Super 8 Information

Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction-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 in a small town when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The movie was filmed in Weirton, West Virginia and surrounding areas.

Super 8 was released on June 10, 2011, in conventional and IMAX theaters in the US. The film was well-received with critics praising the film for its nostalgia, visual effects, musical score, and for the performances of its young actors, particularly those of Fanning and newcomer Courtney. It was also a commercial success, grossing some $260 million against a $50 million budget. The film received several awards and nominations; primarily in technical and special effects categories, as well as for Courtney and Fanning's performances as the film's two young leads.

Plot

In April 1979, Deputy Sheriff Jack Lamb (Kyle Chandler) of Lillian, Ohio, and his 14-year-old son Joe (Joel Courtney), mourn the death of his wife in a factory accident. Jack blames his wife's co-worker, Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard), for her death, as she was covering his shift while he was recovering from intoxication the night before.

Four months later, Joe's best friend and cameraman Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths) decides to produce and make a low-budget zombie movie to enter into an international film competition. Charles enlists the help of their close friends Preston (Zach Mills), Martin (Gabriel Basso), and Cary (Ryan Lee), as well as Dainard's daughter, 14-year-old Alice (Elle Fanning). Joe and Alice, though aware their respective fathers would be furious, become smitten with each other.

Charles decides to film a scene at the local train depot using a passing train to add authenticity to his film. While shooting, Joe witnesses a pickup truck drive onto the tracks and ram the train head-on, causing a massive train derailment as the friends barely escape the resulting chaos and explosions. The children investigate the wreck and find a pile of strange white cubes, then discover the truck's driver is Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman), their honors biology teacher. Woodward, barely alive, warns the children at gunpoint to never talk about what they saw that night, or else they and their parents will be killed. The children flee the scene just as an armed force from the local U.S. Air Force base, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), arrive to secure the scene. Nelec discovers an empty box of Super 8 mm film, and assumes the event was captured on camera.

While Joe and Charles wait on the development of the film of the derailment, the town experiences strange events: Joe's dog Lucy and others run away, several people are missing, and numerous electronics components from homes and department stores are stolen. Overhearing questionable Air Force and Army communication, Jack approaches Nelec to help quell the rising panic in town, but Nelec instead orders him secured in the base's prison. Nelec soon orders his forces to use flamethrowers to start wildfires on the outskirts of town, as a guise to evacuate the townspeople to the base. Suddenly, soldiers from the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division sweep into town on M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, M35 Trucks, and M151 Jeeps to begin the evacuation. Meanwhile, Joe and Charles watch the footage they filmed at the derailment at his home and discover that a large creature had fled from the damaged train.

At the base, Joe and Jack learn from a repentant Dainard that Alice is missing, abducted by the mysterious creature the night before, after Dainard discovered her being seen with Joe. Joe, Charles, Martin, and Cary find a loophole in the base, and then slip back into town, intent on rescuing Alice from the creature. They first break into Dr. Woodward's storage trailer at school and discover films and documents from his time as a government researcher.

They play the marked film, which reveals the horrible truth; the cargo is an alien, which crash-landed on Earth in 1958. The Air Force has captured the alien and has been thwarting its attempts to repair its spaceship so that they can hold it captive and experiment on it. Woodward was a scientist at the Area 51, experimenting on an alien creature and its spaceship, the latter composed of thousands of the white cubes. At one point of the research, the alien grabs Woodward, establishing a psychic connection with him, as explained in an audio recording by Woodward. Imbued with an understanding of the alien, he was motivated to rescue the alien and aid in the alien's escape from Earth, and found a way when he found out . The boys are caught by Nelec and his men, but as they are taken back to the base by bus, the alien attacks the vehicle. Nelec and his men are killed while the boys escape. Meanwhile, Jack has escaped from the base's prison and made his way to the townsfolk and learns from Preston about Joe's hope to rescue Alice. Jack tells Dainard, and they agree to put aside their differences to save their kids.

