Super 8 (film)
Encyclopedia
Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction
action film
written and directed by J. J. Abrams
and produced by Steven Spielberg
. The film stars Joel Courtney
, Elle Fanning
, and Kyle Chandler
and was released on June 10, 2011 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.
), a 14-year-old boy living in the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio
, has lost his mother in a factory accident. Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard
) comes to the wake
, but Joe's father, Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler
), takes Dainard in handcuffs. It is later revealed that Jackson blames Dainard for the former's wife's death because he was absent during his shift and she had to fill in for him.
Four months later, Joe's friend Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths
) convinces Dainard's daughter Alice (Elle Fanning
) to be the protagonist's wife in his low-budget zombie movie on Super 8 film
. Both Joe and Charles secretly have crushes on Alice. Alice appropriates her father's car and takes Joe, Charles, Preston (Zach Mills
), Martin (Gabriel Basso
), and Cary (Ryan Lee
) to an old train depot where the group plans to film a scene.
During the shoot, Joe watches a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks and place itself in the path of an oncoming train, causing a massive derailment. Something breaks open one of the train car's doors and escapes. In the aftermath of the accident, the kids find the wreck littered with strange white cubes. They approach the truck and discover Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman
), their biology teacher, behind the wheel of the truck, who purposefully sabotaged the train. He instructs them to never talk about what they saw; otherwise, they and their parents will be killed. Moments afterwards, the U.S. Air Force
, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich
), arrives to secure the crash site while the kids flee the scene.
Over the next couple of days, strange phenomena occur: numerous town dogs run away; kitchen appliances, car engines, and power lines vanish, and people begin to disappear. The Air Force deliberately starts a wildfire
(Operation Walking Distance) outside of town, giving them a pretext to evacuate the entire town to a nearby base. Upon arriving at the base, Joe finds Dainard, 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 documentation about the creature that might help them save Alice. In the papers, film, and audio recordings, they discover that the government imprisoned an extraterrestrial
(played by Bruce Greenwood
in motion capture sequences) who crashed on Earth in 1958. The alien only wished to rebuild its ship, using the shapeshifting white cubes and return home, but it was instead imprisoned and tortured by the Air Force, who sought to seize its technology. 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. Woodward derailed the train to free it from captivity.
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 the alien attacks the bus 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. In the confusion Martin is injured and Charles stays behind with him while Joe and Cary go to find Alice. They find the alien's subterranean lair near the cemetery where Joe's mother is buried, along with several missing people who have been trapped there by the alien, which has apparently kept them for food. The town's missing electronics are there, too, formed together to create a giant electromagnet
underneath the base of the water tower. Joe manages to rescue Alice, but, as they escape, the alien grabs Joe, who tells the creature that it can still live on even after painful events. The alien understands Joe's meaning through their tactile telepathic connection and lets go of him, allowing him and his friends to escape.
Shortly after, all the cubes (which break free from Air Force transport trucks) as well as loose metal from around the town are attracted to the town's water tower. The cubes begin to align and a ship begins to take form around the water tower, which the alien then enters. Joe's metal locket, which contains a picture of him as a baby with his mother, is also drawn towards the tower, and, after a moment, he decides to let it go, finally putting the past behind him. Everyone watches as the ship takes off toward space.
During the end credits, the full movie that Charles and his friends were working on, titled The Case, is shown, with an epilogue in which Charles asks the "Super 8 film festival" judges to select his movie, before he is assaulted by a zombie played by Alice.
, 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
. Filming took place in Weirton, West Virginia
, from September to October 2010. To promote the film, Valve Corporation
created a short video game segment and released it alongside the PC version 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.
, Abrams' long-time collaborator. Giacchino recruited his team of conductor Tim Simonec, recorder Dan Wallin and the Hollywood Studio Symphony
to bring the music to life. The soundtrack was released on August 2, 2011 by Varèse Sarabande
.
During the final credits, the songs "My Sharona
", by The Knack
and "Don't Bring Me Down
" by Electric Light Orchestra
are featured. The Blondie
song "Heart of Glass
" is also featured in the film.
