Super 8 (2011 film)

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 in a workplace accident. Jack blames Elizabeth's co-worker Louis Dainard for the accident, as Dainard had a hangover, resulting in Elizabeth having to cover his shift. Joe clings to his mom's memory in the form of a locket.

Four months later, Joe's friend Charles is making a zombie movie for a Super 8 film competition. He enlists Joe's help along with friends Preston, Martin, and Cary, as well as Dainard's daughter, Alice. Though their fathers are opposed to their friendship, Joe and Alice become close.

One night while they film at a train depot, a pickup truck rams an approaching train head-on, derailing it (which they capture on film) and destroying the depot. After being scattered by the fiery chaos, the kids regroup and find crates of strange white cubes amid the wreckage, and discover the truck driver to be their biology teacher Dr. Woodward. Gravely injured, he warns them at gunpoint to forget what they have seen. They flee, as a convoy from the local Air Force base, led by Col. Nelec, arrives. Nelec finds an empty Super 8 film box.

In the following days the town experiences strange events: dogs run away, several townspeople go missing, the electrical power fluctuates, and electronic items are stolen. Jack approaches Nelec, but Nelec arrests him. Nelec orders flamethrowers to start a wildfire as an excuse to evacuate the residents to the base. Watching their footage, Joe and Charles notice a large creature escaping the train. In a military hospital, Nelec questions Woodward about the creature. After Woodward rebukes him, Nelec has him killed with a lethal injection.

Louis tells Joe the creature has abducted Alice. Joe, Charles, Martin, and Cary persuade Jen, Charles's older sister, to flirt with Donny so he can get them into town to rescue Alice. Breaking into Dr. Woodward's trailer, they learn of his work as a former government researcher.

In 1963, the Air Force captured a crash-landing alien. Its space craft, composed of the white cubes, allowed it to shape-shift. While being experimented on, the alien established a psychic connection with Woodward, convincing him to help it escape Earth. Their efforts are sabotaged by Nelec who discredited, and discharged Woodward. Nelec captures them, but the alien kills Nelec and his airmen, allowing the kids to escape. Jack escapes and agrees with Louis to put aside their differences to save their kids.

The military attacks the alien, but their hardware goes haywire in its presence, resulting in significant collateral damage. Joe and Cary find a massive tunnel system under the town. The missing townsfolk, including Alice, are hanging unconscious from the ceiling of a cavern. Here, the alien is creating a device, constructed from the missing electronics, and attached to the base of the water tower. Using firecrackers as a distraction, Joe frees Alice and the others. The alien grabs Joe, who quietly speaks to it, convincing that it could "still live" while bad things happen. Establishing an emotional connection between the two of them, the alien realizes that not all humans are as bad as Nelec and spares him, allowing them to return to the surface.

Everyone watches as metal objects from the town are pulled to the top of the tower by an unknown force. The white cubes reassemble to create a spaceship and, as the alien enters it, Elizabeth's locket is drawn toward the tower. Joe lets it go, completing the ship. As the ship rises into space, he takes Alice's hand.

The short film the children were making in Super 8 runs at the end of the movie beside the credit roll. In it, Charles's character asks for his short film "The Case" to be picked for a local film festival before being attacked by a zombie played by Alice.

Cast

• Joel Courtney as Joseph "Joe" Francis Lamb, a 14-year-old boy grieving the death of his mother
• Elle Fanning as Alice Dainard
• Riley Griffiths as Charles Kaznyk
• Ryan Lee as Cary McCarthy
• Gabriel Basso as Martin Read
• Zach Mills as Preston Scott
• Kyle Chandler as Deputy Jack Lamb, a local Ohio sheriff, widower, and Joe's father
• Ron Eldard as Louis Dainard, Alice's alcoholic father whom Jack blames for his wife's death.
• AJ Michalka as Jen Kaznyk
• Joel McKinnon Miller as Mr. Kaznyk
• Jessica Tuck as Mrs. Kaznyk
• Brett Rice as Sheriff Pruitt
• Michael Giacchino as Deputy Crawford
• Michael Hitchcock as Deputy Rosko
• Jay Scully as Deputy Skadden
• Noah Emmerich as Colonel Nelec, a ruthless, military leader of an elite Air Force unit obsessed with killing the Alien
• Richard T. Jones as Overmyer
• Bruce Greenwood as The Alien (credited as Cooper), the titular creature who escapes military captivity and goes on a rampage, all while trying to go back to his home planet.
• David Gallagher as Donny
• Glynn Turman as Dr. Thomas Woodward, Joe's biology teacher and a former Area 51 doctor who originally had a connection with the Alien
• Beau Knapp as Breen
• Dan Castellaneta as Izzy
• Caitriona Balfe as Elizabeth Lamb, Joe's deceased mother
• Dale Dickey as Edie

Production

Development

J.J. Abrams initially conceived Super 8 by combining two distinct ideas: one about kids making a movie during the 1970s, and another focused on a large-scale alien invasion. The concept began when Abrams thought of a scene featuring a factory's "Accident-Free" sign, which later grew into a more complex storyline. He ultimately decided to combine the two ideas, feeling that the "kids' movie" concept alone might not draw enough attention from audiences.

