History Film / Super8

* TheSeventies: Takes place in 1979, and does a fabulous job of capturing the look of the time.

* CapturedSuperEntity: The alien since TheFifties, under less-than-humane circumstances.

* HeadphonesEqualIsolation: A gas station attendant is so busy rocking out to Music/{{Blondie}} on his brand new Walkman that he doesn't hear the monster attack, nor feel the shockwaves from a police car being bounced off the ground 50 feet away.

** To the Spielberg movies of the late [[TheSeventies '70s]] and [[TheEighties '80s]].

* OverprotectiveDad: Joe's and Alice's fathers when they forbid their respective children from spending time with the other.

* BareYourMidriff: Charles's older sister, Jennifer, has wardrobe choices that consist entirely of this trope.

Not to be confused with ''Film/EightMM''. Has nothing to do with the motel chain.

* AllohistoricalAllusion: The Three Mile Island accident, which took place in the same year as the events of the film, is mentioned in the news in one scene.

* ShoutOut:
** One-sheets of ''Film/{{Earthquake}}'', ''Film/Halloween1978'', and ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' are prominently displayed in Charles' room.
** An in-universe example in Charles' movie ''The Case'' where the zombie attacks occur at "[[Creator/GeorgeARomero Romero]] Chemicals".

** Alice's father turns out to be this as well, as he was indirectly responsible for Joe's mother's death and sought out forgiveness.

** And when Deputy Lamb is coming out of the press conference, a man comes up to him and tells him about "some kinda sinkhole" in his garage.

* ShoutOut: One-sheets of ''Film/{{Earthquake}}'', ''Film/Halloween1978'', and ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' are prominently displayed in Charles' room.

** Taken UpToEleven in the first draft of the script, in which the alien was never supposed to be shown ''at all''.

''Super 8'' is a 2011 SciFi Monster Film written and directed by Creator/JJAbrams and produced by Creator/StevenSpielberg. It is an homage to classic "adventurous children" movies, particularly those made/produced by Spielberg, like ''Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'', ''Film/TheGoonies'' and especially ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind''.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Joe eventually realizes that the alien isn't particularly malicious, it just wants to get rebuild its ship and go home, but it has to eat ''something'' while it's on the run from the law, and basically feels the same way about humans that we would feel about some particularly nasty-but-small wild animals when we crash land in a foreign country - (an obnoxious nuisance at worst, but also [[ToServeMan the best food source available]]). The only time it displays actual murderous intent is during the bus attack, [[BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil not without justification.]]

* TheUnreveal: The alien's home planet or much of anything about its race. Then again, it is a J.J. Abrams film.

* AmateurFilmMakingPlot: Charles's zombie movie, eventually shown in full during the end credits.

** [[DrugsAreBad "Drugs are so bad!"]], Charles moans after Donny stones himself to sleep. PlayedForLaughs.

* HumanityEnsues: In "The Case", Det. Hathaway is about to reluctantly shoot his infected wife when the antidote starts taking effect.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: In "The Case": "This fell out of the pocket of the attacker's pocket."

* EsotericHappyEnding: InUniverse. The kids' film, "The Case," ends with the hero saving his wife from the zombie disease...by wasting the only remaining dosage of the cure on her.

* VomitingCop: Played with in that the boy who ''plays'' the cop in "The Case" just happens to be the one who keeps barfing.

* StylisticSuck: "The Case," the zombie movie that the kids are filming, is shown during the credits. It is ''so bad''. Joe in particular is a horrendous actor during his one scene in ''The Case.''

* ClicheStorm: InUniverse. ''The Case'' is all NightOfTheLivingMooks cliches rolled into one. A more realistic example, because it's hard to expect Creator/AndreiTarkovsky material from a bunch of 13-year-olds who've been watching too many zombie movies.

* ClicheStorm: InUniverse. "The Case" is all NightOfTheLivingMooks cliches rolled into one. A more realistic example, because it's hard to expect Creator/AndreiTarkovsky material from a bunch of 14-year-olds who've been watching too many zombie movies.

* DullSurprise: Averted within the movie itself, as all of the child actors are great. Played hilariously straight within "[[ShowWithinAShow The Case]]", where the acting is just ''[[StylisticSuck lousy.]]'' Charles and Martin are decent, but Joe is painfully wooden when playing a soldier. Alice is the only one of the kids who seemingly has any acting ability, but most of that gets edited out of the film.

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: At the end of "[[ShowWithinAShow The Case]]," Charles talks directly to the audience, only to be interrupted by a zombie tearing out his throat. It's a ShoutOut to grindhouse movies that did the exact same thing, and to the framing stories of a few ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' episodes being invaded by the primary plots.

