Characters / Super 8

Super 8

The Film Crew

Joe

Joseph 'Joe' Lamb

Played By: Joel Courtney

• Badass Pacifist: Joe gets the alien to leave Earth just by using empathy.

• Calling the Old Man Out: Calls out his dad for making him stay away from Alice without getting to know her.
• Character Development: Becomes more assertive and finally accepts his mother's death.
• Determinator: Nothing stopped Joe from going to rescue Alice from the alien.

• Nice Guy: The most mature and well-mannered of his friends.
• Parental Neglect: Joe's father can't wait to shovel him off to a camp for the summer. He's terrified of being left alone with Joe.
• Took a Level in Badass: Part of his character development has him letting people walk all over to standing up for himself and others. Also, he entered a flesh-eating alien's lair, something that Joe probably wouldn't do in the beginning.
• Tragic Keepsake: His mom's locket.
• Would Hit a Girl: But hesitantly and only because it was the only way to wake her up so that they could run for their lives.

Alice

Alice Dainard

Played By: Elle Fanning

• Abusive Parents: Of the neglectful, alcoholic kind, though her father does care about her.
• Damsel in Distress: Gets kidnapped by the alien near the end.

• Lovable Alpha Bitch: She's snarky, blunt, and quite popular if the boys' opinion of her is anything to go by. But she's not actually a bad person, being friendly to Joe in particular and agreeing to play in Charles's film even though she's got no real reason to.
• Missing Mom: Alice's mother left them at some point.

• Sins of Our Fathers: Jack Lamb doesn't like Joe being with her because she is the daughter of the drunken idiot who got Mrs. Lamb killed.

• The Smurfette Principle: The only girl in the main cast.

Charles

Charles Kaznyk

Played By: Riley Griffiths

• Big Eater: Mocked by Cary.
  Cary: Excuse me, can I have another order of fries? Because my friend here is fat.
• The Big Guy
• Control Freak: He takes the production of his film VERY seriously.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Hot-Blooded: He's somewhat abrasive and short-tempered.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Part of the reason he takes his budding film career so seriously is that he's self-aware enough about how fat and ugly he is that he knows he needs to do something impressive with his life if Alice or any other girl is ever going to like him.
• Insufferable Genius
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He and Joe's friendship is strained through the movie, with Charles mostly the aggressor, but he does care for Joe. At the climax of the movie, when the group have to split up, Charles's immediate concern is whether Joe will be alright without him. He also tries to calm Dr. Woodward after the train crash, at first believing it to be an accident.
• Large Ham: "GOD, MOM, I'M COMING!"
• Prima Donna Director
• Sir Swears-a-Lot
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With everyone, but especially Cary.

Cary

Cary

Played By: Ryan Lee

• Ax-Crazy: A heroic example.
• Braces of Orthodontic Overkill: Charles even calls him Chompers during an argument.
• Everything Is Better With Explosions: The script even makes a note that "this kid enjoyed the crash."
• Keet: He's pretty hyperactive and easily excitable.
• Pyromaniac: Has a fixation with fireworks and has taken them apart to make his own.
• Mad Bomber
• Malicious Misnaming: Calls Martin Smartin, despite Martin telling him he doesn't like being called that.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot
• Tagalong Kid: He's the only one out of all of Joe's friends to enter the alien's lair with him to save Alice.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Charles, but also with Martin and Preston.

Martin

Martin

Played By: Gabriel Basso

• Butt-Monkey: Culminating in him breaking his leg in the climax.
• Cowardly Lion
• Dirty Coward
• The Lancer
• Nervous Wreck: While all the boys are shaken after the train crash, Martin is most obviously freaking out. He vomits due to terror at least twice during the film.

Preston

Preston

Played By: Zach Mills

• Deadpan Snarker
• Out of Focus: He is left behind while the rest of the group sneak back into town.
• The Smart Guy

Residents of Lillian, Ohio

Jack

Jackson 'Jack' Lamb

Played By: Kyle Chandler

• Berserk Button: The Dainards are this to him until the end of the film.

• Her Heart Will Go On: Heavily implied after he, in his own way, forgives Louis.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The "jerk" part comes from planning to send his son away because he didn't know how to talk to him and forbidding Joe from spending time with Alice because of her being the daughter of Louis. The "heart of gold" comes from him forgiving Louis and saving his son.
• Morality Chain: A non-villainous example. It seems Jack's wife was this for him to prevent him from being vindictive towards Louis even before the accident due to his bad reputation as the town drunk, however, after his wife died, Jack blames Louis for her death and becomes hostile towards him as a result, which even exceeds to Louis's family as well, such as his daughter Alice.

• Supporting Protagonist: Some of Joe's and his friends' escapades are told from his viewpoint.

