Super 8 (2011 film)


Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction monster thriller film written and directed by J. J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler and tells the story of a group of young teenagers who are filming their own Super 8 movie when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The film was shot in Weirton, West Virginia and surrounding areas, masquerading as the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio.
Super 8 was released on June 10, 2011, in conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States. The film received positive reviews, with critics praising the film for its nostalgic elements, visual effects, musical score, and for the performances of the cast, in particular, both Fanning and newcomer Courtney's acting was cited, while also being compared to such thematically similar films as E.T., Stand by Me, and The Goonies, featuring a darker interpretation of those iconic premises. Super 8 was also a commercial success, grossing over $260 million against a $50 million budget. The film received several awards and nominations, primarily in technical and special effects categories, Giacchino's musical score, as well as for Courtney and Fanning's performances.

Plot

In 1979, Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb of Lillian, Ohio, and his 14-year-old son Joe, mourn the death of wife and mother Elizabeth, who was killed in a workplace accident. Jack blames Elizabeth's co-worker, Louis Dainard, as she was covering his shift because he showed up to work drunk. All Joe has left is a locket that belonged to her.
Four months after Elizabeth's funeral, as school lets out for the summer, Joe helps his best friend Charles Kaznyk to make a low-budget zombie movie for a film competition. Charles enlists the further help of fellow friends Preston Scott, Martin Read, and Cary McCarthy, as well as Dainard's daughter, Alice. Though their fathers would be furious, Joe and Alice become close to each other.
Charles has them film a scene at a train depot at midnight. During a rehearsal, a train approaches and Charles has them start Super 8 filming as the train passes to add 'production value'. While filming, Joe witnesses a pickup truck drive onto the tracks and ram the train, causing a massive derailment that destroys the train, the depot and the surrounding area, and separates the children from each other amidst the chaos. Joe finds himself near one of the cars, the loading door of which is violently thrown off by an unseen force. Eventually the kids regroup and wander amid the wreckage, finding crates full of strange white cubes, then discover the truck's driver to be Dr. Woodward, their biology teacher. Woodward, barely alive, warns them at gunpoint to forget what they have seen, or they and their families will be killed. The children flee the scene when a convoy from the local Air Force base, led by Col. Nelec, arrives at the scene. Nelec discovers an empty super 8 film box, and assumes the event was deliberately captured on camera.
While Joe and Charles wait for their film from the night of the crash to be developed, and keep working with Alice and their friends on the movie, the town experiences strange events: All the dogs run away, several townspeople go missing, the electrical power fluctuates and various electronic items are stolen. Overhearing military communications, Jack approaches Nelec to figure out what he is up to amidst the panic, and if he has some part in it, but Nelec has him arrested. Nelec orders flamethrowers be used to start a wildfire outside the town as an excuse to evacuate people to the base. As soldiers begin the evacuation, Joe and Charles watch the derailment footage and discover that a large creature escaped from the train.
At the base, Alice's father tells Joe the creature has abducted her. Joe, Charles, Martin, and Cary convince Jen, Charles' older sister, to pretend to hit on Donny, a worker from the town camera store, so he can get them into town to rescue Alice. They break into Dr. Woodward's storage trailer and discover films and documents from his time as a government researcher.
The film reveals the Air Force captured an alien when it crash-landed in 1958, and ran experiments on it while withholding its ship that is composed of the strange white cubes, allowing it to shape-shift. Woodward was one of the scientists experimenting on the alien. At one point, the alien grabbed Woodward, apparently establishing a form of psychic connection with him. Now understanding the alien, he was compelled to help it escape from Earth. He found out about the train, years later, and wanted to help the alien. Nelec captures the boys, but while returning them to the base, the alien attacks their bus. The boys escape as the alien attacks and kills Nelec and the airmen. Meanwhile, Jack escapes from the base's stockade and gets to the shelter housing the townsfolk. Preston tells him about Joe and the boys' plan to rescue Alice. Jack and Dainard agree to put their differences aside to save their kids.
In town, the military attempts to kill the alien but their hardware goes haywire in its presence, resulting in significant collateral damage. Martin is injured, so Charles stays behind with him while Joe and Cary head to the cemetery garage, where Joe had earlier seen something suspicious. They find a massive tunnel system under the town, with a cavern where the alien is creating a device from the town's stolen electronics, attached to the base of the town's water tower. The alien also has the people it had captured, including Alice, hanging unconscious from the ceiling, to use them as food. Using Cary's firecrackers as a distraction, Joe frees Alice and the others, but the three kids are trapped. Understanding the alien's condition, Joe steps forward. The alien grabs Joe, who quietly speaks to it, telling the alien "bad things happen" but that it "can still live". The alien releases him and departs, allowing the three to return to the surface.
As Joe and Alice reunite with their fathers, along with Cary, they and the military all watch as various metal objects from all over the town are pulled up to the top of the water tower by an unknown force. The white cubes are also pulled in to reassemble the alien's spaceship, using the tower as its base. The alien enters the spaceship and the locket is then drawn from Joe's pocket toward the tower. After a moment, he lets it go, completing the ship. As the ship rockets into space, Joe takes Alice's hand.
The detective-zombie short film the children were making in Super 8 rolls runs at the end of the movie beside the credit roll. Charles asks for his short film "The Case" to be picked for an international film festival before being attacked by Alice as a zombie.

