Hacker Cinema
Super 8
2011 · Film · 112 min
Directed by J.J. Abrams
ThrillerScience FictionMystery
In late 1970s Ohio, a group of friends filming a homemade zombie movie witness a devastating train derailment. Soon after, their quiet town is gripped by unexplained disappearances, strange phenomena, and a growing sense of fear, as they uncover that something terrifying has been set loose.
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7 comments on Hacker News
Super 8 has a coherent reveal of the mystery box. Lost did not and disappointed at the end.
The kelvin timeline from when he rebooted Star Trek is sort of mystery box but then we learn who Nero is in a coherent way early on as well. I did not like that JJ destroyed Vulcan and frankly made a confusing alternate, darker timeline at all. The reboots are good movies but they were not good Star Trek movies. Missed opportunities to explore the Roddenberry style themes of humanity and deep moral questions under a backdrop of optimism.
loved Super 8. Have watched it several times. It's his best movie IMO.
I watched Super 8, on I think Amazon, when it came out. I thought it was about the weirdest movie I'd ever seen, a narrated in real time action movie.
Come to find out, for whatever reason, it had audio description turned on by default.
As someone who can see and hear fine, I found it rather odd(before learning what it was). But for a vision impaired person, such a thing must be a game changer.
I've felt a very small version of this in watching certain movies. When I saw Stand By Me, I understood Stranger Things and Super 8 a lot more.
I'm amazed by all of the answers in this thread, it's amazing how many people are just guessing or making stuff up. Netflix "cheaped out", wants it for "maximum compatibility" (what?), is doing it to be "simpler", or hand-wringing about whether or not it's technically feasible to automatically zoom in on the faces in that way.
It's really easy to explain why they are doing this: the studio is giving them this version of the movie and Netflix is uploading it.
There are plenty of 2.40:1 movies on the service, mostly newer ones. House of Cards is a nonstandard 2:1 aspect ratio. If they cared about cropping the movies they'd do it to all of them. They don't.
The studios just already have these HD transfers of movies that were probably made years ago for television broadcast and that's what they give to Netflix. Case closed.
That said, every movie should be available only in its original aspect ratio, and anything else is bogus. Film aesthetics rely on someone not cropping the shot. For example, in Super 8 the movie begins with a shot of a metal sign at a factory. That sign is 2:40:1, just like the movie's aspect ratio. It's almost certain that JJ Abrams had them build that sign at that aspect ratio on purpose so it would fill the frame. The version on Netflix, it's cropped off and you can't read part of it. Bad.
I just watched[1] Super 8[2] last night, sounds familiar, maybe he did too.
[1] Not that good of a film, sorry...
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1650062/
I guess... and of course I defer to Ebert on all things cinematic... but these are all critiques you could have leveled with equal force in 2002. There've been good years in the preceding decade.
Except for 3D. But how much of an effect is 3D having? Most movies aren't 3D.
I'll say this: I went to see Super 8 at an old 60's-70's style theater in the far-out suburbs, one almost identical to the ones I saw movies in when I was a kid. No stadium seating. Simple seats. No cupholders. Massive screen. Minimal concessions. Maybe it was just the movie I was seeing --- like how watching South Park on your computer enhances the experience --- but it was awesome.
Ultimately, my bet is that the problem with theaters is simple: for the core market (the family of four that wants blockbuster mainstream product), the substitutes are just too good now. Mainstream consumers have, relative to 1995, spectacular home theater setups, and diverse options for feeding content to them. Is it any wonder theaters suffer?