** After the moment where Joe lets go of the locket, followed by the ship leaving, the credits continue the sad music... only to cut to show the hilarious [[ShowWithinAShow movie of the kids]], "The Case". And then, "My Sharona".

* NightOfTheLivingMooks: The zombie movie the kids are trying to film.

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: The cure for the zombie virus in "The Case."

* RuleOfThree: The three male zombies in "The Case" are all played by Cary, who looks exactly the same in all three roles except with a change of clothes.

* ShowWithinAShow: Type 1. "The Case", the film that the kids are making for the Super-8 Film Festival. Their involvement in the greater plot mostly revolves about being in the right place at the wrong time as they try to film the thing.

* StylisticSuck: "The Case," the zombie movie that the kids are filming, is shown during the credits. It is ''so bad''. Joe in particular is a horrendous actor during his one scene in "The Case."

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: InUniverse. Alice's character as the wife in "The Case" is just a SacrificialLamb, but during rehearsal, Alice acts out the part so emotionally the entire crew is in shock. And then it gets mostly edited out of the film anyway.

* WomenAreWiser: Downplayed. Alice is the same age as all the boys (14), but since women generally mature faster than men, her greater maturity makes sense. However, she's still shown to be just as emotional, impulsive, and quick to anger as the other teenagers. The only place where she ''is'' shown to be completely superior to all of the guys is in the filming of "[[ShowWithinAShow The Case]]", where she's apparently the only one who has any acting capability whatsoever.

* YouLookFamiliar: InUniverse example. In "[[ShowWithinAShow The Case]]", Cary plays ''every single zombie'', all of whom get killed by Martin's character, except for when Charles and Alice's characters are infected.

* PunchClockVillain:
** All of the U.S. military personnel under the Colonel's direction.
** Arguably, [[NotSoDifferent the alien itself.]] It just wants to rebuild its ship and go home - but rebuilding a spaceship takes time, and well, in all that time, a bus-sized predator's gotta eat ''[[ToServeMan something...]]''

* ClicheStorm: InUniverse. "The Case" is all NightOfTheLivingMooks cliches rolled into one. A case of RealityEnsues, because it's hard to expect Creator/AndreiTarkovsky material from a bunch of 14-year-olds who've been watching too many zombie movies.

** The creature is also a [[GreyAndGrayMorality good deal more violent]] than most "crash-landed alien" movie characters, and after [[BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil 20-something years of being tortured and experimented on]], it's pissed off and ready to leave, and doesn't care who gets in its way. It's clearly some form of an apex predator -- like the only other sentient species that has yet been identified in nature -- and thinks nothing of kidnapping the native "[[ToServeMan wildlife]]" to feed on while it builds its spaceship. An intelligent animal the size of a bus [[RealityEnsues has to eat a lot of food]], and given that Lillian seems to have no large livestock, there's only one [[ToServeMan food source]] it can turn to.

* GenreDeconstruction: In addition to being a GenreThrowback, arguably the basic plot of the movie asks the question "What if instead of being tiny, eating human food, and being adopted by kids, [[Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial E.T.]] was huge, carnivorous, and got captured and tortured by the government before the kids could get to him?" Answer: he'd be [[DeconstructedCharacterArchetype a terrifying monster]], who's not killing people for the fun of it (except [[ItsPersonal the military]]), but, well, for a predator the size of a bus, [[RealityEnsues Beer and Reese's Pieces ain't gonna cut it as a food supply.]] Also, TheMeddlingKidsAreUseless gets a damn good reason for once: this alien has a mission and will kill anything that gets in the way, and the military [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade has no problem getting rid of witnesses]]. [[spoiler:Joe manages to talk the alien out of killing any more people, but having killed Nelec (the bastard who deserves ''all'' of the vengeance) and with its ship fully rebuilt, it's a pretty moot point.]]

* GreyAndGrayMorality: The conflict between the army and the alien. The army is highly xenophobic, and willing to go to grand lengths to bring the alien down. But they're mostly just doing their jobs, and even the worst of them has his redeeming qualities. Namely, sacrificing his life to let the kids escape the alien. Meanwhile, the alien has no problem with killing or kidnapping innocent people that get in his way, using kidnappees as a food source while he rebuilds his ship. However, he's more interested in leaving Earth than causing harm, and the whole reason he's attacking humans at all is because his terrible and inhumane treatment at the hands of the military has led him to believe that all humans are a potential threat. That and the fact that a two-story tall apex predator has to eat ''something'', and since Lillian apparently has no livestock (and [[EvilDetectingDog all the dogs]] were scared off by the alien), [[RealityEnsues there's pretty much only one]] [[ToServeMan food source]] available.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Despite killing a large number of people throughout the movie, it's made clear that the alien is primarily just trying to feed and/or defend itself, as a carnivorous creature that large would require a [[RealityEnsues huge amount of food to survive.]] Except for when it has the Colonel cornered in the bus, the creature pauses and looks him dead in the eye, as if [[BestServedCold savoring the moment]], then [[EvilLaugh starts laughing.]]