Cast

Development

J.J. Abrams had the idea to start a film by showing a factory's "Accident-Free" sign long before he came up with the rest of the ideas for the film. Super 8 was actually the combination of two ideas; one for a film about kids making their own movie during the 1970s, and another for a blockbuster alien invasion film. Abrams combined the ideas, worried that the former would not attract enough attendance.
Abrams and Spielberg collaborated in a storytelling committee to come up with the story for the film. The film was initially reported to be either a sequel or prequel to the 2008 film Cloverfield, but this was quickly denied by Abrams. Primary photography began in fall 2010. The teaser itself was filmed separately in April. Super 8 is the first original J. J. Abrams film project produced by Amblin Entertainment, Bad Robot Productions, and Paramount Pictures.
Abrams wanted to find new faces to play the parts in his movie. He conducted a national talent search in order to find the child actors to play each of the leading roles. Courtney was picked out of many boys because Abrams found something "different" in him. Riley Griffiths sent Abrams a tape of himself in order to land the part of Charles.

Filming

Filming took place in Weirton, West Virginia, from September to October 2010. To promote the film, Valve created a short video game segment and released it alongside the Windows and Mac versions of Portal 2.
Abrams' original plan was to film all of the sequences for the film-within-a-film, "The Case", in Super-8 using Pro8mm stock and cameras. However, this approach proved unsuccessful, as visual effects house Industrial Light and Magic found it impossible to integrate CGI into the footage due to the format's graininess. For sequences involving CGI, cinematographer Larry Fong used Super-16 instead.

Soundtrack

The score for the film was composed by Michael Giacchino, Abrams' long-time collaborator. The soundtrack was released on August 2, 2011, by Varèse Sarabande. It won the 2012 Saturn Award for Best Music.
During the ending credits, the songs "Don't Bring Me Down" by Electric Light Orchestra and "My Sharona" by The Knack are featured. The Blondie song "Heart of Glass" and The Cars song "Bye Bye Love" are also featured in the film.

