f13.net

Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams have the teaser trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NECsrx7VC3I) out on a film called "Super 8".

I'm guessing post modern superheroes, but we'll see.

You do know that Super 8 was a film type popular in the 1970s, right?

I'm thinking shaky-cam retro horror from outer space.

I thought that, but then thought Abrams had kind of covered that territory with "Cloverfield".

And here I am thinking this movie is going to be about hotels.

In the forest, no one can hear you scream. 

From the producers of avatar and the director of transformers comes a story of adventure, of battle and of friendship.

Double Tree.

The Title "Super 8" is just a placeholder.

When those trailers were shipped to my theatre, they came labeled "Untitled Paramount Pictures Movie".   The same thing is digitally imprinted in the sound track information (it shows the title of whatever it is playing on our sound monitor unit).

As to the trailer itself, other then mention of Area 51, it really tells us absolutely nothing.

The Incredible Hulk 3!

I'm not sure that the industry realizes that speilburg's name just doesn't carry the weight it used to.  Honestly what was the last good movie he produced or directed, schindler's list?  Movie teasers are one thing but this teaser actually ticked me off a little, it wasn't interesting and made me feel as though i was being told "hey you know these names, this movie will be awesome" when clearly I do not have the trust in those names I used to.

Get back on your meds.  So whose name carries more 'weight' than Spielbergs O great Hollywood insider?  Or JJ Abrams?  You know, the guy who directed a little indie film called 'Star Trek'?

I'm mildly interested in this movie, I like how Abrams tries to keep his stuff secret as long as possible, makes you want it more.

Finally the Alf movie we have been waiting for.

Spielburgs name carries weight IN hollywood.  Can you honestly say he's made a good movie in the last 10 years? 20? We've got jurassic park and schindlers list.

Saving Private Ryan.

Artificial Intelligence. What? I liked it.

A mixed bag at best.  Powerful movie at some parts, very weak in others.

A.I......I kinda liked it too but hell, I didn't even know spielburg directed it and yes a forgettable movie.

Band of Brothers and The Pacific were pretty damn good. Catch Me If You Can was also a great film.

I'm not going to argye his filmaking ability here, he's good but as I said his name doesn't carry the weight it used to.  People don't see his name and suddenly 'have' to see the movie.  In fact the reaction I see now is 'oh he's doing another movie?' it's more curiousity.

I agree with you that he's gone down hill and I don't think he's been making very good movies lately.  But not for as long as you mentioned (as others have pointed out).  But anyways, I'm interested in the film because of JJ Abrams, who by and large has created a great deal of work I enjoy, and continues to do so.  I'd even argue that, among the younger generation, the fact they are sticking JJ Abrams name on the film is going to generate a lot of hype in and of itself, regardless of Spielberg being involved (which is just icing on the cake).

For you.

If you are speaking of Speilberg purely as a name people attach to the desire to see films, and not at all about the quality... he produced two huge movies in the last 10 years, namely the two Transformers films. Additionally, he had Indiana Jones which charts well with the general public and is really only seen with horror by the more niche crowd of online geeks.

As for Super 8: There's of course a viral for it.

You're completely wrong, nobody elses name carries nearly as much weight as Spielbergs.  It has nothing to do with what he has done or not done lately, to the contrary the fact that most of his good movies happened a long time ago just makes it carry more weight.  Attaching the name Spielberg to a movie reminds you of a time when you were young and movies were awesome, it is that simple.

I can't help but feel that is wrong. Then again the "For you." response could be applied in either direction.

For me, his name carries little to no weight at all. Going out on a limb I'd say likewise for pretty much all my friends. I do, however, live in Finland. We don't care about Steven here.

Is anyone actually going to say his name could actually hurt box office receipts? It's not like splashing his name in the trailer has any substantial material costs.  Fuck, they still put Tim Burton name on stuff and I know lots of people who dislike him.

Abrams brings the younger nerds. Spielberg, despite numerous iffy films, still has lots of Hollywood clout and is a positive sign for older nerds.

Anyone get anything out of that website linked above? Got stuck on DEVICE line.

Looking around, I don't believe it works yet. No-one else has managed to get past DEVICE.

However, there are other things to unlock.  (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Super-8-Viral-Site-Moves-On-To-Phase-Two-18631.html)

I'm curious as to how many people actually cared enough to check the website.  To me this just seems like trying to recycle Cloverfield's marketing campaign.  It feels lazy.

So, we just got a new bunch of trailers in at work, and one of them is a new, full length theatrical trailer for Super 8.

Unfortunately, the new trailer does not appear to be up on the official www.super8-movie.com website, however there is an ~30 second cut of it there, which gives you an idea of what to expect.

Beginning to look more like E.T. meets Cloverfield, which has my hopes up that this could be very good.

If things follow the usual pattern, the Full length trailer (about 1 min, 50 sec) should show up on their website / the web on friday.

I've found that with everything JJ Abrams makes, the less I know about it the more I enjoy it. He's good at the reveal and the slow burn, and not so good at the plot and the making sense. Even if I don't see it in the theatre, I'm going to stop paying attention to promotional material and reviews and just let it be whatever it is when I pick it up on video.

