Super 8: Difference between revisions
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{{work}}
{{quote|''There's a reason that ''Super 8'', its cool thrills, also seems a work of innocence: it takes incidental inspiration from the films of a director who, back in 1979, was the J.J. Abrams of his day. Look closely and you'll see that ''Super 8'' [[George Lucas Throwback|is a medley of tropes from the films of Spielberg's early prime.]]''|'''Richard Corliss''', [[Time (magazine)|''Time'' magazine]]<ref>[http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/02/super-8-movie-review/ ''Super 8:'' Just as Great as You Hoped It Would Be] (June 02, 2011)</ref>}}
''Super 8'' is a 2011 [[Science Fiction Films|science fiction film]] written and directed by [[
A group of pre-teens in a small Ohio town in 1979 are dedicated to making a zombie movie to enroll in an upcoming film festival, with Charles as script-writer and director, his best friend Joe as the make-up artist and other cast and crew members like Martin (lead actor), Cary (pyrotechnic/pyromaniac) and Preston (misc crew/extras). Charles manages to convince a girl and classmate, Alice, to play the part of the wife and she and Joe start to form an affection for each other. Unfortunately, there are some lingering emotions surrounding the death of Joe's mom several months prior, as well problems with his distant father, a deputy in the local sheriff's office.
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While filming a scene late at night, they happen upon a freak train crash and barely escape before the authorities show up. Shaken up by the experience, they find that they accidentally filmed ''something'' on their [[Title Drop|Super 8-mm film camera]] in the aftermath of the crash, and soon they're caught up in strange happenings and a secret military operation.
An interactive version of the teaser trailer is bundled with ''[[
{{tropelist}}
* [[Adorkable]]: Joe, when it comes to his hobby of making train models or his obvious crush on Alice.
* [[Alcoholic Parent]]: Alice's father. {{spoiler|He was drinking the morning of the factory accident, which led to Joe's mother taking his shift and her untimely death.}}
* [[Aliens in Cardiff|Aliens Somewhere West of Dayton]]: [[Area 51]] stuff happening in a small Ohio town, possibly tying into the rumors that the nearby Wright-Patterson AFB was the storage place of the alien bodies and wreckage from the Roswell crash.
* [[Alternate Reality Game]]:
** Naturally there'd be one. It involves a site about Ice Cream Lollipop called [https://web.archive.org/web/20130112064404/http://www.rocketpoppeteers.com/ Rocket Poppeteers]. There's [http://scariestthingieversaw.com Scariest Thing I Ever Saw], [https://web.archive.org/web/20121231080117/http://www.
** The editing room is especially good as you have to unlock clips and put them together forming one big video (which features the Truck Guy who apparently was involved in some experiments relating to the monster). Clips can be [http://www.movieviral.com/2011/05/18/super-8-standees-provide-links-to-editing-room-clips/ unlocked from looking through Super 8 standees in theaters and watching the title card after the trailer] and [http://www.movieviral.com/2011/05/09/new-super-8-app-reveals-hidden-editing-room/ using the Super 8 app.]
* [[Always Save the Girl]]
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* [[Armies Are Evil]]: Not entirely so, but army men are not pleasant guys to deal with, and one of them {{spoiler|[[Being Tortured Makes You Evil|tortured the alien and turned him evil]].}}
** Though one could argue that they {{spoiler|evacuated the town so that they could protect the civilians}}.
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: After the train derailment when the kids are all driving away, they're freaking out over Woodward's warnings. Charles is just as distressed, but not about entirely the same things.
** "You will die; your parents will die... this is not good information!" "I've never had a teacher aim a gun at me!" "That train could've killed us!" "Oh shit, the focus ring fell off my camera! The lens is totally cracked!"
* [[Artistic License Physics]]: A whole train was pulled off the tracks by just a truck, ''whose driver survived.''
{{quote|
"[[Captain Obvious|Obviously]], it isn't." }}
** Actually [
* [[As You Know]]: A few times with the kids, who usually respond with a huffy, "I know that!"
* [[The Atoner]]:
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* [[Avoid the Dreaded G Rating]]: Donny saying "fuck" (amongst other curses from the children) and Nelec's unusually {{spoiler|gory death}} were probably put in to ensure a PG-13 rating.
* [[Badass]]: The alien itself.
* [[Badass Teacher]]: Dr.