Louis

Louis Dainard

Played By: Ron Eldard

• Abusive Parents: Of the neglectful kind.
• The Alcoholic
• Alcoholic Parent
• The Atoner
• Despair Event Horizon
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Acts like an asshole mostly due to his wife abandoning him and Alice, as well his guilt over making Mrs. Lamb cover for him at work, which lead to her death.
• Survivor Guilt: All Louis wanted to do was apologize to Jack for indirectly causing his wife's death.

Woodward

Dr. Thomas Woodward

Played By: Glynn Turman

• The Atoner: For his part in experimenting on the alien.
• Badass Teacher
• Butt-Monkey: He's never seen in a single normal situation. He's always being grabbed, or hurt, or tortured...
  • Except when he frees the alien from the train.
• Defiant to the End: Tells Nelec exactly what he thinks of him.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: He maintained a cover as a Stern Teacher at the town's middle school, while he works out a plan to free the alien.
• Not Quite Dead
• Psychic Link
• Reassigned to Antarctica
• Stern Teacher: Gained an infamous reputation as this to a point students thought he was a Sadist Teacher.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness

Pruitt

Sheriff Pruitt

Played By: Brett Rice

• Back for the Dead
• It Will Never Catch On: Sort of. He's disdainful of portable music because he thinks it's a 'slippery slope'. Indeed, the guy he chides for it fails to overhear Pruitt being attacked.
• Killed Mid-Sentence
• Mauve Shirt
• The Sheriff: Of Lillian.

Donny

Donny

Played By: David Gallagher

• Chekhov's Gunman: His first scene establishes his crush on Jen, which Joe then uses to convince him to drive her brother and his friends back to town to save Alice.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He actually treats the kids pretty respectfully and even shows some concern, despite being massively stoned at the time, when they all disappear on him after he passes out in the car.
• Precision F-Strike
• The Stoner: He's the town's local pot dealer, and is more often high than not.

The Kaznyks

Mr & Mrs Kaznyk

Played By: Joel Mc Kinnon Miller & Jessica Tuck

• Good Parents: Undoubtedly the best example in the film.
• Happily Married: They're never seen arguing, and seem like a team when it comes to dealing with their many kids.
• Nice Guy and Girl: They never say anything bad about anyone and are consistently kind and caring.
• Parental Substitute: They make it clear they're fully prepared to be there for Joe.

Jen

Jen Kaznyk

Played By: Amanda Michalka

• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Hates her babysitting job and wishes she could leave it and go to parties.

The Air Force

Nelec

Colonel Nelec

Played By: Noah Emmerich

• Asshole Victim
• Bad Boss: He murders his former employee Dr Woodward in cold blood, and sends his Dragon into a practically suicidal situation.
• Big Bad: Nelec is the true villain of the story; all the horrible events that plague Lillian can be traced back to his initial actions.
• Dirty Coward: He sends his own men up against the alien basically to serve as canaries down the mine, and when he's confronted he tries to escape by opening the cage he kept the kids in. Subverted in a personal Know Where To Fold Em, but Defiant to the End moment when he chooses to Face Death with Dignity when he runs out of ammo. Also, his attempt to open the cage could be a Papa Wolf Pet the Dog to free the kids from his captivity so they could all escape from the alien's wrath.
• Exact Words: He gently promises he will 'take care' of Woodward...but Woodward knows what that means.
• Karmic Death: Ripped apart by the alien he brutally tortured.
• Just Desserts: He's killed and eaten by the alien.
• Sociopathic Soldier
• The Stoic
• Torture Technician: He was responsible for torturing the alien, and also tortured Woodward for info.

Overmeyer

Master Sergeant Overmeyer

Played By: Richard T. Jones

• The Dragon: To Colonel Nelec.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: He's ripped out of the bus by the Alien as he's trying to clarify an order from Nelec.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He's following orders, and otherwise doesn't seem like all that bad a guy with the exception of his Kick the Dog moment when he confiscates Joe's Tragic Keepsake and places in his uniform's breast pocket as though he now makes it his property after catching him and his friends at their middle school outside of the town's quarantine zone.
• Oh, Crap!: He understandably looks terrified when Nelec orders him to tag the creature.

Other Characters

Cooper

The Alien/'Cooper'

Played By: Bruce Greenwood

• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: When he first crashed, all he wanted was to go back to his planet. Nelec and the military subjected him to cruel experiments and inhumane conditions amounting to torture. Angry and in agony, he kills humans freely after escaping.
• Big Eater: Of humans.
• Bizarre Alien Biology
• Captured Super-Entity
• Genius Bruiser
• I'm a Humanitarian: Humans become his source of food.
• Immune to Bullets: The combined might of the Air Force doesn't impact him much. Nelec unloads an entire magazine into his face and it doesn't slow him down.
• It Can Think
• No Name Given: We never learn his true name, or the name of his race.
• Psychic Link: With whoever he touches, seemingly by choice.
• Tunnel King: He gets about by tunneling underneath the town, able to come and go as he wishes.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Yes, he goes on a deadly rampage and kills multiple people, but he's only doing so because the military have captured and experimented on him for years. All he really wants to do is get home.