Super 8

J.J. Abrams picked the wrong time to be a filmmaker. With his love of genres like horror and science fiction, he would’ve thrived in the 1980s alongside the likes of Joe Dante, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Steven Spielberg. Instead, he emerged at a time when Hollywood is only interested in remakes, reboots, sequels, and building up existing franchises. As a result, his directorial debut was a sequel (Mission: Impossible III) and then he went on to reboot two existing franchises – Star Trek and Star Wars with massive commercial success. He did manage, however, to make an original film amidst all of this franchise work.

Super 8 (2011) saw Abrams team up with one of his cinematic heroes and mentor, Spielberg. His presence, along with the film’s story about a group of kids getting involved with an extra-terrestrial, led many to claim that the former was merely paying homage to the latter. While this is true to a certain degree, it is only a superficial reading of the film as Abrams draws on other cinematic influences while also incorporating his own sensibilities to make a film that is his personal and best one to date.

Set in an American steel town called Lillian in 1979, we meet Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a young boy that has just lost his mother in an accident at the plant, leaving him alone with his father Jackson (Kyle Chandler), a police deputy who has no idea how to raise his son. Cut to a few months later and school is out, which gives Joe plenty of time to hang out with his friends, Charles (Riley Griffiths), Cary (Ryan Lee), Preston (Zach Mills), and Martin (Gabriel Basso), as they work on a zombie movie. Charles is their enthusiastic director that needs a female lead and asks Alice (Elle Fanning), one of their classmates, and she agrees much to Joe’s delight as he crushes on her from afar.

One night, they all sneak out to shoot a scene at the local train station and, as luck would have it, a train goes by while they’re filming. Charles decides to incorporate it into the scene (“Production values!”), however, Joe notices a truck driving onto the tracks and it crashes head on with the train, derailing it in an impressively orchestrated scene that our heroes narrowly survive. Something emerges from the wreckage, something not of this world, that goes on to terrorize the town, crossing paths with Joe and his friends.

One of the most striking things about Super 8 is Abrams’ deft touch with the young actors in the cast. They have to carry most of the film as they are in almost every scene and so casting is crucial. This is where the film excels as evident early on when Joe applies makeup on Alice before she films a scene for Charles’ movie at the train station. It is a marvel of understated acting from these two young people. It isn’t what’s said during this moment but what isn’t as they exchange looks – too shy to say what they’re really thinking. Instead, Abrams has them convey it through the looks they exchange.

After Alice mentions that her dad (Ron Eldard) works at the mill, this triggers painful memories for Joe. He wants to say something but it is still too painful and the look she gives him suggests that she understands. Then, when Alice rehearses a scene with her co-star Martin she delivers an emotional monologue, her expressive eyes on the verge of tears. Alice captivates not just us but the other characters as well. It is an incredible bit of acting from Elle Fanning and it announced her as a young actress to watch. She has an enchanting screen presence and a knack for a light touch as evident in the scene where Joe teaches her how to act like a zombie. He’s clearly smitten with her and we are too.

Joel Courtney plays Joe as a sensitive boy coping with the death of his mother whom he was very close to and fills that void by hanging out with his friends and making a movie. Like Fanning, Courtney has very expressive eyes and uses them effectively to convey his character’s feelings. They also share the film’s strongest scenes together, giving Super 8 its heart. Both deliver emotional, heartfelt performances, playing damaged characters as a result of absent mothers. Hers left an abusive situation, his died in an accident that shouldn’t have happened. They elevate the film above its genre trappings, giving us something to care about as we become invested in their lives.

The always reliable Kyle Chandler is well-cast as the savvy deputy that quickly figures out there’s more to the train wreck than meets the eye and doesn’t buy the military’s official stance. He’s also believable as a man too busy being a cop to be a proper father until forced to when his wife dies. There is a Gary Cooper-esque quality to the actor, playing a stand-up guy that gets tired of the military lying to him and decides to do something about it. Chandler does an excellent job conveying his character’s dilemma: he has the whole town looking to him to keep them safe while also trying to be a good father to Joe. There’s a scene halfway through the film where Jack forbids Joe to see Alice and the latter finally confronts the former about how little he knows about him. Courtney is so good in this scene as Joe’s hurt feelings come to the surface.