, an earlier J. J. Abrams
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, Scariest Thing I Ever Saw, which simulated an old computer and contained various clues to the film's storyline (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, Rocket Poppeteers 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
contained 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. The viral campaign generated massive hype for the film long before its release.
on November 22, 2011. The release was produced as a combo pack with a Digital Copy, including nine bonus features and fourteen deleted scenes.
, the film received a score of 82%, based on 251 reviews, and a rating average of 7.4/10, 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 40 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 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 it a similarly positive review, calling it "the year's most thrilling, feeling mainstream movie".
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".
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. 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." CNN's Tom Charity felt that "Abrams' imitation [was] a shade too reverent for [his] 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."
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.
nominations:
2011 Scream Awards
nominations:
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
action film
Action film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
written and directed by J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
and produced by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
. The film stars Joel Courtney
Joel Courtney
Joel Courtney is an American actor. Courtney is most known for his role of Joseph "Joe" Lamb in the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8. Courtney currently resides in Moscow, Idaho.-Acting career:...
, Elle Fanning
Elle Fanning
Mary Elle Fanning , credited as Elle Fanning, is an American actress. She is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning and mainly known for her starring roles in Phoebe in Wonderland, Somewhere, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo which will receive a theatrical release on December 23,...
, and Kyle Chandler
Kyle Chandler
Kyle Martin Chandler is an American film and television actor best known for his roles in the television shows Early Edition as Gary Hobson, Deputy Jackson Lamb in the film Super 8, and as Coach Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead...
and was released on June 10, 2011 in conventional and IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
theaters. The film tells the story of a group of children who are filming their own Super 8
Super 8 mm film
Super 8 mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format....
movie when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The movie was filmed in Weirton, West Virginia
Weirton, West Virginia
Weirton is a city located in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, United States. Most of the city is in Hancock County, with the remainder in Brooke County. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 20,411...
and surrounding areas.
Plot
In the summer of 1979, Joe Lamb (Joel CourtneyJoel Courtney
Joel Courtney is an American actor. Courtney is most known for his role of Joseph "Joe" Lamb in the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8. Courtney currently resides in Moscow, Idaho.-Acting career:...
), a 14-year-old boy living in the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, has lost his mother in a factory accident. Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard
Ron Eldard
Ronald Jason "Ron" Eldard is an American actor.-Early life:Eldard, the second youngest of seven children , was born on Long Island, New York. Eldard's mother died in a car accident when he was a child, and Eldard and his siblings were sent to live with various family members...
) comes to the wake
Wake (ceremony)
A wake is a ceremony associated with death. Traditionally, a wake takes place in the house of the deceased, with the body present; however, modern wakes are often performed at a funeral home. In the United States and Canada it is synonymous with a viewing...
, but Joe's father, Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler
Kyle Chandler
Kyle Martin Chandler is an American film and television actor best known for his roles in the television shows Early Edition as Gary Hobson, Deputy Jackson Lamb in the film Super 8, and as Coach Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead...
), takes Dainard in handcuffs. It is later revealed that Jackson blames Dainard for the former's wife's death because he was absent during his shift and she had to fill in for him.
Four months later, Joe's friend Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths
Riley Griffiths
Riley Griffiths is an American actor. Griffiths' first acting role came when he was 6 years old, when he participated in a version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2010, Griffiths got his first major role, when he was selected to play the role of Charles Kaznyk, in Super 8,...
) convinces Dainard's daughter Alice (Elle Fanning
Elle Fanning
Mary Elle Fanning , credited as Elle Fanning, is an American actress. She is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning and mainly known for her starring roles in Phoebe in Wonderland, Somewhere, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo which will receive a theatrical release on December 23,...
) to be the protagonist's wife in his low-budget zombie movie on Super 8 film
Super 8 mm film
Super 8 mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format....
. Both Joe and Charles secretly have crushes on Alice. Alice appropriates her father's car and takes Joe, Charles, Preston (Zach Mills
Zach Mills
Zachary "Zach" Mills is an American teen actor.-Personal life:Zach was born in Lakewood, Ohio, to Kerry and Patrick. His father is from Cleveland, Zach's mother is from New York, which is where Zach performed his first professional acting job at the age of 7. Zach has two older half brothers who...