* [[Bad Bad Acting]]: Averted. Most of the acting in the movie the kids are working on is believably bad. Joe himself was called upon to play a soldier and was particularly stiff. Martin seems to be alright, but Alice slowly started getting so emotional and into character as the wife that she stunned everyone.
** Amusingly, the poor editing of Charles' movie (seen over the ending credits) conceals this, so that she looks just as bad as the other kids.
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* [[Birds of a Feather]]: Joe and Alice both have [[Parental Neglect|neglectful fathers]] and [[Missing Mom|missing mothers]].
* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: {{spoiler|The alien is thoroughly weird-looking. It has four arms, feet that end with digging "chisels," and a body with multiple gaps or negative spaces that do not exist in Earth vertebrates. Its face looks surprisingly humanoid at first glance, but the lipped mouth can split horribly into a fanged set of mandibles, and the human-like eyes are normally covered by a reflective membrane.}}
* [[Black Dude Dies First]]: Somehow, both averted and played straight. The first violent scene in the movie involves a train crash, in which Dr.
* [[Bratty Teenage Daughter]]: Charles' sister, Jennifer, who is constantly complaining to their mother about wanting to go to a girl's party, but can't, due to babysitting duties. Used as a plot point, it's the only way Charles is able to get them places during the events of the film by promising to babysit instead.
* [[Brick Joke]]:
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* [[California Doubling]]: West Virginia covered for Ohio.
* [[Calling the Old Man Out]]: Joe attempts to when his father forbids him from spending time with Alice.
* [[The Cameo]]: [[The Simpsons (animation)|Dan Castellaneta]] as the car dealer and composer [[Michael Giacchino]] as one of the deputies.
* [[Captured Super Entity]]: The alien since [[The Fifties]], under less-than-humane circumstances.
* [[Car Skiing]]: Happens when the creature slams into the military bus transporting the gang. Of note is that while the driver does succeed in getting the car back on the ground, the raised tires are totally destroyed on impact, forcing him to stop.
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* [[Chekhov's Hobby]]: Cary's obsession with fireworks comes in handy later on when they need a diversion.
* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: A double one. {{spoiler|The alien's ability to bond, and Joe's passion for train models, come in handy when it is time to build a new spaceship.}}
* [[
* [[Cluster F
* [[Colonel Badass]]: {{spoiler|The Colonel spends his last few moments of life shooting the monster ''in the face'' -- despite knowing it won't work -- and staring it down before it eats him.}}
* [[Coming of Age Story]]: With, you know, an angry alien on the loose.
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* [[Cute Monster Girl]]: Alice, after Joe applies the zombie make-up.
* [[The Danza]]: Well, one consonant away from it.
* [[Deconstruction]]: Of a sort. The plot shows a [[Darker and Edgier|grittier]] realization of an ''[[
* [[Defictionalization]]: Rocket Poppeteers are available at 7-11 stores. You wouldn't know they're Super 8 tie ins unless you followed the ARG.
* [[Defrosting Ice Queen]]: Alice, who is initially cold towards Joe but quickly warms up to him once they spend time together.
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* [[Dirty Communists]]: [[Invoked]] when a woman suggests that all the weird stuff going on in town is a prelude to a Soviet invasion.
* [[Disney Death]]: After the train accident, the gang find blood on some of the train wreckage and think that it's Alice's. Alice appears behind them and is uninjured; the blood is just fake blood from Joe's make-up box.
* [[
* [[Dogged Nice Guy]]: Joe towards Alice. It turns out Charles had the same idea too.
* [[Downer Beginning]]: We start with a funeral for Joe's mom.
* [[Dramatic Alien VTOL]]: {{spoiler|It wouldn't be a proper '80s-style Spielberg movie without one.}}
* [[Dressing
* [[Esoteric Happy Ending]]: The kids' film, "The Case," ends with the hero saving his girlfriend from the zombie disease...by wasting the only remaining dosage of the cure on her.
* [[Everyone Can See It]]: Between Joe and Alice.
* [[Evil
** Either that, or {{spoiler|the equipment it's assembling}} makes a noise or smell humans can't detect, but they don't like at all.
* [[Evil Laugh]]: {{spoiler|The noises made by the creature before it crushes the Colonel to paste sound suspiciously like a ''very'' nasty chuckle.}}
* [[Exactly What It Says
* [[Exposed Extraterrestrials]]: The creature.
