Super 8

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Super 8's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Super 8 completed by The Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 15 June 2011.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines.

ACCM review

This review of the movie Super 8 contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

13-year-old Joe Lamb’s mother has been killed in a factory accident. Four months later, at the beginning of summer, Joe (Joel Courtney) and his friends Charles (Riley Griffiths), Preston (Zach Mills), Martin (Gabriel Basso), Carey (Ryan Lee) and Alice (Elle Fanning) sneak out at midnight to film part of Charles’ low-budget zombie film on Super 8 film. They witness a truck being driven by their biology teacher Dr Woodward (Glynn Turman) driving on to train tracks, crashing into an oncoming train and causing a derailment. Woodward survives, but warns the children to never speak of what they saw that night because they and their parents will be killed.

Air force personnel arrive to investigate the accident and in the following days strange things begin to happen in the town. People and pets disappear; electronics and parts of cars also go missing. Meanwhile, the military question Dr Woodward and kill him when he won’t cooperate.

Then Alice is abducted and the town is evacuated with surrounding fires being used as an excuse. The military take over the town and the children break into the school to search for any information that Dr Woodward may have had. They discover that the US government imprisoned, tortured and experimented on, an extraterrestrial being that crashed on Earth in 1958.

The children now work to find Alice and right past wrongs.

Themes

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Extraterrestrial life; death of a parent

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is violence in this movie including:

• Louis (Alice’s father) and Jack (Joe’s father) have a fight. Jack grabs Louis by the wrists and pushes him into a police car
• A truck rams an oncoming train, sending burning debris into the air around the children. Dr Woodward is hurt in the crash
• The extraterrestrial being destroys a police car, attacks a bus and turns it over and grabs people by the head
• Dr Woodward threatens the children with a gun
• An air force officer kills Dr Woodward by lethal injection
• Jack attacks and hits a guard with a machine gun, then fires at a petrol truck which blows up and sends people flying
• Military personnel fire weapons at an extraterrestrial being

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scene, there area number of scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of eight, including the following:

• A number of crashes and fiery explosions, particularly in the scene where the children are in real threat of being hurt by the exploding derailed train
• The extraterrestrial being looks scary, particularly when we see the full view in the final scenes
• Joe is upset by the death of his mother
• Alice runs away from her father, who is drunk and shouts at her to go away
• Alice is abducted by the extraterrestrial being and later Joe is attacked by it

Aged eight to thirteen

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group may also be disturbed by the above-mentioned violent and distressing scenes

Over the age of thirteen

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Younger children in this age group may also be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes

Product placement

None of concern

Sexual references

None of concern

Nudity and sexual activity

None of concern

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• Donny offers to sell marijuana to Charlie
• Donny smokes a joint and gets stoned
• Alice’s father Louis is an alcoholic and we see him drunk

Coarse language

There are some coarse language and putdowns in this movie, including:

• holy shit, dick, pussy, son of a bitch, dork, what the fuck?

The movie's message

Super 8 is a teen science fiction thriller with spectacular effects and sense of mystery. It raises issues of friendship, young love, single parenthood and how everyday people cope with encountering an extraordinary situation. The film is recommended for older teens because of disturbing scenes and themes and coarse language.

The main messages from this movie are

• the importance of friendships
• the importance of forgiveness and compassion
• that life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it to

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with older children include:

• courage
• self sacrifice

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

• the perils of taking drugs
• lying
• criminal activity (stealing, breaking into property)