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Super 8 (2011 film)

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Super 8
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJ. J. Abrams
Written byJ. J. Abrams
Produced bySteven Spielberg
J. J. Abrams
Bryan Burk
StarringJoel Courtney
Elle Fanning
Kyle Chandler
CinematographyLarry Fong
Edited byMaryann Brandon
Mary Jo Markey
Music byMichael Giacchino
Production
companies
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release dates
  • June 9, 2011 (2011-06-09) (Australia)
  • June 10, 2011 (2011-06-10) (United States)
Running time
112 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film US
LanguageEnglish
Budget$50 million[1]
Box office$131,114,324 [2]

Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction film written and directed by J. J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film, starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler, was released on June 10, 2011[3][4] in conventional and IMAX theaters. The film tells the story of a group of children who are filming their own Super 8 movie when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The movie was filmed in Weirton, West Virginia and surrounding areas.

Plot

In the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio, early 1979, a factory worker at the local steel mill changes the number of days since the last accident from 784 days to 1 day. Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a 13-year-old boy living in town, has lost his mother in the accident and holds his mother's locket which contains a picture of her holding him as an infant. Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) comes to the funeral but Joe's father, Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler), puts Dainard in handcuffs. It is later revealed by Alice (Elle Fanning), Dainard's daughter, that her father, an alcoholic, had been drinking the morning of the accident. Since Joe's mother was a kind woman, she stayed to cover his shift that day. Unfortunately, doing so resulted in her being fatally crushed by a steel beam.

Four months later, as summer break begins, Alice uses her father's car to take Joe and his friends Charles (Riley Griffiths), Preston (Zach Mills), Martin (Gabriel Basso), and Cary (Ryan Lee) to an old train depot. The group is shooting a scene there for Charles's low budget zombie movie on Super 8 film. During the shoot, Joe witnesses a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks towards an oncoming train, which causes a massive derailment. Recovering from the accident, the kids find the wreck littered with strange white cubes. The kids approach the truck and discover Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman), their biology teacher, behind the wheel of the truck. He instructs them to never talk about what they saw; otherwise, they and their parents will be killed.

Soon, the U.S. Air Force, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), arrives to secure the crash site while the kids flee. After days of strange phenomena (pets running away, kitchen appliances, car engines, and power lines disappearing; people being abducted), the Air Force deliberately starts a wildfire outside of town. This gives them a pretense to evacuate the entire town to the local Air Force base. At the base, Joe runs into Louis, who tells him that a creature abducted Alice.

Joe, Charles, Cary, and Martin sneak back into town and head to their school, where they break into Woodward's stash of confiscated items, thinking he may have hidden in the stash documentation about the creature that might help them save Alice. In the papers, film, and audio recordings found, they discover that the government imprisoned an extraterrestrial (Bruce Greenwood) that crashed on Earth in 1958. The alien only wished to rebuild its ship using the shapeshifting white cubes, and return home, but was instead imprisoned and tortured by the Air Force in order to learn from the creature's advanced technology and intellect. One film shows Woodward, a researcher at the time, being attacked by the alien. This physical contact caused him to form a telepathic bond with the alien, through which he learned that it only wanted to go home. By colliding with the train, he hoped to free the alien.

Colonel Nelec and his men storm the school and capture the boys. They place the children on a security bus and head back to the Air Force base but are attacked by the alien on the way. Nelec and his men are killed while Joe and his friends escape. The kids head through the town, which is now under heavy fire from malfunctioning military equipment as the military attempts to battle the alien. They find the alien's subterranean lair near the cemetery where his mother is buried, along with dozens of missing people who have been trapped there by the alien. In the lair, they discover that the alien was using the town's missing electronics to create a large device around the water tower base.

Joe manages to rescue Alice, but as they make their escape, the alien grabs Joe. He tells the creature: "I know bad things happen.... But you can still live." The alien, through its tactile telepathic ability, understands and lets go of Joe, allowing him and his friends to escape just as the machine the alien constructed starts to run. Shortly after, all the cubes as well as loose metal from around the town are attracted to the water tower. The cubes begin to align and a ship begins to take form around the town's water tower. Joe's metal locket is also sucked upwards and, after a moment, he decides to let it go. After this, the locket completes the pile and everyone watches as the ship takes off toward space.