Spielberg's name is the American Dollar of Hollywood. It used to represent gold, but now it's only valued because of the value people give it.

New Trailer.

If you like not knowing, or simply knowing only what the first showed, don't watch this.
Super 8 Trailer HD  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqvZMhRB5cE)

I'm still not entirely clear what the film is about. Also, I'm not sure why, but nothing about the teaser or the new trailer really grabs my interest.

I just saw a 12am showing.   :drill:    I don't even know what to say for once.   This movie convinced me I'm not viewing the past with rose tinted glasses.   Movies really WERE better once upon a time.    For me at least this movie recaptured that feeling.  It's not like I'll say you'll love it because I don't know.   If you enjoyed feel good summer flicks in the past though then you should probably go watch this movie and find out.

Since Abrams was too cool to tell me what his movie is about (yet again) I am too cool to give a shit.

He's apparently changed his mind on that and been giving interviews that at least tell you the outline now.  It actually IS E.T. meets Cloverfield.  He wanted to capture the charm & characterization of the old Spielberg movies while using "The monster" to provide some action and represent the boy & his dad's life or some crap like that.

The negative review I heard said it was old and boring and reminded you of 80's movies because it WAS an 80's movie.  The reviewer said something like, "all I got out of it was a lot of nostalgia and a sense that I'd seen it before."   On the other hand he's in the minority.

Either way it's a wait till netflix for me.

Ed:  I just was perusing the review blurbs on RT and it looks like the only reason it's getting an 85% is because it's Abrams & Spielberg.  There's too many, "the movie got cheesy and improbable, but..." type of lines.  They wouldn't be as forgiving with smaller names.

That's why it's good.

I like my idea better, but I was horribly wrong on this.  :awesome_for_real:

Reviews I've heard are that its solid all the way up to its ending section.

Saw it yesterday. Thought it was meh and pretty cornball.

Heh, I TOTALLY called it.

This would be 15 year old me's favourite movie and I loved it because of that. It was like a bit of Goonies mixed with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, totally a love letter to old school Spielberg.

Enjoyed the Hell out of it.

Really? When it comes to "______ superheroes" there's ANYTHING that could go in the blank that isn't beyond fucking played-out for you?

Opened to like $38 million, which I didn't think was that great until I saw that it was made for a measly $50 million. Yeah this is gonna do fine, especially if word of mouth is decent.

I would love to see a modern golden-age superhero movie.  I thought opening to Watchmen was the best part of the movie.

And Elle Fanning kicks her sister's arse.

Saw this with my dad over the weekend.  Thought it was a really nice movie.  I enjoyed it.

I am still amused by the chubby kid's movie contest entry.  I mean, who could POSSIBLY imagine that a company called Romero Chemical would be responsible for a zombie plague?!?  The mind boggles.  :oh_i_see:

Stand By Me + E.T. + Jaws + Cloverfield have sex and the result is actually pretty handsome, if familiar.

Just watched it, Awesome flick!

Saw this last night on PPV. Absolutely fucking awesome!

Its a Goonies+ET+Close Encounters of the Third Kind+Predator love child!

Give this 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Just finished watching this.

Other than "fuck you, J.J. Abrams and your goddamn lens flares," I'd say this movie was fucking awesome.

Just watched this.  Honestly I was bored for most of the movie, but the last 45 minutes was good.  It was "ET with an attitude".
Felt like a vanity project, like Abrams was getting some personal homage of ET out of his system.  I did like how the camera lingered in a couple of scenes and the nice little touches of 80's culture.  The CB radio made me smile as did the pot head.  Very well directed anyway.

Watched this a week ago then watched ET with the kids the day after. It was a homage to Spielberg in about as much as it was about a kid with daddy issues having to deal with an alien but it lacked anything like the heart, soul or cinematic prowess of Spielberg's earlier films. In that sense, it entirely missed the point. Despite the stories, Spielberg's films were always grounded in a semblance of reality. Super 8 didn't.

The whole "we're in the 70s" schtick got old too - it was all so fucking knowing and smug (and wrong).

So yeah, at the time I just thought that I just thought the film wasn't all that but writing this, I realise I really didn't like it much at all.  :oh_i_see:

I watched Attack the Block last week and that felt more effective as a bitchin' old school movie than Super 8 as a family-friendly old school movie.

Super 8 looks pretty (especially most of the train scene) but is kinda lame.

Fuck JJ Abrams sideways with a corn cob. That shit is getting worn out.

What daddy issues?

Distance between kid and policeman-dad who a) doesn't like kids friends b) can't cope with raising kid c) is pretty much an absent father (so kid spends all his time around his friends house) and d) wants to send his kid away.

