Kyle Chandler | Okinawa Assault

Age of Innocence: “Super 8”

This post is not really about Super 8 – my review will be coming out on Anomalous Material this weekend. This is more about its well-crafted first full length trailer. I’d argue that it’s one of the two best trailers of the year because it obfuscates the plot so well. Brad Brevet posted the second trailer for the film yesterday, but I still like the first one better. And somebody probably already did what I’m doing now, but what the hey. Above is an image of the good old days, recorded, imagined, not fully realized.

This movie is about a group of children and as these movies go, these children will have to lose their innocence in the course of this story. But those gears are starting to turn already, the symbiosis of adulthood around them. The kids are making a film using a titular super 8, and in it they’re dressed like adults, talking like adults. They think their stories are boring and thus are working on this movie with a conceived notion that fiction is the land of grown-ups. Above is the film’s protagonist, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), dressed up as an Air Force cadet.

And this is where I wonder what decade we’re in, although I guess I can read a synopsis, right? Nonetheless, first time actress Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning), looking like a child version of Grace Kelly, still throws me off, making me think that this movie was set in the Roswell years. These hordes of people dress like they’re a generation younger. And are they coming in or going out?

Joe has an unbelievable faith in strangers.

Speaking of this horde, the groovy woman in the centre is one half of Aly & AJ and the long-haired guy on the right is “7th Heaven” alum David Gallagher. Like their younger counterparts, these former child singers/actors grow up so fast.