While Joe and his friends live in Spielbergian suburbia complete with dysfunctional families and kids that dream of becoming filmmakers, Alice lives on the wrong side of the tracks with a screw-up for a father, which echoes the character of Darren in Joe Dante’s Explorers (1985), who also lives in the poor side of town with terrible parents. Abrams, however, has different cultural touchstones than Spielberg as evident with a soundtrack that features the likes of The Knack’s “My Sharona” and ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down.” The kids are making a zombie movie, which is an obvious reference to George Romero and Charles even has a poster of Dawn of the Dead (1979) hanging up in his room as well as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978).

The original idea for Super 8 was, according to Abrams, to make a film about “that time in my life and my friends’ lives making these Super 8 films.” To that end, he incorporated aspects of himself in the kids. He made moves like Charles, but “felt like I experienced the world through the eyes of Joe,” while he also took apart firecrackers and blew up models like Cary. Over time, Abrams incorporated the monster movie genre into the film. Growing up, he had friends whose parents were getting divorced and was afraid that could happen to him. While working on Super 8 he came up with the idea of what if “the mother is suddenly gone and this boy didn’t have the greatest relationship with his dad, what is that relationship once she’s gone?”

While Abrams was clearly inspired by Spielberg and his early Amblin films, he didn’t want to have any overt references to his films even though posters for them would most definitely be hanging on the kids’ walls. Instead, he made Charles a Carpenter and Romero fan. The Carpenter influence extended to the structure of Super 8 itself as Abrams wanted to combine “the sweetness of the autobiographical stuff with the horror of the John Carpenter-type of conditional terror, the premise of something monstrous out there.”

Super 8 is a coming-of-age story as the lives of Joe and his friends are changed forever. They see not just their town, but the world in a different light as their lives are put in real danger and are forced to grow up. A father and son relationship lies at the heart of the film, surrounded by genre trappings. Much like he did with Cloverfield (2008), Abrams wisely waits as long as he can to reveal the alien, building suspense by expertly staging a few attacks on random people by an unseen force. The last third of the film delivers the kind of expectations that are intrinsic with this kind of big budget genre film as the alien presence becomes more overt.

Where Super 8 falls apart somewhat is the last third as Abrams relies on the traditional tropes of the blockbuster action movie as Joe and his friends engage the alien. It is here where Abrams tries to fuse Cloverfield with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and stumbles. For most of the film we are meant to fear the alien as its motives are unclear. By the end of the film it is revealed that the alien had been captured by the United States government and tortured for years, which certainly justifies the swath of destruction it leaves in its wake.

The moment, however, where Joe gives up his mother’s pendant so that the alien can complete its spacecraft and go home rings false. Through the whole film Abrams makes a point of showing how important this object is to Joe. It is the last, significant tangible link to his mother. Why he would give that up doesn’t make sense. Is Abrams trying to tell us that symbolically it means that Joe is finally letting go of the hurt and pain he feels for the loss of his mother? It hasn’t been that long and why does the alien need that particular piece of metal? There is plenty around for it to use. Abrams should have removed that bit and instead played up the fact that Joe and Alice finally connect with their respective fathers who, in turn, have settled their differences between each other. Instead, we have a decidedly bittersweet ending, which is more Abrams than Spielberg.

The commercial and critical success of Super 8 should have paved the way for more original films from Abrams but instead he went back to Star Trek and has directed two Star Wars movies, which should give him the kind of creative control that Christopher Nolan enjoys. Perhaps Abrams simply hasn’t found something personal enough to motivate him into making another original film, or perhaps the flaws in Super 8 demonstrated that he was still learning, trying to figure things out and going back to franchise movie work allowed him to not only increase his industry clout but also gave him a chance to practice with the big toys and budgets that studios provide while working out things for when he decides to do something original.

SOURCES

Billington, Alex. “Interview: Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams – Writer and Director of Super 8.” Firstshowing.net. June 10, 2011.

Knolle, Sharon “J.J. Abrams on Why Super 8 Is His Most Personal Project Yet.” Moviefone. June 9, 2011.

Ordana, Michael. “J.J. Abrams Combines Childhood’s Wonders, Horrors.” San Francisco Chronicle. June 3, 2011.