Viral marketing campaign

Like Cloverfield, an earlier J. J. Abrams-produced film, Super 8 was promoted through an extensive viral marketing campaign. The first trailer for the movie was attached to Iron Man 2, released in May 2010. The trailer gave the premise of a section of Area 51 being closed down in 1979 and its contents being transported by freight train to Ohio. A pickup truck drives into the oncoming train, derailing it, and one of the carriages is smashed open while a Super 8 camera films. Fans analyzing the trailer found a hidden message, "Scariest Thing I Ever Saw", contained in the final frames of the trailer. This led to a website, www.scariestthingieversaw.com, which simulated the interface of a PDP-11 and contained various clues to the film's story-line; the computer was eventually revealed to belong to Josh Woodward, the son of Dr. Woodward, who is trying to find out what happened to his father. Another viral website, www.rocketpoppeteers.com, was also found, which like Slusho from Cloverfield plays no direct part in the film but is indirectly related. The official Super 8 website also contained an "editing room" section, which asked users to find various clips from around the web and piece them together. When completed, the reel makes up the film found by the kids in Dr. Woodward's trailer, showing the ship disintegrating into individual white cubes, and the alien reaching through the window of its cage and snatching Dr. Woodward. The video game Portal 2 contains an interactive trailer placing the player on board the train before it derails, and showing the carriage being smashed open and the roar of the alien within.

Release

The film was released on June 9, 2011, in Australia; June 10, 2011, in the United States; and August 5, 2011, in the United Kingdom. On June 8, Paramount also launched a “Super 8 Sneak Peek” Twitter promotion, offering fans a chance to purchase tickets for an advance screening, taking place on June 9, 2011, in the United States. The film opened at #1 in the U.S. Box Office for that weekend, grossing about $35 million.

Home media

The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on November 22, 2011. The release was produced as a combo pack with a Digital Copy, including nine bonus features and fourteen deleted scenes.

Reception

Box office

Super 8 had a production budget of $50 million. It was commercially released on, 2011. In the United States and Canada, it opened in and grossed over $35.4 million on its opening weekend, ranking first at the box office. The film grossed $127 million in North America with a worldwide total of some $260 million.

Critical response

Super 8 received positive reviews from critics. On the film-critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a score of 81%, based on 287 reviews, and a rating average of 7.33/10, with the consensus that: "it may evoke memories of classic summer blockbusters a little too eagerly for some, but Super 8 has thrills, visual dazzle, and emotional depth to spare." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score from 1–100 to reviews from critics, assigned the film a Metascore of 72 based on 41 critics, signifying "generally favorable reviews".
Chris Sosa of Gather gave the film an A rating, calling it, "a gripping and exciting tale of finding one's place in the world amidst tragedy". His review concluded, "While the genre-bending occasionally unsettles, the film's genuine and emotionally gripping nature make its journey believable."
Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out of 4 and said, "Super 8 is a wonderful film, nostalgia not for a time but for a style of film-making, when shell-shocked young audiences were told a story and not pounded over the head with aggressive action. Abrams treats early adolescence with tenderness and affection." Richard Corliss of Time gave it a similarly positive review, calling it "the year's most thrilling, feeling mainstream movie". He then named it one of the Top 10 Best Movies of 2011. Jamie Graham of Total Film gave the film a perfect five-star rating, saying, "like Spielberg, Abrams has an eye for awe, his deft orchestration of indelible images – a tank trundling through a children's playground, a plot-pivotal landmark framed in the distance through a small hole in a bedroom wall – marking him as a born storyteller". Christopher Orr of The Atlantic called it a "love letter to a cinematic era", while Claudia Puig of USA Today praised it as "a summer blockbuster firing on all cylinders".
Critics and audiences alike were polarized on the film's ending. Some found it to be emotional, powerful, and satisfying while others found it rushed and forced. For example, writing for MUBI's Notebook, Fernando F. Croce alleged that "no film this year opens more promisingly and ends more dismally than J.J. Abrams' Super 8." Other critics commented negatively on the film's frequent homages to early works of Spielberg, particularly in its depiction of broken families. For example, CNN's Tom Charity felt that "Abrams' imitation a shade too reverent for taste." David Edelstein, of New York magazine, called it a "flagrant crib," adding that "Abrams has probably been fighting not to reproduce Spielberg's signature moves since the day he picked up a camera. Now, with the blessing of the master, he can plagiarize with alacrity."

Accolades

In addition to these awards, the film was short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score, and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, and Best Special Visual Effects. Paramount submitted it for several considerations for the BAFTAs including Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Leading Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Production Design, Editing, Costume Design, Original Music, Sound, Makeup and Hair, and Special Visual Effects.