In town, much of the military hardware wildly malfunctions as the U.S. Army attempts to kill the alien using M41 Buldogs, M113 Carriers, M151 Jeeps and infantry troops. Martin is injured in an explosion. Charles stays behind to tend to Martin while Joe and Cary head to the cemetery where Joe saw something suspicious earlier. They find a large hole which leads to a series of underground caverns. In a large chamber beneath the town's water tower, the two find the alien has created a device from the various stolen electronics attached to the base of the tower, and has kept several of the townspeople, including Alice, hanging and still alive from the ceiling as food. They free Alice and attempt to escape the alien, but are trapped in a dead end cavern. The alien grabs Joe, who through a telepathic bond, attempts to tell the alien that "Bad things happen." The alien, after a moment, releases Joe and departs, allowing the three to return to the surface.

As they reunite with their fathers, they and the military watch as metallic objects large and small accumulate around the town's large water tower. The white cubes break out of their containment and form the alien's spaceship around the tower. Joe's locket, which contains a picture of his mother and a newborn Joe, is drawn towards the tower, and Joe decides to let it go, putting the past behind him. With the spaceship complete, the alien enters it; the water tower implodes and the ship launches into space.

During the credits, the completed Super 8 film, titled The Case, by Charles and his friends is shown.

The Case

The Case is the amateur zombie film that is being shot by the characters throughout the movie. Brief excerpts are seen in the main film, along with episodes in which scenes are being shot. It is said to be written by Charles to be entered in a film contest. It was in fact written by Basso with assistance by his co-stars and Abrams. The complete short film is shown through the end credits of Super 8. It tells the story of a detective named Hathaway who is put on a case to investigate numerous zombie murders, fighting zombies on his way. He meets with the president of a chemical company, a doctor, and his wife to discuss the murders, before ultimately finding a cure.

Plot

Detective Hathaway meets with a young witness who says he has seen a zombie attack. He presents Hathaway with a building access pass that fell out of the attacker's pocket. The pass is for the Romero Chemical Plant. Hathaway then goes to the President of Romero Chemicals. He confronts him about an incident that occurred in the plant that he funded. The President disregards it as an accident, but Hathaway argues. He tells the President that he is going to look around the building that was on the note. He leaves, and the President makes an urgent phone call saying "He knows". He goes to the building and is attacked by a zombie. He manages to kill the zombie by pressing its head against exposed nails in the wall. He then calls someone to buy his wife a ticket to Michigan because it is not safe for her. But that night at the train depot, she tells him that she loves him and doesn't want him getting into danger. Seconds later, a massive train wreck occurs confirming his wife's staying. The next morning they are looking out at the wreck and are attacked by a zombie, whom Hathaway shoots. That night, Hathaway records in his audio journal that the attacks are putting stress on his town and his marriage. He then gets a call from an Air Force officer that served with Hathaway in Vietnam who tells him that an airman committed suicide because there was a secret he could no longer keep. He then gives him top-secret information about a doctor that the late airman worked for. He goes to meet this doctor who says that he has found a cure for the zombie epidemic and begins to test it on a victim of the virus. However, the victim wakes up and bites the doctor turning him into a zombie. Hathaway shoots them both. He goes home to see that his wife has been turned into a zombie. She suddenly attacks him, but he injects the antidote into her neck. He gets ready to shoot her but she is cured of the virus and they embrace. The film ends with a small announcement from the director, Charles Kaznyk, who tells the audience how much fun they had making it and that he hopes they choose his film for the festival. Alice, in zombie makeup, then attacks Charles and bites him.

Cast

• Joel Courtney as Joseph "Joe" Lamb, the Hero of the film
• Elle Fanning as Alice Dainard, Joe's love interest
• Kyle Chandler as Jackson "Jack" Lamb, Joe's father
• Riley Griffiths as Charles Kaznyk, Joe's best friend
• Ryan Lee as Cary, A juvenile pyromaniac and a friend of Joe and Charles
• Ron Eldard as Louis Dainard, Alice's father
• Gabriel Basso as Martin, a friend of Joe and Charles
• Noah Emmerich as Colonel Nelec, the antagonist of the film
• David Gallagher as Donny
• Bruce Greenwood as Cooper
• Zach Mills as Preston, a friend of Joe, Charles, Cary, and Martin
• Amanda Michalka as Jen Kaznyk, Charles's sister
• Glynn Turman as Dr. Woodward, a biology teacher
• Michael Hitchcock as Deputy Rosko
• Caitriona Balfe as Elizabeth Lamb
• Joel McKinnon Miller as Mr. Kaznyk
• Jessica Tuck as Mrs. Kaznyk
• Dan Castellaneta as Izzy
• Richard T. Jones as Overmyer
• Dale Dickey as Edie

Production

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 idea of 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. Worried that the former idea would not attract enough attendance, Abrams combined the ideas.