), Martin (Gabriel Basso
Gabriel Basso
Gabriel Basso is an American film and television actor who has been active since 2007.-Life and career:Basso was born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved with his mother, Marcie, and sisters, to Los Angeles in 2008. He booked minor roles in two feature films in early 2007 in St...
), and Cary (Ryan Lee
Ryan Lee (actor)
Ryan Scott Lee is an American teen actor. Lee is best known for his performance as Cary in Super 8.Lee was raised in Austin, Texas.-Filmography:-Television:-External links:***...
) to an old train depot where the group plans to film a scene.
During the shoot, Joe watches a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks and place itself in the path of an oncoming train, causing a massive derailment. Something breaks open one of the train car's doors and escapes. In the aftermath of the accident, the kids find the wreck littered with strange white cubes. They approach the truck and discover Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman
Glynn Turman
Glynn Russell Turman is an American stage, television, and film actor as well as a writer, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as high school student Leroy "Preach" Jackson in the 1975 coming-of-age film Cooley High, math professor and retired Army colonel Bradford...
), their biology teacher, behind the wheel of the truck, who purposefully sabotaged the train. He instructs them to never talk about what they saw; otherwise, they and their parents will be killed. Moments afterwards, the U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich
Noah Emmerich
Noah Nicholas Emmerich is an American film actor who first broke out in the film Beautiful Girls. He was later seen in movies like The Truman Show, Cop Land, Frequency, Love & Sex, Windtalkers, Miracle, Super 8 and Little Children.-Early life:Emmerich was born in New York City to a Jewish family,...
), arrives to secure the crash site while the kids flee the scene.
Over the next couple of days, strange phenomena occur: numerous town dogs run away; kitchen appliances, car engines, and power lines vanish, and people begin to disappear. The Air Force deliberately starts a wildfire
Wildfire
A wildfire is any uncontrolled fire in combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or a wilderness area. Other names such as brush fire, bushfire, forest fire, desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, squirrel fire, vegetation fire, veldfire, and wilkjjofire may be used to describe the same...
(Operation Walking Distance) outside of town, giving them a pretext to evacuate the entire town to a nearby base. Upon arriving at the base, Joe finds Dainard, 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 documentation about the creature that might help them save Alice. In the papers, film, and audio recordings, they discover that the government imprisoned an extraterrestrial
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
(played by Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and musician. He is generally known for his roles as U.S. presidents in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film...
in motion capture sequences) who crashed on Earth in 1958. The alien only wished to rebuild its ship, using the shapeshifting white cubes and return home, but it was instead imprisoned and tortured by the Air Force, who sought to seize its technology. One film shows Woodward, a researcher at the time, being attacked by the alien. This physical contact caused him to form a telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
bond with the alien, through which he learned that it only wanted to go home. Woodward derailed the train to free it from captivity.
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 the alien attacks the bus 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. In the confusion Martin is injured and Charles stays behind with him while Joe and Cary go to find Alice. They find the alien's subterranean lair near the cemetery where Joe's mother is buried, along with several missing people who have been trapped there by the alien, which has apparently kept them for food. The town's missing electronics are there, too, formed together to create a giant electromagnet
Electromagnet
An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by the flow of electric current. The magnetic field disappears when the current is turned off...
underneath the base of the water tower. Joe manages to rescue Alice, but, as they escape, the alien grabs Joe, who tells the creature that it can still live on even after painful events. The alien understands Joe's meaning through their tactile telepathic connection and lets go of him, allowing him and his friends to escape.
Shortly after, all the cubes (which break free from Air Force transport trucks) as well as loose metal from around the town are attracted to the town's water tower. The cubes begin to align and a ship begins to take form around the water tower, which the alien then enters. Joe's metal locket, which contains a picture of him as a baby with his mother, is also drawn towards the tower, and, after a moment, he decides to let it go, finally putting the past behind him. Everyone watches as the ship takes off toward space.
During the end credits, the full movie that Charles and his friends were working on, titled The Case, is shown, with an epilogue in which Charles asks the "Super 8 film festival" judges to select his movie, before he is assaulted by a zombie played by Alice.
