Super 8 Movie Review

Act structure explains how a plot of a film story is composed. 

The three acts are labeled as act 1 setup, act 2 confrontation and act 3 resolution. 

The first act is usually used for exposition, to establish the main characters, their relationships and the world they live in. The first act usually comprises the first quarter of the screenplay around 30 minutes.

 In the movie Super 8, the first act refer to the start of the film. The mother of the main character Joe Lamb has been killed in an accident. Joe was more attached to his mom than his dad who is Deputy Jackson Lamb who never really been there for his son.

Later at the Lamb's house, Louis Dainard pays a visit. He was blamed for the death of Jackson wife's death and forced him out of his house and puts him in his squad car. As Joe watches his father take Louis away, his gaze shift to a silver locket in his hand.

Four months later, Joe and his friends Charle get summer break and they has been shooting a Super 8 film which is a detective story for a film festival in Cleveland. The crew include Cary, Preston and Martin. Charle had rewritten the story so the detective now has a wife. He invited Alice to play the character. 

The group arrives at the Lilian Train Station, where Charles intends to shoot a scene with Martin as the detective of his story, trying to get his wife Alice to leave a zombie infection. As they film the scene of the train thundering past the station, there is a explosion of the train. The train-wreck site scattered with strange little white cubes. Joe picked up one of the white cubes and the strange events started to happen around in his life.

The second act also referred to as rising action, typically depicts the main character's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point, only to find  him or herself in ever worsening situations. The main reason of the main character seem unable to resolve their problems is because they do not yet have the skills to deal with the forces if antagonism that confront them. The second act comprises the next two quarter of the film around 60 minutes.

The town devolves into a state of crisis after the train- crash. There are many report about the missing household items and dogs. Later Jackson grows concerned when the Military begins to roll into Lilian through radio frequency.  

Shortly after hearing the transmission, Jackson encounters Alice's father Louis, who tells Jackson to keep Joe away from Alice. Jackson demands that Joe keep away from Alice, but Joe claims that Alice isnt like her father. They two reach a wordless impassses before Jackson under arrest and locked away by General Nelec.

Joe heads over to the cemetery after this, where he sits at the headstone of his Mother's grave. He hears some loud noises coming from a garage near the tombstones. He is surprised when Alice appears in his rooms. They watched the home movies of his mom and suddenly the strange white cube that Joe picked up at the crash site started to vibrate before shooting through a nearby wall and leaving a hole behind.

After that, Alice heads home and saw his father drunk and smoking. She rushed away from the home with bike because disgusted by his father. Alice was taken by a large creature at that time. Because of this incident, Joe intent to get back into town and rescue Alice. They discovered some secret of the large creature before they under arrest by General Nelec. They managed to escape and they rush off to the cemetery. 

They saw and heard strange things from the garage. Eventually, they found all the missing people at there and the large creature eating the limb of another human.

The third act features the resolution of the story and its subplots. The climax is the scene or sequence in which the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the main character and other characters with a new sense of who they really are. The third act comprises the final quarter of the film around final 30 minutes.

Joe, Alice and Cary return to the surface safely. As they do,a ll sorts of mechanical objects in the area become magnetized to the water tower's top area. The water tower burst after the locket of Joe flies up to the magnetized watertower, where he metallic objects and the white cubes morph into a spaceship. The creature climbs on top of the water tower and disappears. The watery content raining down on the people below and all of the family reunion again. Alice and his dad and Joe and his dad seem to remend their broken relationship because of this incident.

Reference

Sidney Lumet(2013).Three-act Structure. Retrieved from http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/pruter/film/threeact.htm.

Stephen J. Cannell (1998). What is the Three Act Structure? Retrieved from http://www.writerswrite.com/screenwriting/lecture4.htm.

IMDb(2001). Super 8. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1650062/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn.