“Super 8,” emotional logic, and rational logic
A few weeks back I posted this:
I have been emailed by a bunch of GITS readers asking my reaction to the movie Super 8. I want to make sure folks have a chance to see it before providing any analysis so they can screen it with a clean slate. In the interim, I propose we have a go at some of the logic ‘problems’ in the movie, at least as lobbed my way via email. So if you’ve seen the movie and you had any problems with the story logic, please join me in comments where I have started a list.
I will collect all the logic issues, then go through them with my own response.
There were quite a few responses, so I have aggregated all of them and will post in comments so as not to spoil the movie for those who have yet to see it.
And now let me resolve all those logic issues for you.
But wait. How can I handle all the logic issues without actually referring to them one by one here in this post?
Simple. Because I don’t need to. There is a blanket rationale which overrides any logic problem in the movie. And that rationale is this:
Emotional logic trumps rational logic.
J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg are savvy enough to know when it comes to story, what a moviegoer wants to see, what they enjoy experiencing as they watch a movie, and the feelings they have during those two hours are absolutely, fundamentally, and utterly more important than any sort of rational consideration.
Two points:
(1) This doesn’t work with every movie. For example, a heist film like Ocean’s 11 or con movie like The Spanish Prisoner puts a higher premium of the internal logic of the story. There the filmmakers must craft a plot within the perimeters of how that rational logic shapes the contours of the story universe. That is not the case with a movie like Super 8 which is a cross between science fiction, fantasy, and wish fulfillment. For this movie, emotional logic rules over rational logic because moviegoers go into the film experience desiring to experience the sci-fi, the fantasy, and the wish fulfillment.
(2) Once the story establishes the threshold of emotional logic, basically sinking that hook in the moviegoer, they are free to play that trump card as often as they like as long as they don’t overuse it. How does Super 8 do this? Since anybody who is interested in the movie has likely seen the trailer or commercials, I’m not giving away anything here to note that a major Plotline point is a train wreck.
But it’s not just a train wreck, it is the train wreck to end all train wrecks. Dozens of train cars exploding, careening, flying, hurtling, crashing, smashing, tumbling, rumbling, banging, booming, creating a hailstorm of metal parts and flaming shards, taking several minutes of screen time resulting in massive destruction.
Now several people noted logic issues re this plot point:
* How could one pick-up truck driving onto the tracks and crashing into the engine cause such a massive chain reaction of destruction?
* How could the driver of the truck possibly survive the collision and ensuing apocalypse?
* If the alien is able to break out of the train after the accident, why doesn’t it escape before?
* Why were the soldiers transporting the alien in the first place?
* Why was the train apparently unmanned?
* How is it none of the kids filming at the time of the destruction gets hurt?
* How is it Alice’s father’s car survives the rampage?
* And then the remarkable coincidence that the kids just happen to be filming their scene at the precise time the train happens to rumble by as well as the precise time the teacher in the pick-up truck just happens to cause the accident.
That’s a lot of issues, right? And while they may exist as concerns in our rational mind, there’s one simple fact that sets them aside:
We just got done watching the greatest single train accident sequence in the history of movies!!!
That experience — the emotional logic of that — trumps the rational logic. And now having created this enormous latitude of emotional logic, the filmmakers can go to that well again and again and again.
Now sure, there will be a segment of moviegoers who will diss the movie because they can’t get past the issues of rational logic.
But that’s not the movie’s target audience. And as filmmakers, Abrams and Spielberg would be downright dumb if they allowed the intellectual instincts of a small minority of the movie’s potential audience squash the primacy of emotional logic which they figured would be there in the target demo group.
In other words, the filmmakers made a calculated choice that a helluva a lot more moviegoers would enjoy giving themselves over to the emotional logic of the story universe in Super 8 than would not.
And they were right. Per Box Office Mojo, Super 8 has racked up $155M in worldwide box office receipts as of today, probably on its way to $200M. With a production budget reported to be $50M, the movie will have a very healthy ROI.
Caveat: If your name isn’t Abrams, Spielberg, or the like, and you are an aspiring or novice screenwriter, your scripts will be held to a higher degree of scrutiny per its story logic. So you have to be careful. While your script’s target audience may be tween girls, ten year-old boys, horror enthusiasts, or whatever type of fans, the readers of your scripts will all be adults. If you need them to buy into your story’s emotional logic, you must get them in touch with their inner tween, ten year-old, horror fan, and so on in order to buy into your vision for the story.
Finally in a bit of synchronicity, it just so happens The Bitter Script Reader’s post today was about this very subject of emotional logic, specifically in reference to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:
…the film reached the classic scene where school dean Ed Rooney breaks into Ferris’s house and has a confrontation with Ferris’s dog… and it hit me! This is the first time we’re seeing Ferris’s dog and it’s more than an hour into the film! You’d think conventional screenwriting wisdom would have dictated a scene earlier in the movie establishing the pooch’s presence before Ferris left, and yet… no.
This struck me because it wasn’t that long ago I saw the divide among fans of Super 8. There were those who nitpicked every last detail of the film as proof it was crap, while plenty of other viewers who were touched by the movie basically adopted the “la la la… not listening” approach to the holes. I didn’t think it was a perfect film, myself. I even admit there are some details that don’t quite fit… but some of the critiques crossed the line into really anal nitpicking. It was almost as if these viewers were looking for a fight with the film and were blasting it for not having any faith in their ability to connect the dots off-screen.
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It comes down to this: if you think Ferris Bueller is a stupid film, you probably hate the fact Ferris’s dog isn’t established sooner. If everything else in that movie works for you, what does it matter if the dog shows up out of nowhere? If Super 8 worked for you emotionally, do you really need to find out why the alien was being moved?
For all the logic ‘problems’ in Super 8 folks noted previously and an opportunity to weigh in on the subject, see you in comments.
UPDATE: From a recent event at the DGA, J.J. Abrams and James Cameron talked with the night’s honoree Steven Spielberg in a wide-ranging conversation about filmmaking. This excerpt:
Applauding Spielberg’s passion and childlike enthusiasm for the open wonder of possibility, Cameron and Abrams listened intently as Spielberg explained how he balanced the “magic of the moment with the necessary architecture of each scene.” Spielberg was vividly forthright in discussing everything from dealing with a disastrous first day of shooting on Jaws, thanks to an inebriated Robert Shaw, to the creative genesis of Close Encounters which led to the discovery that the key to accessibility in science fiction is personal, human relationships: “Create characters you really want to be with.” [emphasis added]
Seems applicable to this discussion as I think it supports my basic contention at least how Spielberg and Abrams approached Super 8. The more deeply a moviegoer is immersed in the story’s characters, the more latitude you have as a filmmaker to do just about anything, including bending the ‘rules’ of rational logic.
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