Sciretta, Peter. “JJ Abrams Talks Super 8, Bad Robot, Lens Flares, LOST, Spielberg and the Mystery Box.” /Film. June 10, 2011.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In 1999, the highly anticipated Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released and soon followed by subsequent installments, Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Returning to the director’s chair for the first time since Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1977, George Lucas chronicled the tumultuous events that preceded the adventures of Luke Skywalker. While a massive financial success, the Prequel Trilogy was roasted by film critics and derided by a significant portion of the franchise’s fanbase, many of whom had grown up with the Original Trilogy. Personally, I felt that Lucas had betrayed the essential elements that made those movies so magical and so special for me at such an impressionable age. The real issue I have with these movies was Lucas’ inability to recreate the feeling of excitement and wonderment of seeing the Original Trilogy for the first time and how it captivated my imagination.

After Revenge of the Sith, Lucas said that he would not make any more Star Wars movies. I resigned myself to the idea that never in my lifetime would I be able to return to Tatooine or see the Millennium Falcon fly through space, which were a part of a rich universe that has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

In October 2012, he sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney and shortly thereafter it was announced that J.J. Abrams would be directing a new movie entitled, The Force Awakens (2015). It would take place approximately 30 years after Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) and not only introduce a new generation of characters played by the likes of John Boyega, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley, but also see the return of cast members from the Original Trilogy such as Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill reprising their much beloved characters.

Burned by the Prequel Trilogy, I was understandably wary of this new movie but any lingering doubts were put to rest by a strategic media blitz that reassured the faithful that Abrams was one of us. He would be shooting this new movie on film stock instead of digitally as Lucas had done with the prequels, he would be shooting on location instead of green screen soundstages, putting an emphasis on practical effects over CGI, including building a full-scale Millennium Falcon, and, most significantly, bringing back Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the screenplays for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi, to co-write this new movie with him.

Years after the events depicted in Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has gone off the grid after an attempt to create a new order of Jedi went disastrously wrong, resulting in his apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) going over to the Dark Side where he soon became a leading figure in the First Order, a group that rose out of the ashes of the Galactic Empire and bent on continuing Darth Vader’s plans. To this end, they want to find Luke and kill him thereby eliminating the Jedi for good. The Resistance, led by Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), also wants to find Luke and send their best pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and his loyal droid BB-8 to find him. This takes him to the planet of Jakku where he is subsequently captured by the First Order.

Meanwhile, a reluctant First Order Stormtrooper (John Boyega) witnesses a horrible massacre of a village on Jakku and decides that he can no longer be a part of this destructive group and helps Poe escape. They return to Jakku and are separated after the Tie Fighter they stole is shot down and crashes. Eventually renaming himself Finn, he accidentally crosses paths with a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley) who has found BB-8 with the coordinates to Luke’s whereabouts. They run afoul of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and team up to get Luke’s location to the Resistance who is gearing up to stop the First Order’s Starkiller Base, a planet converted into a superweapon that makes the previous Death Stars look like tinker toys. This new base absorbs the power of a nearby sun and redirects the energy into a blast that is capable of destroying multiple planets simultaneously.

Unlike Lucas, Abrams knows how to work with actors, especially younger ones, and get the best performances out of them. All the newcomers to the Star Wars universe acquit themselves admirably with John Boyega, Adam Driver and, especially, Daisy Ridley being the heart and soul of The Force Awakens. All three bring their characters vividly to life. Driver wisely doesn’t play Ren as a one-note villain and is given the screen-time to portray someone struggling with inner demons that threaten to engulf him. There is a satisfying character arc to Ren as he succumbs completely to the Dark Side of the Force. Ridley’s character represents hope as Rey embraces the Light Side. She is a strong-willed character more than capable of handling herself and the young actress brings an undeniable charm and charisma to the role as she does an excellent job of showing how Rey comes into her own over the course of the movie. She is smart, proactive and more than capable of getting herself out a jam. Ridley’s performance is the kind of exciting breakout role that Elle Fanning did in Abrams’ Super 8 (2011).

Boyega’s Finn is somewhere in the middle between Ren and Finn, starting off on the wrong side but as the movie progresses he makes a choice by taking a side and believing in something. Boyega also gets the bulk of the movie’s humorous moments, demonstrating fantastic comic timing and then turning on a dime when it comes to the more dramatic scenes. The scenes between him and Ridley are among some of the strongest in the movie. Initially, Finn and Rey have somewhat of an antagonistic relationship that develops into something more meaningful as they learn to trust each other with their lives. The chemistry between them is excellent and feels genuine. Unfortunately, Oscar Isaac is given not as much screen-time as I would have liked. Poe shows up early on only to disappear for most of the movie and reappears near the end in deus ex machina fashion.