* [[Face Death
* [[Fantasy-Forbidding Father]]: Deputy Lamb.
* [[Five
** [[The Hero]]: Joe
** [[The Lancer]]: Martin
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** {{spoiler|And when Deputy Lamb is coming out of the press conference or whatever it was, a man comes up to him and tells him about "some kinda sinkhole" in his garage.}}
* {{spoiler|[[Forgiveness]]: One of the major themes of the film.}}
* [[The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You]]: At the end of "[[Show Within a Show|The Case]]," Charles talks directly to the audience, only to be interrupted by a zombie tearing out his throat. It's a [[Shout
* [[Free
* [[Freeze
* [[Friend Versus Lover]]: Sort of. Alice wants Joe to stand up to Charles and not let him blow up his train model, while Charles is annoyed by Joe's new-found independence (or, as he puts it, "bossiness") due to Alice's encouragement.
* [[Funny Background Event]]:
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* [[George Lucas Throwback]]/[[Reconstruction]]: The entire film appears to be honoring every late 1970s-1980s film that [[Steven Spielberg]] either directed or had a hand in:
** Specifically ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]'' (the midwest setting, power outages).
** ''[[
** ''[[The Goonies]]''
** Even Deputy Lamb trying to find out what's going on with the disappearances in town is reminiscent of Chief Brody's investigations in ''[[Jaws (
** And arguably lesser-known recent films like ''[[The Iron Giant]]'' and ''[[The Host]]''.
** The deputy punching out bad guys to steal their uniforms is a pretty blatant call back to [[Indiana Jones]].
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* [[Hair of Gold]]: Alice.
* [[Happier Home Movie]]: Joe and Alice watch a home movie of Joe as a baby with his mother.
* [[Headphones Equal Isolation]]: A gas station attendant is so busy rocking out to [[Blondie (
* [[Heel Face Turn]]: {{spoiler|The alien monster}}, thanks to the [[Power of Friendship]].
* [[Her Heart Will Go On|His Heart Will Go On]]: Joe's father eventually comes to terms with his wife's death.
* [[Holding Hands]]: Joe and Alice at the end of the film.
* [[Humans Are
** Averted {{spoiler|with Joe, whose chat with the alien in the tunnel -- "Bad things happen" -- reveals to it that in a way, everybody hurts. And since the alien is holding Joe at the time and establishes a mind link by contact, the alien can see that Joe -- who had by then forgiven Alice's father for what happened -- is right.}}
** From the prequel comic's tagline: {{spoiler|"The Soviets sent a dog. The U.S. sent a ''[[Nuke
* [[Immune to Bullets]]: The alien, which is a bit of a problem for {{spoiler|Colonel Nelec when he's trapped in a bus by the alien with only an M-16. Even escalating to ''tanks'' doesn't help, as it's capable of making them veer off course with magnetism.}}
* [[I Wished You Were Dead]]/[[You Should Have Died Instead]]: Alice tells Joe that {{spoiler|her father [[Survivor Guilt|wishes he had died instead]] of Joe's mother on the day of the accident, and sometimes she feels that way about him too.}}
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* [[Insufferable Genius]]: Charles can be quite arrogant and bossy when it comes to his film, but he clearly wants to make it more in-depth by adding emotional investment to it, such as giving the detective a wife. Which makes the amusingly awful result all the more funny.
* [[It Will Never Catch On]]: The sheriff is not impressed by the idea of everyone having their own Walkman. He isn't totally ignorant of its potential, though, and in fact sees how such an innocuous device could inspire an entire new trend. "It's a slippery slope," indeed.
* [[
* [[Jerkass Facade]]: Initially, Alice and Louis both treat Joe with anger and resentment. As it turns out, this is merely a front.
* [[Karma Houdini]]: {{spoiler|The alien ultimately gets away with killing random innocent people. On the other hand, it's not really a straight-up villain.}}
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** After {{spoiler|the moment where Joe lets go of the locket, followed by the ship leaving}}, the credits continue the sad music... only to cut to show the hilarious [[Show Within a Show|movie of the kids]], "The Case".
* [[Mook Lieutenant]]: Overmeyer, Nelec's loyal subordinate.
* [[Mugged for Disguise]]: Joe's father has to punch out the soldier guarding him and steal his uniform to pull off [[Dressing
* [[Night of the Living Mooks]]: The zombie movie the kids are trying to film.