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 (September/October) 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 (who was hoping to land a part in a commercial) 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 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 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.

Music

|noprose=yes }} 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 "My Sharona", by The Knack and "Don't Bring Me Down" by Electric Light Orchestra 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, Scariest Thing I Ever Saw, 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, 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.

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

Critical response

Super 8 received generally positive reviews. On the film-critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 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 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 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 (a theme Spielberg has explored in nearly all of his films). For example, 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."

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.

Awards

Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
4th Annual Coming of Age Awards	Best Newcomer	Joel Courtney
	Best Cinematography
	Special Soundtrack
Central Ohio Film Critics Association	Best Picture
SFX Awards	Best Film
	Best Director	J. J. Abrams
10th Annual TSR Awards	Actress of the Year (Multiple Roles)	Elle Fanning
	Best Visuals: Special Effects
38th Saturn Awards	Best Science Fiction Film
	Best Performance by a Younger Actor	Joel Courtney
	Best Performance by a Younger Actor	Elle Fanning
	Best Director	J. J. Abrams
	Best Writing	J. J. Abrams
	Best Music	Michael Giacchino
	Best Editing
	Best Special Effects
48th Annual CAS Awards	Best Sound Mixing
2011 BAM Awards	Best Picture
	Best Director	J. J. Abrams
	Best Cinematography	Larry Fong
	Best Makeup
	Best Original Screenplay	J. J. Abrams
	Best Editing	Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey
	Best Score	Michael Giacchino
	Best Sound Editing/Mixing
	Best Visual Effects
	Best Costumes
	Best Cast
	Best Youth Ensemble
	Best Performance by a Child Actress in a Leading Role	Elle Fanning
	Best Performance by a Child Actor in a Leading Role	Joel Courtney
	Best Performance by a Child Actor in a Supporting Role	Ryan Lee
	Best Young Actor/Actress	Elle Fanning
17th Empire Awards	Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy
	Best Female Newcomer	Elle Fanning
2011 St. Louis Film Critics Association Awards	Best Visual Effects
2011 Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards	Best Editing	Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey
	Best Ensemble Acting
	Best Film
	Best Original Score	Michael Giacchino
	Best Youth Performance - Male	Joel Courtney
	Best Youth Performance - Female	Elle Fanning
	Breakthrough Performance - On Camera	Elle Fanning
2011 Satellite Awards	Best Supporting Actress	Elle Fanning
	Best Original Score	Michael Giacchino
	Best Visual Effects
	Best Sound (Editing & Mixing)	Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, Ben Burtt, Mark Ulano, Matthew Wood, and Tom Johnson
2011 Scream Awards
	The Ultimate Scream
	Best Science Fiction Movie
	Best Director	J. J. Abrams
	Best Scream-Play	J. J. Abrams
	Breakout Performance - Female	Elle Fanning
	Holy Sh!t Scene Of The Year	The Train Crash
2011 Teen Choice Awards
	Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie
	Sci-Fi Actress	Elle Fanning
	Breakout Male	Joel Courtney
	Scene Stealer Male	Riley Griffiths
	Chemistry	The Super 8 Crew
	Hissy Fit	The Alien
2012 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
	Best Action Movie
	Best Sound
	Best Visual Effects
	Best Young Actor/Actress	Elle Fanning
Golden Reel Awards	Music in a Feature Film
	Dialogue and ADR in a Feature Film
	Sound Effects and Foley in a Feature Film
Hollywood Film Festival	Spotlight Award	Elle Fanning
YouReviewer Awards	Best Supporting Actress	Elle Fanning
	Best Visual Effects
	Breakthrough Actor	Joel Courtney
33rd Young Artist Awards	Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actor	Joel Courtney
	Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actress	Elle Fanning
	Best Performance in a Feature Film - Supporting Young Actor	Zach Mills
	Best Performance in a Feature Film - Young Ensemble Cast	Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills, Riley Griffiths, Gabriel Basso, Britt Flatmo
MTV Movie Awards	Breakthrough Performance	Elle Fanning

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.