Super 8 was intended to be a general homage to that sort of film.

Not a slavish remake of one of them.

So it has the child friendships, it has the government conspiracy and caring but clueless parental figures of ET and CE3K but it also has the body horror of Alien, Gremlins, Jaws and The Blob remake etc (an alien has to eat and you guys eat mammals).

As for F-bombs, kids that age have always spoken that way, if you think otherwise you just weren't listening.

It was difficult to get such language from a child passed the certification boards of the 80's (look how shocking the language in The Exorcist was thought to be in the early 70's, now it's almost retroactively comical).

Once again it wasn't a perfect film but it was well directed.

The actors seemed to be motivated into acting like their characters instead of reciting their lines in a bewildered fashion to a man with a chrome ball on his head.

This may lead to a better Star Wars film than we have had of late even if the writing is a bit pants still.

By all accounts the writer can write too.

But John Carter proved to me at least that a reputation is not enough to make an interesting film.