You probably mean you hoped for the monster to get killed, right? I dunno, I found it refreshing that it didn't come to that. Yes, the monster was cruel and yet it wasn't evil, the army kinda pushed it that direction. So I would have found an ending with the kids/army killing it silly/ highly disappointing. I thought it worked fine like this, not as black and white as it often is.
Nah, I really didn't want the monster to get killed. I felt bad for it. On the other hand, having it get to escape after killing innocent people was very unsatisfying. The ending that they used simply didn't work with the setup they chose.
I know the military was horrible to the alien, and if the alien had just stuck to killing the military, it would have been acceptable. But it kidnapped/killed/ate/strung up innocent townspeople who never did it any harm. Their only crime was being of the same species as the military men who tortured it. And the movie couldn't even use the excuse of "well, maybe it thought all humans were bad, given how it had been treated," since it was established it could form a psychic link with people. It could easily see that the people it was murdering were no threat and not evil. It either didn't bother or it didn't care.
It was a villain. A sympathetic villain, but a villain nonetheless. The ending it got was not the ending a villain deserved.
It would be a like if they made a movie about a POW. He's a decent guy, and the people who have him treat him horribly. He finally escapes, and hides out in a village while he tries to contact the people on his side to get him out of there. In the meantime, he starts killing the villagers. Maybe because he just doesn't like them due to what happened to him, or maybe because they saw him and he's afraid of them telling their military where he is. But whatever the reason, once he does that, he's a bad guy. The movie can't end with him getting in contact with his people and having them rescue him and take him home to rejoin his loved ones. The character lost the "right" to that ending when he became a murderer.
And, as I said before, I felt BAD for the alien. I WANTED to be able to root for it to escape. I didn't want it to just get killed like your average monster movie creature. I wondered how the movie was going to resolve this moral issue. I don't mind things being morally grey as long as the moovie actually adresses the issues it brings up.
And it didn't. It just buried them. The murdering alien got to go home in a cool scene. The hell with the people it killed and their grieving loved ones. After all, the alien didn't kill the protagonist's little gal-pal, so I guess that means everything's okay then
Which ALSO reminds me...I thought the motivation for the alien's heel-face turn was pretty lame "Bad things happen?" The kid's equating what amounts to an act of God (the death of his mom) to the deliberate imprisonment and torture of the alien for decades by the military is almost insulting, and I doubt the alien, espacially as "pissed-off to the point of murdering innocents" as it is, would buy it.
I thought the plot simply needed some re-tooling in order to work with the ending they chose.
super 8
08/08/2011 10:43:18 PM
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I enjoyed it at first, but...
08/08/2011 11:23:27 PM
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I see what you mean, but! *spoilers*
09/08/2011 11:37:53 AM
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More spoilers
09/08/2011 08:04:48 PM
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