While the end credits play, the movie that Charles and his friends were working on, The Case, is shown.

Cast

Production

Abrams and Spielberg collaborated in a storytelling committee to come up with the story for the film.[6] The film was initially reported to be either a sequel or prequel to the 2008 film Cloverfield,[7] but this was quickly refuted by Abrams.[8] Primary photography began in fall 2010. The teaser itself was filmed separately in April.[9] This film is the first original J. J. Abrams film project, produced by Amblin Entertainment, Bad Robot Productions, and Paramount Pictures.[10] Filming took place in Weirton, West Virginia, from September to October 2010.[11]

Reception

Super 8 received very positive reviews from professional critics. 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." The review concluded, "While the genre-bending occasionally unsettles, the film's genuine and emotionally gripping nature make its journey believable." [12]

Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, has a Metascore of 72 out of 100 (i.e., generally favorable reviews) based on 40 critics, and a User Score of 7.8 out of 10 (i.e., generally favorable reviews) based on 102 ratings.[13] Additionally, Metacritic's Nick Hyman ranked Super 8 first out of "Six Picks for the Week of June 6-12".[14]

Super 8 received positive reviews on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 82% based on 205 reviews and a rating average of 7.5/10.[15]

Roger Ebert gave the film 3 and a half stars out of 4 and said "...Super 8 is a wonderful film, nostalgia not for a time but for a style of filmmaking, 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 a similarly positive review, calling it "the year's most thrilling, feeling mainstream movie".[16]

Jamie Graham of Total Film gave the film a 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".[17]

Most of the film's negative reviews commented negatively on the film's ending, and its frequent homages to the early films of Steven Spielberg. Tom Charity, of CNN.com, said, "Abrams' imitation is a shade too reverent for my taste." David Edelstein, of New York magazine, wrote, "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."[18]

Box office

Super 8 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. As of June 28, the film has grossed $95,114,324 in North America and 131,114,324 worldwide, more than double its production cost. The movie cost $50 million to produce. [2]

References

  1. ^ Kaufman, Amy (2011-06-09). "Movie Projector: 'Super 8' faces off against 'X-Men'; both will destroy 'Judy Moody'". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved 2011-06-11.
  2. ^ a b "Super 8 (2011 )". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved June 15, 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  3. ^ "Global sites & Release Dates". Paramount Pictures. Retrieved 2011-05-06.
  4. ^ "Super 8 Viral Marketing Ramps Up". Retrieved 2011-03-12.
  5. ^ Rich, Katey (13 June 2011). "Bruce Greenwood's Secret Role In Super 8 Revealed". Cinema Blend. Retrieved 13 June 2011.
  6. ^ "A Shot by Shot Description of the SUPER 8 Teaser Trailer; Steven Spielberg Is Producing, J.J. Abrams Is Directing". Collider.com. 2010-05-04. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ "We've Got Details on J.J. Abrams's Secret Movie Trailer for Super 8". New York. 2010-05-04. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  8. ^ "J.J. Abrams's Cloverfield-esque Super 8 Has 'Absolutely Nothing to Do With Cloverfield'". New York. 2010-05-05.
  9. ^ Fernandez, Borys; Kit (2010-05-07). "Details surface on spooky Abrams-Spielberg project". Film Journal International.
  10. ^ "More 'Super 8' Viral Goodness Comes Via Snail Mail". Bloody Disgusting. 2010-07-16.
  11. ^ "Super 8 Shooting Schedule for Weirton". Super 8 News. 2010-09-23. Retrieved 2011-06-06.
  12. ^ Sosa, Chris (2011-6-13). "Super 8 Review". Gather. Retrieved 2011-06-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ "Super 8 Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2011-06-14.
  14. ^ Nick Hyman (2011, June 5). "Six Picks for the Week of June 6-12". Metacritic.com>>Movies. Retrieved 2011, June 14. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  15. ^ "Super 8 (2011)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 2011-06-05.
  16. ^ Corliss, Richard (2011-06-02). "Secret's Out: J.J. Abrams' Super 8 Scores". TIME. Retrieved 2011-06-05.
  17. ^ Graham, Jamie (2011-05-31). "Super 8 Review". Total Film. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  18. ^ http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/super-8-edelstein-review-2011-6/
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