Cast
- Joel CourtneyJoel CourtneyJoel Courtney is an American actor. Courtney is most known for his role of Joseph "Joe" Lamb in the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8. Courtney currently resides in Moscow, Idaho.-Acting career:...
as Joseph "Joe" Lamb - Elle FanningElle FanningMary Elle Fanning , credited as Elle Fanning, is an American actress. She is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning and mainly known for her starring roles in Phoebe in Wonderland, Somewhere, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo which will receive a theatrical release on December 23,...
as Alice "Allie" Dainard - Kyle ChandlerKyle ChandlerKyle Martin Chandler is an American film and television actor best known for his roles in the television shows Early Edition as Gary Hobson, Deputy Jackson Lamb in the film Super 8, and as Coach Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead...
as Jack Lamb - Ron EldardRon EldardRonald Jason "Ron" Eldard is an American actor.-Early life:Eldard, the second youngest of seven children , was born on Long Island, New York. Eldard's mother died in a car accident when he was a child, and Eldard and his siblings were sent to live with various family members...
as Louis Dainard - Riley GriffithsRiley GriffithsRiley Griffiths is an American actor. Griffiths' first acting role came when he was 6 years old, when he participated in a version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2010, Griffiths got his first major role, when he was selected to play the role of Charles Kaznyk, in Super 8,...
as Charles Kaznyk - Ryan LeeRyan Lee (actor)Ryan Scott Lee is an American teen actor. Lee is best known for his performance as Cary in Super 8.Lee was raised in Austin, Texas.-Filmography:-Television:-External links:***...
as Cary - Zach MillsZach MillsZachary "Zach" Mills is an American teen actor.-Personal life:Zach was born in Lakewood, Ohio, to Kerry and Patrick. His father is from Cleveland, Zach's mother is from New York, which is where Zach performed his first professional acting job at the age of 7. Zach has two older half brothers who...
as Preston - Noah EmmerichNoah EmmerichNoah Nicholas Emmerich is an American film actor who first broke out in the film Beautiful Girls. He was later seen in movies like The Truman Show, Cop Land, Frequency, Love & Sex, Windtalkers, Miracle, Super 8 and Little Children.-Early life:Emmerich was born in New York City to a Jewish family,...
as Colonel Nelec - Bruce GreenwoodBruce GreenwoodBruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and musician. He is generally known for his roles as U.S. presidents in Thirteen Days and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and for his role as Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 Star Trek film...
as Cooper - Amanda MichalkaAmanda MichalkaAmanda Joy "AJ" Michalka , often credited as AJ, is an American actress, singer-songwriter, and musician. She used to be a model prior to becoming an actress, and was best known as one-half of the duo 78violet with her sister, Alyson Michalka. AJ recently recorded the theme song for the film...
as Jen Kaznyk - Michael HitchcockMichael HitchcockMichael Hitchcock is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and television producer.In 2011, Hitchcock became a writer and consulting producer for season 3 of the FOX television series Glee, where he had guest starred in season 1 as rival glee club director Dalton Rumba.As an actor, he has...
as Deputy Rosko - Gabriel BassoGabriel BassoGabriel Basso is an American film and television actor who has been active since 2007.-Life and career:Basso was born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved with his mother, Marcie, and sisters, to Los Angeles in 2008. He booked minor roles in two feature films in early 2007 in St...
as Martin - Caitriona Balfe as Elizabeth Lamb
- Joel McKinnon MillerJoel McKinnon MillerJoel McKinnon Miller, or sometimes credited as Joel McKinnon, is an American film and television actor who has been living in Los Angeles since 1991. His most significant role is that of Don Embry on HBO's drama series Big Love.-Life and career:...
as Mr. Kaznyk - Jessica TuckJessica TuckJessica Ines Tuck is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Megan Gordon Harrison on One Life to Live, Gillian Gray on Judging Amy, and Nan Flanagan on True Blood. She also appeared as Madeline Peterson Woods on Days of our Lives.-Personal life:Tuck was born in New York City and is a...