* [[Noodle Incident]]: A more grim version: It's never revealed how Joe's mother died, only that it was rather nasty and involved i-beams.
* [[No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup]]: The cure for the zombie virus in "The Case."
* [[Nostalgia Filter]]: Anybody who was a pre-teen between 1975 to 1985 is gonna get misty-eyed watching this movie.
* [[Nothing but Hits]]: "[[Electric Light Orchestra|Don't Bring Me Down]]," "Easy", "My Sharona," "Heart of Glass," and "[[Silly Love Songs|Silly Love]] [[Paul McCartney|Songs]]" all show up.
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* [[Operation Blank|Operation Walking Distance]]
* [[Overprotective Dad]]: Joe's and Alice's fathers when they forbid their respective children from spending time with the other.
* [[Paper
* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Joe's mother is dead, and his father attempts to send him away to a six week baseball camp over the summer, arguably so he doesn't have to deal with raising Joe by himself.
* [[Parental Neglect]]: Both Joe's and Alice's fathers share neglect towards their respective child, Joe's father due to his work and emotional baggage carried from Joe's mother's death, and Alice's father due to his resentment over Alice's mother leaving him {{spoiler|and his guilt over Joe's mother's death, which he is indirectly responsible for.}}
* [[Pet the Dog]]: What does [[Knight Templar|the Colonel]] do in his last few minutes of life? {{spoiler|[[You Shall Not Pass|Buy time for the kids to escape from the creature]].}}
* [[Precision F
{{quote|
* [[Police Brutality]]: Mild case. Joe's police officer dad strongarms Mr. Dainard into the back of his police car and drives him away, apparently for the crime of... showing up at a wake. {{spoiler|Subsequent events explain his motive, though.}}
* [[Posthumous Character]]: Joe's mother.
* [[Post
* [[Prequel]]: The comic bundled into the second issue of the ''[[Batman: Arkham City]]'' comic. Long story short, it's revealed that {{spoiler|the alien's ship had been monitoring Earth for quite some time and humans only discovered it with Sputnik; the Russians were scared shitless and so were the Americans, through OSS intelligence. The Russians sent Sputnik 2 (with Laika on-board) to investigate, while the Americans sent a probe of their own, which the alien ship promptly atomized. The U.S. response? [[Nuke
* [[Product Placement]]: Budweiser, 7-Eleven, and Kodak are all over the place.
* [[Psychic Link]]: Humans develop this link with the alien if they are touched by it.
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* [[The Stoner]]: Donny.
* [[Strictly Formula]]: {{spoiler|The fact that the monster is really just trying to get home and was something which the Air Force found but couldn't understand or control. The point-by-point recreation of The Hero's Journey for Joe.}}
* [[Stylistic Suck]]: "The Case," the zombie movie that the kids are filming, is shown during the credits. It is ''[[So Bad
* [[Survivor Guilt]]: The reason that {{spoiler|Alice's father, Louis, initially acted like a [[Jerkass]] to Joe was because he felt indirectly responsible for Joe's mother's death. Alice even tells Joe that he wished he had died instead of her.}}
* [[Technology Marches On]]:
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* [[Twice Shy]]: Joe and Alice again.
* [[Tunnel King]]: {{spoiler|The creature is this.}}
* [[The Un
* [[Villainous Valor]]: {{spoiler|Nelec's last stand against the alien.}}
* [[Vomit Indiscretion Shot]]: A few, courtesy of Martin. In the special features, cinematographer Larry Fong notes that this may the first instance of computer-generated vomit in a movie.
* [[We Need a Distraction]]: One implied, one stated. {{spoiler|Joe's dad blows up a tanker truck to provide cover for his escape from custody, and Joe asks Cary to set off some fireworks so they can get out.}}
* [[What Do You Mean
* [[What Measure Is a Non
* [[Would Hit a Girl]]: Joe, but hesitantly and only because it was the only way to wake her up {{spoiler|so that they could run for their lives.}}
* [[X Days Since...]]: Used at the very start of the film to (fleetingly) cryptic effect. {{spoiler|Joe's Mom broke the streak. It was an accident.}} May be the first example of this trope used for ''dramatic'' effect.
* [[X Meets Y]]: The movie is ''[[
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Super 8]]
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Super Title Index]]
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