Abrams collaborated with Steven Spielberg and others to develop the plot. Despite early speculation that Super 8 was connected to Abrams' 2008 film Cloverfield, he quickly denied the rumor, clarifying that Super 8 was its own standalone project. Primary filming for the movie began in the fall of 2010, while the teaser trailer had been shot separately in April of that year. Super 8 became the first original J. J. Abrams project produced by Amblin Entertainment, Bad Robot, and Paramount Pictures.

To cast the film's lead roles, Abrams held a national talent search to find fresh faces for the young characters. Joel Courtney, who had initially auditioned for a commercial, was chosen because Abrams saw something "different" in him. Riley Griffiths secured his role by submitting a self-taped audition.

Filming

Filming for Super 8 took place in Weirton, West Virginia, from September 20 to December 16, 2010. To help promote the film, Valve Corporation created a short video game segment, which was included alongside certain versions of Portal 2, enhancing the film's marketing efforts.

Initially, director J.J. Abrams intended to shoot all the footage for the fictional movie within the film, "The Case", on Super-8 film stock. However, this plan was abandoned due to challenges faced by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), who found it difficult to integrate CGI into the grainy Super-8 footage. As a result, cinematographer Larry Fong opted to use Super-16 film for scenes that required visual effects, ensuring smoother CGI integration while maintaining a similar aesthetic.

Music

Main article: Super 8 (soundtrack)

The score for the film was composed by Michael Giacchino, Abrams' long-time collaborator, conducted by Tim Simonec and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony. The soundtrack was released on June 13, 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.

Marketing

Like Cloverfield (2008), an earlier J. J. Abrams-produced film, Super 8 used an elaborate viral marketing campaign to generate interest. The first teaser trailer, attached to Iron Man 2 in May 2010, introduced viewers to the premise of a freight train transporting contents from the decommissioned Area 51. A dramatic crash leads to the release of a mysterious entity, captured on a Super 8 camera. Sharp-eyed fans discovered a hidden message, "Scariest Thing I Ever Saw", embedded in the trailer's final frames. This clue led them to the website www.scariestthingieversaw.com, simulating an old PDP-11 computer system, with clues revealing that the computer belonged to Josh Woodward, son of Dr. Woodward, a key figure in the story.

In another layer of the viral campaign, a website for Rocket Poppeteers (a fictional brand like Slusho in Cloverfield) was launched, which didn't directly relate to the film's events but added to the mystery. The official Super 8 website featured an "editing room" section that invited users to collect clips from across the internet and stitch them together. Once assembled, the footage depicted the alien's ship disintegrating into white cubes and Dr. Woodward's ill-fated encounter with the alien.

Additionally, the video game Portal 2 features an interactive trailer that allows players to experience the train derailment scene from the movie, including the eerie sound of the alien breaking free from its containment.

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.

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. A 4K Blu-Ray edition was released for its tenth anniversary (May 25, 2021).

Reception

Box office

Super 8 had a production budget of $50 million. It was commercially released on June 10, 2011. In the United States and Canada, it opened in 3,379 theaters 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

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Super 8 holds an approval rating of 81% based on 296 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's consensus reads: "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 assigned the film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Chris Sosa of Gather gave the film an A rating, describing it as "a gripping and exciting tale of finding one's place in the world amidst tragedy." He praised the film's emotionally resonant storytelling, concluding that, "While the genre-bending occasionally unsettles, the film's genuine and emotionally gripping nature makes its journey believable."

Critics offered varying opinions, with Roger Ebert awarding the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising it as a "nostalgic" tribute to earlier styles of filmmaking, where "audiences were told a story and not pounded over the head with aggressive action." Similarly, Richard Corliss of Time called it "the year's most thrilling, feeling mainstream movie," placing it among his Top 10 Best Movies of 2011. Jamie Graham of Total Film gave it a 5-star review, noting that Abrams' storytelling ability makes him "a born storyteller".

However, the film's ending drew polarized reactions. Some praised its emotional resonance, while others found it rushed and lacking. For instance, Fernando F. Croce of MUBI criticized the film for starting strong but ending poorly. Moreover, the frequent homages to Steven Spielberg's early works drew mixed feedback; David Edelstein of New York Magazine referred to it as a "flagrant crib" of Spielberg's films, albeit one made with "the blessing of the master".

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 (J. J. Abrams), Best Original Screenplay, Leading Actor (Kyle Chandler), Supporting Actress (Elle Fanning), Supporting Actor (Joel Courtney, Gabriel Basso, Noah Emmerich), Cinematography, Production Design, Editing, Costume Design, Original Music, Sound, Makeup and Hair, and Special Visual Effects.

References

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