Like I said, it's a homage to Spielberg's films:

Close Encounters (Roy Neary alienates his family through his obssession)
Jaws (Chief Brody alienates his family through his obssession)
E.T. (Elliots absent father)
Indy Jones & Last Crusade (Young Indy alienated by his obssessed father)
Hook (Obssessed father alienates his kids before becoming Peter Pan)
Jurassic Park (Dedicated scientist cum father-figure alienates can't stand the two kids he's saddled with - and where are their parents anyway?)
Jurassic Park 2 (Divorced father doesn't want to look after his kid)
A.I. (Annoying kid robot unsurprisingly abandoned by both creator and purchaser)
War of the Worlds (Divorced father doesn't want to look after his kids even though its the end of the world)
Indy Jones & Crystal Skull (Indy Jones is an absent father)

How many kids were abandoned in Saving Private Ryan ?

 :ye_gods:

Wear berets less...

It's just a convenient plot device and yes spielburg goes back to that well a little too much but it's not because he has a thing for daddy issue characters.

Oh come on to fuck, of course it is.  It's also all about The Nazis with him too.  Man hates him some Nazis.

Yeah, it's really hard to understand that one.  :why_so_serious:

I understand there was some altercation in the past, yes.

Watched this again the other night. Thing about the film is that it's full of references to "mothers" but not to fathers. Ryan was the only one of his brothers left and they wanted to get him home to his mum. Not his dad, or his parents, his mum. The soldiers sent to rescue him all bitch about the fact they've all got mothers. One of them tells a story about how his mother was a nurse, another a story about his mum's shop (not his dad's shop - his mum's).  Tom Sizemore teases Tom Hanks about doing something dangerous that his mother wouldn't approve of. Loads of references throughout the film.

Aside from Cpt Miller being a father figure, the only father we see or that gets referenced is Ryan and the closing scene is him looking for affirmation that he's been a good man and a good life - including being a good dad (as he makes a point that his family wanted to be with him).

Oh yeah, and when Vin Diesel gets shot, it's because he's trying to save a kid from a building and Miller says afterwards something like "This is why we don't save children!" Bad, abandoning, mission-focussed daddy figure!

 :grin:

Got around to seeing Super 8 yesterday. It was fine. I wouldn't call it great, except in comparison to the shit that gets shoveled around hollywood nowadays.

Amusingly, since having teal and orange (http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html) pointed out to me, I can't unsee it now. And the lens flares weren't as bad as Trek, but they were still there, and still hella annoying. I think JJ Abram's next movie is just going to be an LED flashlight with daddy issues pointed into the camera.

I just saw it (bluray rentals from the library for a dollar a week) and it was ok but ridiculously formulaic and the teal was overdone (the lady in the opening scene has eyes that are creepily bright blue).

Oddly, this was the reason I liked it. It was E.T. if done with 2010 sensibilities. The 1980s were an optimistic time for America. That shit don't fly 30 years later. Super 8 couldn't really be the optimistic pap of one dimensional good guys doing antisocial things for the greater good against misunderstood bad guys that ultimately ends with smiles all around.

• The alien wasn't cute and cuddly. That wouldn't work here. Aliens are scary because they're the ultimate unknown. That it had a specific motivation and only killed the bad guys felt like an appropriate throwback to happier (or to some: niave) times.
• The military were not a bunch of goody-two-shoe scientists just trying to help. They were today's cynical outlook on anything the guv'mint does. Appropriate for the 1970s setting too.
• The overworking perceptually-narcissistic rudderless father nobody liked was appropriate for the period. It was an interesting critique of role model vs hero in how he could step up for the town only at the expense of further distancing himself from his son.
• The kids were sorta timeless. They had tween issues and did all the what-me-worry stuff any little narcissist would do. But they were also Goonies without some of the slapstick. Kids are resilient and adaptable by nature (they gotta be), but I'm glad they did show some of them getting deeply impacted by what they saw.

The whole movie was put together very well. I don't think it has the same broad appeal that the 80s ones did though.[/list]

This. I finally watched it and it really was an E.T. homage from start to finish only with the Cloverfield monster's baby in place of cuddily phone homer. I liked it though the end was a little schmaltzy. No great cinematic achievement, really really self-indulgent fan wank, but fun for what it was.

Like most movies these days, I watched it on Netflix a few months ago and totally forgot that I even watched it until I saw this thread pop up.  Movies caught my imagination so much more in my youth.

As with everything else JJ has made, I was more impressed with the pieces than the whole.

What Spielberg does, and does well, is the sprinkling of a bunch of well-observed human moments into fantasy backgrounds... while maintaining the same sense of reality in the fantasy they season. Rather than simply having a human story run parallel to an alien one, he specifically focuses on how bizzare events would make real people behave, and then gives them room to behave that way. Hook, for example, is about the way that rediscovering Neverland helps Peter reconnect with his kids... not about how a man reconnecting with his kids happens to be Peter Pan. As easy as it is to say that, we can see from the dozens who have failed to become Spielberg that it isn't easy to do.

When JJ too often cannot maintain that balance he fails on both sides: His reality based plots look schmaltzy or preachy, and his fantasy elements feel two-dimensional or forced. I hope he improves because I love the sort of director he's trying to be.

...and as fond as I've been of some of his historical epics, I wish Spielberg would go back to fantasy himself.