as Mrs. Kaznyk - David GallagherDavid GallagherDavid Lee Gallagher is an American actor. Beginning a prolific career as a child actor and model at the age of two, Gallagher is a five-time Young Artist Award nominee and Teen Choice Award winner, best known for his role as Simon Camden on the long running television series 7th Heaven, as well as...
as Donny - Glynn TurmanGlynn TurmanGlynn Russell Turman is an American stage, television, and film actor as well as a writer, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as high school student Leroy "Preach" Jackson in the 1975 coming-of-age film Cooley High, math professor and retired Army colonel Bradford...
as Dr. Thomas Woodward - Dan CastellanetaDan CastellanetaDaniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble,...
as Izzy
Production
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 CloverfieldCloverfield
Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city...
, 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
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
film project produced by Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...
, Bad Robot Productions
Bad Robot Productions
Bad Robot Productions is an American film and television production company owned by J. J. Abrams. It is responsible for the television series Alias, Lost, What About Brian, Fringe, Six Degrees, Undercovers, Person of Interest and the feature length films Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , ...
, and Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. Filming took place in Weirton, West Virginia
Weirton, West Virginia
Weirton is a city located in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, United States. Most of the city is in Hancock County, with the remainder in Brooke County. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 20,411...
, from September to October 2010. To promote the film, Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
created a short video game segment and released it alongside the PC version of Portal 2
Portal 2
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The sequel to the 2007 video game Portal, it was announced on March 5, 2010, following a week-long alternate reality game based on new patches to the original game...
.
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
Larry Fong
Larry Fong is an American cinematographer born in Los Angeles, California. He showed interest and talent in art at a young age. His experience in photography and film was self-taught, beginning in junior high with short films shot on Super 8, cel animation, and stop motion projects. He graduated...
used Super-16 instead.
Music
The score for the film was composed by Michael GiacchinoMichael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino is an American composer who has composed scores for movies, television series and video games. Some of his most notable works include the scores to television series such as Lost, Alias and Fringe, games such as the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, and films such as...
, Abrams' long-time collaborator. Giacchino recruited his team of conductor Tim Simonec, recorder Dan Wallin and the Hollywood Studio Symphony
Hollywood Studio Symphony
The Hollywood Studio Symphony is the credited name of the symphony orchestra behind many major soundtracks, including The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sucker Punch, Jurassic Park 3, Last Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean, We Are Marshall, Spider-Man 2, Lost and The...
to bring the music to life. The soundtrack was released on August 2, 2011 by Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande is an American record label, distributed by Universal Music Group, which specializes in film scores and original cast recordings. It aims to reissue rare or unavailable albums as well as newer releases by artists no longer under a contract...
.
During the final credits, the songs "My Sharona
My Sharona
"My Sharona" is the debut single by The Knack, released in 1979 from their album Get the Knack. It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart where it remained for six weeks and was #1 on Billboards Top Pop Singles of 1979 year-end chart. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry...
", by The Knack
The Knack
The Knack was an American New Wave rock quartet based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, "My Sharona", an international number one hit in 1979.-Founding :...
and "Don't Bring Me Down
Don't Bring Me Down
"Don't Bring Me Down" is a song by the band Electric Light Orchestra, and is the last track from their 1979 album Discovery. It is their highest charting hit in the US to date.-History:...
" by Electric Light Orchestra
Electric Light Orchestra
Electric Light Orchestra were a British rock group from Birmingham who released eleven studio albums between 1971 and 1986 and another album in 2001. ELO were formed to accommodate Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne's desire to create modern rock and pop songs with classical overtones...
are featured. The Blondie
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
song "Heart of Glass
Heart of Glass (song)
"Heart of Glass" is a song by American New Wave band Blondie, written by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. Featured on the band's third studio album, Parallel Lines, it was released as a single in January 1979 and topped the charts in several countries, including the US and UK.Rolling...
" is also featured in the film.
Viral marketing campaign
Like CloverfieldCloverfield
Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city...
, an earlier J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
film, Super 8 was promoted through an extensive viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign. The first trailer for the movie was attached to Iron Man 2
Iron Man 2
Iron Man 2 is a 2010 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Iron Man, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is the sequel to 2008's Iron Man, the second film in a planned trilogy and is a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directed by Jon...
