If you made it to one of the midnight screenings of Iron Man 2 tonight in the United States, then you were among the first people on the planet to get a look at the secret movie project being created by JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg. We’ve been talking about it for the past few days here on Cinema Blend, the film’s called Super 8, and even after seeing the film’s first teaser myself tonight, much of it remains a mystery.
The teaser is surprisingly intense. A train flies past the camera while the following text appears on screen:
IN 1979 THE U.S. AIR FORCE CLOSED A SECTION OF AREA 51.
We see headlights in the distance approaching a train crossing and these words appear:
ALL MATERIALS WERE TRANSPORTED TO A SECURE FACILITY IN OHIO.
The headlights become a pickup truck with one driver and no passenger. The truck bursts through the crossing and turns onto the railroad tracks. Now it’s driving down the tracks, straight towards the approaching train. As if its playing chicken with the locomotive. The truck and the train collide, the explosion is huge. Cars fly off the tracks, the train derails. The camera pans over the wreckage and we hear clanking noises. Sparks fly and more text:
NEXT SUMMER
IT ARRIVES
The camera settles on an overturned traincar with the words US Airforce on the side. The door to the car is sealed with a wheel lock which begins to spin wildly. Something begins pounding on the door, the metal bends, and it’s clear that whatever’s in there is about to get out. The picture changes to the film’s logo, the lens of a Super 8 camera with film running behind it. It flies by pretty fast but if you look closely you’ll see a human face in the lens along with a lot of other blurry images and then some letters which are probably markers at the end of a film reel running out. I was only able to clearly make out an “E” an “I” and “E’ an “H” and a “W”. Then the movie’s name, Super 8, appears and the trailer ends.
A leaked version of it has already popped up online. You can try and watch that below, assuming the studio wants it to be seen. If they don’t, it’ll probably vanish pretty shortly.
Much of the initial talk surrounding the project speculated that it might in some way be connected to Cloverfield, and after watching the trailer some might still draw that conclusion since the title hints at found camera footage (as used in Cloverfield) and the teaser seems to indicate aliens are involved. But earlier this week Abrams himself confirmed that Super 8 is in no way connected to Cloverfield, so abandon those prequel theories.
Super 8 is something new. Enjoy the mystery, I suspect we won't get any real answers until it's in theaters next summer.
