Super 8 (2011 film)

Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction thriller film written and directed by J.J. Abrams and co-produced by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler in lead roles. Set in 1979, the plot follows a group of young teenagers who witness a mysterious train derailment while filming their own Super 8 movie. As strange occurrences unfold in their small Ohio town, they realize that something dangerous has been unleashed from the train.
Filmed in Weirton, West Virginia, Super 8 blends elements of mystery, science fiction, and coming-of-age drama, drawing comparisons to iconic films like E.T. and The Goonies for its nostalgic tone, while offering a darker twist on those familiar themes. Released on June 10, 2011, Super 8 received positive reviews from critics and was a moderate box office success, grossing over $260 million worldwide.
Super 8 received 4 nominations at the 17th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Action Movie and Best Young Actor/Actress (Fanning). The film received 8 nominations at the 38th Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film, and won 3 awards – Best Director (Abrams), Best Performance by a Younger Actor (Courtney) and Best Music (Michael Giacchino). Fanning also received a nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards.
In 1979, Deputy Sherriff 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 Elizabeth had to cover his shift while Dainard recovered from a hangover. 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.
While filming at a train depot at midnight, a train approaches and a pickup truck rams the train head-on, derailing it and destroying the depot. The children are separated in the fiery chaos. The kids regroup and find crates of strange white cubes amid the wreckage before discovering 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. Joe and Charles watch their derailment footage and see that a large creature escaped the train. Nelec confronts Woodward in a military hospital, seeking information about the creature, but when 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' older sister, to flirt with Donny so he can get them into town to rescue Alice. Breaking into Dr. Woodward's trailer they find documents and a film from his time as a government researcher.
The film and tape recorder reveal that in 1963, the Air Force captured an alien when it crash-landed. They experimented on the alien, while withholding its space craft, composed of the strange white cubes, which allowed the craft to shape-shift. The alien had established a psychic connection with Woodward, convincing him to help it escape Earth, but Nelec sabotaged, discredited, and discharged Woodward. While the kids are watching the film, Nelec captures them, but the alien kills Nelec and the airmen, allowing the kids to escape. Jack escapes and agrees with Louis to put their differences aside 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, the locket in Joe's pocket is drawn toward the tower. After a moment, he lets it go, completing the ship. As the ship rises into space, Joe takes Alice's hand.
The detective-zombie short film the children were making in Super 8 runs at the end of the movie beside the credit roll. In it, Charles asks for his short film "The Case" to be picked for a local film festival before being attacked by Alice as a zombie.
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 merged 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 was 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 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.
The score for the film was composed by Michael Giacchino, Abrams' long-time collaborator. 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.
Like Cloverfield (2008), an earlier J. J. Abrams-produced film, Super 8 utilized 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 included an interactive trailer where players could experience the train derailment scene from the movie, including the eerie sound of the alien breaking free from its containment.
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 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 on its tenth anniversary (May 24, 2021).
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.
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".
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.