For fans of the Original Trilogy there is a definite nostalgic thrill in seeing Han Solo, Leia, Chewbacca and other characters again. The introduction of each one gives off its own unique emotional spark and then they are seamlessly integrated into the narrative with Han and Chewie, not surprisingly, getting some of the best moments in the movie as they banter back forth just like old times. I couldn’t help but tear up a bit when Han steps back onto the Millennium Falcon for the first time after all these years and Ford’s expression said it all, which made me wonder just how much of it was acting on his part. The veteran actor hasn’t looked this engaged in a role in a long time and it looks like he’s having a great time slipping on the blaster again. Sadly, Carrie Fisher’s Leia is mostly relegated to the sidelines in what I can only assume is a symbolic passing of the torch to Ridley’s Rey.

Clearly Abrams learned from the mistakes of the Prequel Trilogy by jettisoning annoying offensive characters like Jar Jar, utilizing actual locations whenever possible (the last scene in particular is breathtaking) and relying more on practical effects, which gives The Force Awakens a tangible quality – something that had gone missing since the Original Trilogy. Most importantly, this movie has an emotional weight and heart to it, which was sorely lacking from the prequels. For example, The Phantom Menace introduced a cool-looking villain named Darth Maul only to kill him off at the end of the movie, but it didn’t mean anything because we knew nothing about him – his fears or his motivation. Not so with Ren and this is what makes him a much more interesting character and formidable antagonist.

Structurally, The Force Awakens is a carbon copy of A New Hope albeit with a few variations but this seems intentional as Abrams and Kasdan are saying that those that don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it and this certainly applies to the First Order as they stubbornly follow in the footsteps of the Galactic Empire like some kind of perverse intergalactic version of Groundhog Day (1993). It should be interesting to see where the next installment takes it from here.

How does this Star Wars junkie feel about the first Lucas-less movie? Honestly, I’m ambivalent about it all. On the one hand, the franchise was his baby. Lucas became a legend on the shoulders of the Original Trilogy and rightly so. Almost 40 years in, my friends and I continue to gleefully debate which movie is the best. For years, we had cast Lucas out as the Darth Vader of his own universe, banished for the sin of betraying our childhood memories by constantly tinkering with his movies with needless changes. Over the years, he had gone from being an upstart rebel filmmaker to the emperor of his own vast empire. He had made the classic mistake of getting high on his own supply and had to have his own creation taken away if it was to thrive and survive thereby giving the world a new hope. By selling Star Wars to Disney, Lucas made the most beautiful sacrifice a parent can make for their children. He had to walk away from it all and let someone else take the reins and that couldn’t have been an easy thing to do.

In many respects, The Force Awakens acts as a bridge, transitioning from the Original Trilogy to a new generation. As a result, Abrams gets to have his nostalgia cake and eat it too by giving fans what they want and then building from it. Best of all, he has instilled his passion for Star Wars in every frame of this movie in a way that Lucas was unable to in the Prequel Trilogy. I was pleasantly surprised at how much this movie affected me emotionally and how invested I became in it. The Force Awakens is an unabashed entertaining and engaging movie that managed to recapture the sense of wonder from the Original Trilogy and transport me back to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

DVD of the Week: Cloverfield

Cloverfield was the first media sensation of 2008 and an excellent case study in canny marketing. A teaser trailer appeared in theaters months ahead and featured a few, brief, tantalizing scenes of chaos in Manhattan with no mention of a title or who was in it. The only thing that was certain was that J.J. Abrams was somehow involved. Fans speculated about possible similarities to his TV show Lost or the likelihood that he had masterminded a new kind of monster movie. This teaser trailer sparked intense interest on the Internet which the studio brilliantly exploited with snippets of information staggered over succeeding weeks. The marketing paid off and the buzz resulted in a strong opening weekend and decent critical reaction.

The film’s framing device is that what we are about to see is “found” footage recovered from a digital camera in what used to be known as Central Park in New York City. Hud (T.J. Miller) has been entrusted to record testimonials for his friend Robert Hawkins’ (Michael Stahl-David) going away party. Rob recently got a promotion that will take him to Japan. During the party what feels like an earthquake forces everyone to the roof where they all witness a huge explosion in the distance. The partygoers make their way to the street and all kinds of debris comes flying down the street including, incredibly enough, the head of the Statue of Liberty.