* RealityEnsues: Feeding an alien creature [[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial Reese's pieces]] works fine when it's approximately the size of a toddler. Not so much here: A highly intelligent apex predator the size of a school bus has to eat a ''lot'' of food to sustain itself, and given that Lillian seems to have no farm animals, there's pretty much only one [[ToServeMan food source]] available for the creature to choose from.

* InfantImmortality: Despite a number of other violent deaths in the movie, all the kids make it out unscathed.

* PaperThinDisguise: Jackson's stolen Air Force uniform. Everyone from town knows that it's him when he uses it to infiltrate the evacuee center run by the Air Force. It works for the soldiers, since the military is, obviously, a very big organization.

* CharacterDevelopment: Joe. He starts off as a bit of a pushover, constantly helping Charles with his film and initially letting him blow up his model train. After bonding with Alice, Joe starts standing up for himself, eventually directing the kids to help Charles and taking Donny with him to save Alice. As noted by Donny, "When did ''he'' get so bossy?"

* {{Adorkable}}: Joe, when it comes to his hobby of making train models or his obvious crush on Alice.

* KarmaHoudini: The alien kills at least a dozen innocent townsfolk, including the sheriff and a woman, yet the audience is expected to sympathize with it and feel good when it leaves Earth.

''Super 8'' is a 2011 SciFi MonsterFilm written and directed by Creator/JJAbrams and produced by Creator/StevenSpielberg. It is an homage to classic "adventurous children" movies, particularly those made/produced by Spielberg like ''Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'', ''Film/TheGoonies'' and especially ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind''.

A group of middle schoolers in a small Ohio town in 1979 are dedicated to making a zombie movie to enroll in an upcoming film festival, with Charles as script-writer and director, his best friend Joe as the make-up artist and other cast and crew members like Martin (lead actor), Cary (pyrotechnic/pyromaniac) and Preston (misc crew/extras). Charles manages to convince a girl and classmate, Alice, to play the part of the wife and she and Joe start to form an affection for each other. Unfortunately, there are some lingering emotions surrounding the death of Joe's mom several months prior, as well problems with his distant father, a deputy in the local sheriff's office.

** Interestingly, the film was originally going to have a scene where Joe masturbates as a CensorDecoy, but the scene never made it past the script because the filmmakers decided it would be [[{{Squick}} too creepy]].

** Played straight in the bus attack, when the first two soldiers to die are Overmeyer and the driver, Krause, who are both black guys. As if in silent acknowledgement of this trope, both of them have the most darkly hilariously "[[ThisIsGonnaSuck I hate my job]]" expressions on their faces when Nelec sends them out to track the alien, clearly [[GenreSavvy knowing what's going to happen to them.]]

* BookDumb: Joe. His talents are obviously placed outside school subjects. In one scene he hides a test marked "C-" from Alice.

** A woman at the police department is looking for someone with brown hair and "rollers." She's one of the people taken by the alien.
** The Electronic Football. When the kids break into the "Dungeon" where all the confiscated items and Woodward's items were, the next scene has the kid it was confiscated from playing it in the background.

** Donny has a crush on Charles' sister Jennifer, who wants to go to Wendy's party next week, but their mother makes her babysit the twins. This comes in handy when Charles convinces her to flirt with Donny so that the gang can be driven back to town to rescue Alice in exchange for Charles doing the babysitting for her so she can go to the party.

* ClicheStorm: InUniverse, "The Case" is all NightOfTheLivingMooks cliches rolled into one. A case of RealityEnsues, because it's hard to expect Creator/AndreiTarkovsky material from a bunch of 14-year-olds who've been watching too many zombie movies.

** As summarized by none other than Creator/JamesRolfe, "Coming from a [[WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd guy that says 'shit' a lot]], these kids say 'shit' ''all the time''."

** The creature is also a [[GreyAndGrayMorality good deal more violent]] than most "crash-landed alien" movie characters, and after [[BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil 20-something years of being tortured and experimented on]], it's pissed off and ready to leave, and doesn't care who gets in its way. It's clearly some form of an apex predator - like the only other sentient species that has yet been identified in nature - and thinks nothing of kidnapping the native "[[ToServeMan wildlife]]" to feed on while it builds its spaceship. An intelligent animal the size of a bus [[RealityEnsues has to eat]] ''[[RealityEnsues a lot]]'' [[RealityEnsues of food]], and given that Lillian seems to have no large livestock, there's only one [[ToServeMan food source]] it can turn to.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: In the "The Case": "This fell out of the pocket of the attacker's pocket."