, released in May 2010. The trailer gave the premise of a section of Area 51
Area 51
Area 51 is a military base, and a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base. It is located in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States, 83 miles north-northwest of downtown Las Vegas. Situated at its center, on the southern shore of Groom Lake, is a large military airfield...
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, Scariest Thing I Ever Saw, which simulated an old computer and contained various clues to the film's storyline (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, Rocket Poppeteers 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
Portal 2
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The sequel to the 2007 video game Portal, it was announced on March 5, 2010, following a week-long alternate reality game based on new patches to the original game...
contained 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. The viral campaign generated massive hype for the film long before its release.
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 advanced screening, taking place on June 9, 2011 in the United States.Home media
The film was released on Blu-ray and DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on November 22, 2011. The release was produced as a combo pack with a Digital Copy, including nine bonus features and fourteen deleted scenes.
Critical response
Super 8 received very positive reviews from professional critics. On movie review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, the film received a score of 82%, based on 251 reviews, and a rating average of 7.4/10, 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
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a weighted average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score from 1–100 to reviews from critics, assigned the film a Metascore of 72 based on 40 critics, signifying 'generally favorable reviews.'
Chris Sosa of Gather
Gather.com
Gather or Gather.com is a social networking website designed to encourage interaction by discussion of various social, political and cultural topics. Its headquarters are in Boston, Massachusetts...
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
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
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 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
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
gave it a similarly positive review, calling it "the year's most thrilling, feeling mainstream movie".
Jamie Graham of Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
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".
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. 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." CNN's Tom Charity felt that "Abrams' imitation [was] a shade too reverent for [his] taste." David Edelstein, of New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
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."
Box office
Super 8 had a production budget of $United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
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.
Accolades
2011 Teen Choice Awards2011 Teen Choice Awards
The 2011 Teen Choice Awards hosted by Kaley Cuoco aired live on August 7, 2011 at 8/7c on Fox. This was the first time that the ceremonies were aired live since the 2007 show...
nominations:
- Choice Movie: Sci-Fic/Fantasy (Nominated)
- Choice Movie: Actress Sci/Fi - Elle FanningElle FanningMary Elle Fanning , credited as Elle Fanning, is an American actress. She is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning and mainly known for her starring roles in Phoebe in Wonderland, Somewhere, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo which will receive a theatrical release on December 23,...
(Nominated) - Choice Movie: Breakout Male - Joel CourtneyJoel CourtneyJoel Courtney is an American actor. Courtney is most known for his role of Joseph "Joe" Lamb in the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8. Courtney currently resides in Moscow, Idaho.-Acting career:...
(Nominated) - Choice Movie: Scene Stealer Male - Riley GriffithsRiley GriffithsRiley Griffiths is an American actor. Griffiths' first acting role came when he was 6 years old, when he participated in a version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2010, Griffiths got his first major role, when he was selected to play the role of Charles Kaznyk, in Super 8,...
(Nominated) - Choice Movie: Chemistry - The Super 8 Crew (Nominated)
- Choice Movie: Hissy Fit - The Alien (Nominated)
2011 Scream Awards
2011 Scream Awards
The 2011 Scream Awards was the name of the sixth annual Scream Awards, an award show dedicated to the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres of feature films, television and comic books...
nominations:
- The Ultimate Scream (Nominated)
- Best Science Fiction Movie (Won)
- Breakout Performance - Female - Elle FanningElle FanningMary Elle Fanning , credited as Elle Fanning, is an American actress. She is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning and mainly known for her starring roles in Phoebe in Wonderland, Somewhere, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo which will receive a theatrical release on December 23,...
(Nominated) - Best Director - J. J. AbramsJ. J. AbramsJeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
(Nominated) - Best Scream-Play - J. J. AbramsJ. J. AbramsJeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
(Nominated) - Holy Sh*t Scene Of The Year - The train crash (Nominated)
External links
- "Super 8: Blu-ray Review" at HD Report
- "Super 8" at HD Trailer