In the distance, a skyscraper comes crashing down and the ensuing dust cloud and people running eerily echoes footage from 9/11. It looks exactly like a terrorist attack except for something massive glimpsed briefly moving between buildings. A huge tail that later takes out the Brooklyn Bridge confirms that some kind of creature is wreaking havoc in the city. After losing his brother, Rob decides to go rescue his friend and love of his life, Beth (Odette Yustman) with Hud and friends from the party, Lily (Jessica Lucas) and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) tagging along. What follows is an intense, white-knuckle journey through Manhattan as Rob and his friends try to avoid the thing that is tearing the city apart.

Cloverfield’s take on the monster movie is brilliant: imagine Godzilla (1998) shot like The Blair Witch Project (1999) fused with the same story structure as Miracle Mile (1989). This gives the film an immediacy that is very effective, especially in a scene where our heroes decide to walk through a subway tunnel only to realize that some things are chasing them. Director Matt Reeves ratchets up the tension with a chilling shot of rats scurrying away en masse while our heroes are traveling through the tunnel. There are all kinds of shots like this throughout the film, most notably a haunting shot of a riderless horse-driven carriage going through a deserted intersection. In addition to the aforementioned films, Cloverfield is also influenced by the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) in the way we (and the characters) get bits and pieces of information about what might be causing all of the destruction via newscasts. Like George Romero’s film, there is a raw, almost documentary-like feel that enhances the horror of what we are watching.

The comparisons to 9/11 – especially visually – are unavoidable as is evident early on in the initial attacks on the city and when the military show up with images that are not only meant to evoke that day but also footage of American soldiers fighting in the streets of Baghdad. More than any other film before it, Cloverfield is a cathartic experience for those of us who experienced and lived through 9/11 much like the original Godzilla (1954) film was for the Japanese after the atomic bombings during World War II.

Like any good horror film, Cloverfield is a metaphor for the horrors of real life. For people who actually lived in New York City at the time of 9/11 this film is particularly harrowing and traumatic ... but in a good way if that makes any sense. What makes the film particularly gripping is that the filmmakers take the time to allow us to become emotionally invested in the characters so that we care about what happens to them. We are given just enough details about their lives and their relationships with each other to make what happens to them later that much more powerful. This is visceral filmmaking at its finest that finally eradicates the waste of celluloid that was the Roland Emmerich Godzilla remake and finally gives America a decent monster movie to call their own.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by director Matt Reeves. He starts off talking about the genesis of the project and how he got the gig. He speaks about the casting process and how it was shrouded in secrecy with the actors auditioning scenes from J.J. Abrams TV shows Felicity and Alias. Reeves says that he resisted the urge to have a lot of obvious edits in favour of long takes or invisible edits in order to mimic a film actually shot by an average person who was there. To that end, he points out that the style of the film was meant to suggest that anyone could have shot it. This is an engaging and informative track with very few lulls.

“Document 01.18.08: The Making of Cloverfield” takes a look at how the film came together amid a shroud of secrecy. The use of hand-held cameras is examined including how it gave the film an authenticity. The on-the-set footage shows how it was filmed, mostly on a soundstage which is amazing because it doesn’t look it in the film. We see several scenes being shot and it is fascinating to see how they pulled it off.

“Cloverfield Visual Effects” examines how they virtually destroyed Manhattan with CGI effects. The fore and middle ground of scenes were real with practical sets while the background was a mix of CGI and good ol’ Matte paintings. This featurette takes us through the major SFX set pieces and shows us how they did them.

“I saw it! It’s alive! It’s huge!” J.J. Abrams was inspired by Godzilla and its iconic status in Japan and he wanted to do that for America. This featurette takes a look at how the creature was designed and why it looks the way it does.

“Clover Fun” are outtakes and bloopers as the cast blow their lines and goof around.

Also included are four deleted scenes with optional commentary by Reeves. There is more footage from Rob’s farewell party and more of him and his friends in the subway tunnels including more from the aftermath of the attack there.

There are two alternate endings with optional commentary by Reeves. Both tweak some of the pre-recorded footage of Rob and Beth during happier days.