* DiscOneFinalBoss: [[BigBad Colonel]] Nelec gets killed about 3/4 of the way through the movie. The climax of the film is Joe convincing the alien that it doesn't have to act like a monster.

* EsotericHappyEnding: In-universe: The kids' film, "The Case," ends with the hero saving his girlfriend from the zombie disease...by wasting the only remaining dosage of the cure on her.

* EvilDetectingDog:
** All the dogs in the area run away to other towns because they can tell there's a monster running around.
** Either that, or the equipment it's assembling makes a noise or smell humans can't detect, but they don't like at all.

* FelonyMisdemeanor: "You can't drink that! ''It doesn't belong to you!''"
* FlatWhat: Cary emits one of these after Joe is able to convince the alien to spare him during the climax.

** Three: When several of Martin's scripts sheets blow away, he is seen chasing them across the screen behind Joe and Alice. A little later, when Joe is putting make-up on and having a conversation with Alice, Charles and Martin have a heated argument over one of his lines being changed slightly just before filming.

* GenreDeconstruction: In addition to being a GenreThrowback, arguably the basic plot of the movie asks the question "What if instead of being tiny, eating human food, and being adopted by kids, [[Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial ET]] was huge, carnivorous, and got captured and tortured by the government before the kids could get to him?" Answer: he'd be [[DeconstructedCharacterArchetype a terrifying monster]], who's not killing people for the fun of it (except [[ItsPersonal the military]]), but, well, for a predator the size of a bus, [[RealityEnsues Beer and Reese's Pieces ain't gonna cut it as a food supply.]] Also, TheMeddlingKidsAreUseless gets a damn good reason for once: this alien has a mission and will kill anything that gets in the way, and the military [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade has no problem getting rid of witnesses]]. [[spoiler:Joe manages to talk the alien out of killing any more people, but having killed Nelec (the bastard who deserves ''all'' of the vengeance) and with its ship fully rebuilt, it's a pretty moot point.]]

** The deputy punching out bad guys to steal their uniforms is a pretty blatant call back to ''Franchise/IndianaJones''.

** Played straight when a bone is said to be poking out of Martin's leg after an explosion in the house and it has to be physically arranged back, but neither the injury nor the process is shown.

* HellIsThatNoise: The sound designers in this movie really earned their overtime pay. The creature's demonic-sounding roars and growls are ''terrifying''. Especially during the [[NightmareFuel bus scene]].

** Basically, the creature itself has been stranded on Earth since the 1950s, and has been imprisoned and experimented on for the last couple of decades, and has only wanted to return home via its ship. More or less the reason for its aggression is because every human it sees (other than Dr. Woodward, with whom it establishes a mental link) is a potential threat, or expendable for the most part.

** The classic version is used repeatedly when the monster abducts someone. The third version as well: when Joe and Cary are in the monster's lair, the sheriff's body is right next to them, though you might not spot it until they do, and when Alice is abducted, there appears to be something blurry in the background. [[NightmareFuel Which starts moving]].

* PunchClockVillain: All of the U.S. military personnel under the Colonel's direction.

** Could be justified: braces might have been made of different material back then, but today, dental braces are very rarely magnetic. The metal chain could be a similar example of a non-magnetic metal.
* SerkisFolk: The creature is all motion-capture. Provided by Bruce Greenwood, of all people. Maybe Abrams just likes [[Film/StarTrek2009 hanging out with him.]]
* SeventiesHair: Farrah Fawcett hairdos and long sideburns all over the place. However, most of the male kids' hair isn't all that different from 2011 fashions.

* ShowWithinAShow: Types 1. "The Case", the film that the kids are making for the Super-8 Film Festival. Their involvement in the greater plot mostly revolves about being in the right place at the wrong time as they try to film the thing.

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Alice Dainard is the only female in a group with 5 young boys making a film and navigating their way through their adventure. In fact, she's pretty much the only female in the entire movie, other than Charles's mom and sister.

* StylisticSuck: "The Case," the zombie movie that the kids are filming, is shown during the credits. It is ''{{so bad|ItsGood}}''. Joe in particular is a horrendous actor during his one scene in "The Case."

* YouLookFamiliar: InUniverse example, in "[[ShowWithinAShow The Case]]", Cary plays ''every single zombie'', all of whom get killed by Martin's character, except for when Charles and Alice's characters are infected.