4K UHD Blu-ray Review: Super 8

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Release Date: May 25, 2021

Region: Region Free

Length: 01:51:48

Video: 2160P (HEVC, H.265)

Main Audio: 7.1 English Dolby TrueHD Audio

Alternate Audio:

5.1 French Dolby Digital Audio

5.1 Spanish Dolby Digital Audio

5.1 Portuguese Dolby Digital Audio

Subtitles: English SDH

Ratio: 2.40:1

Notes: This is the film’s debut on 4K UHD. Unfortunately, the package doesn’t include a Blu-ray copy of the film, but it does include a code that allows owners to redeem a digital copy.

“The work I was doing as an 11-year-old filmmaker was as inspired by [Spielberg’s] Amblin work as anything. So it’s hard to disconnect those films and the spirit of those movies from that time in my life.” —J.J. Abrams (J.J. Abrams Combines Childhood’s Wonders…, SFGate, June 03, 2011)

There is something very unique and rare about those old school coming of age adventures that came out of the eighties, and it is something of a shame that similar films are so rarely made today. There is obviously a taste for these stories. Stranger Things wouldn’t be a success if viewers didn’t have a very real affection for this kind of material, and I think Super 8 shares the same spirit. One might argue that more recent genre successes are riding on a wave of nostalgia, but that doesn’t explain why they register with younger viewers who weren’t even around yet.

It seems that J.J. Abrams was inspired to make an adventure film based on his youth and the films that he loved during that period.

“I had the notion of doing a film called Super 8 about a group of kids making films and called Steven [Spielberg] immediately. This was a few years ago, but the film was obviously inspired by my childhood experiences doing these movies… He was encouraging and critical in the most constructive ways, and because Super 8 is a Spielberg produced movie — literally an Amblin film — it gave me license to embrace story elements that were in the DNA of the piece.” —J.J. Abrams (What the Hell Would Spielberg Do Here?, Time, June 06, 2011)

Abrams would elaborate about Spielberg’s participation in other interviews.

“Steven was involved in various stages of production. I worked with him on the story, editing the script, casting, during production he watched dailies and came to the set a few times. He was filming another movie, but he still came by a few times — which was great — and in post he spent some hours in the edit room and was incredibly helpful with that because it was a real challenge to structure the thing. In post we had a bunch of second act things that we needed to figure out, and he was really helpful in that. It was one of those things where I was amazed at how available he made himself to me and to this movie.” —J.J. Abrams (J.J. Abrams: Super 8’s Monster Is No Cuddly E.T., Gizmodo, June 06, 2011)

The fact that Super 8 is a period piece adds to its charm, but the filmmakers weren’t trying to duplicate the cinematic techniques or the aesthetic of films made during the late seventies.

“I told our cinematographer, Larry Fong (who I met at 12 making Super 8 films) that I didn’t want the film to look like it was made in 1979, but I wanted it to look the way we remember films looking from 1979. That is to say, it needed to be its own thing — with visual and rhythmic motifs that allude to a different era of moviemaking — but made using tools and techniques of today. I sort of wanted to build a bridge between then and now.” —J.J. Abrams (What the Hell Would Spielberg Do Here?, Time, June 06, 2011)

The real reason films like this speak to such a large demographic is really rather simple. They are inevitably about the pain of childhood and of that bittersweet loss of innocence that every human being on the planet is forced to experience. Even children who haven’t experienced it yet know on some level that it is coming, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. This is what the monster in Super 8 represents. The creature represents demons that our heroes don’t want to face but must, and there is no going back once these demons are conquered.

“The monster is a tricky thing from the story [perspective] to make work. The reason it’s in the movie is that it’s a physical manifestation of the struggle going on inside this boy who has lost his mother. The idea of confronting this thing, the inevitability of having to confront this thing, really maps the inevitability of having to deal with that loss and figure out a way to get past it. And so having to see and confront this thing that’s the scariest thing in the world, by definition, this creature has to be terrible… Having said that, once you actually confront the thing that’s so scary to you, it’s never exactly as you imagined. And it’s often survivable… This creature needed to have nuance and not just be something that was a chest-pumping beast. It needed to be scary, but it needed to get to a place where it was not scary — that’s not to say it was ever going to do a 180 and be E.T. and adorable and loveable and cuddly – it was never designed as such.” —J.J. Abrams (J.J. Abrams: Super 8’s Monster Is No Cuddly E.T., Gizmodo, June 06, 2011)

Super 8 has held up rather nicely over this past decade. It has charm, a few genuinely suspenseful sequences, and plenty of heart. What’s more, it manages to pay homage to the a few of those earlier Amblin movies even as it distinguishes itself as something more than a nostalgic throwback.

The Presentation:

4 of 5 Stars

 Paramount protects their disc in the standard black 4K UHD case with an insert sleeve that features attractive artwork. The first pressing also comes with a slip sleeve featuring the same artwork.

A special 10^th Anniversary Steelbook Edition featuring different artwork is also being released.

The disc menu utilizes footage and music from the film and is easy to navigate.

Picture Quality:

5 of 5 Stars

“We shot Super 8 on film, and I love and prefer film…  There’s a kind of look that film has that’s just fantastic. Part of it is that it’s almost not as clear and crisp as digital, and because of that, somehow, it almost activates part of your imagination, sort of filling in the blanks in a way… Digital’s often so completely pristine that, in a weird way, there’s nothing left to imagine. You sort of see everything almost too well, in a way.” —J.J. Abrams (J.J. Abrams Interview: ‘Super 8,’ Den of Geek, August 02, 2011)

This quote may be slightly misleading — even if most of Super 8 was shot on either 16mm or 35mm film — because there were a few shots that were realized using Red One MX cameras. The hybrid nature of the film’s production doesn’t really show itself though, and this is no small achievement in itself. Better yet, the film has always looked wonderful on home video. The 2011 Blu-ray edition of the film was and still is gorgeous, and this new 4K UHD version seems to come from the same master. What we get here is an upgrade in resolution, and the added benefits that HDR10 and Dolby Vision provide the discerning viewer, but these improvements fairly substantial and well worth the upgrade. We get more detail, richer contrast, more dynamic range, improved depth and clarity, better black levels, richer colors, and etc. We doubt if there will be a better transfer of the film any time soon.

Sound Quality:

5 of 5 Stars

One expects there to be some grumbling amongst audiophiles about the lack of a proper Dolby Atmos track, but this page isn’t going to join in that particular chorus. The 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio mix is an incredibly rich sonic experience. We are talking about an immersive experience that transports the viewer into the film’s world. All tracks are well prioritized and support the films visuals rather brilliantly.

Special Features:

4 of 5 Stars

Feature Length Audio Commentary with J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, and Larry Fong

This group conversation between J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, and Larry Fong is certainly engaging, but they tend to joke around too much to offer enough of the production information that fans are hoping to hear. Some of the information that is buried within the track can also be found elsewhere on the disc, but die-hard fans will probably find the track interesting enough to warrant at least one listen.

14 Deleted Scenes — (12:47)

It’s great to see that these deleted scenes are included since it is always interesting to see what was left out of the final assembly of a film.

Making Super 8 — (01:37:15)

While the eight featurettes don’t quite congeal into one of those excellent “making of” documentaries of yore, they do create a fairly interesting look at the film’s production when one chooses the “Play All” option.

The Dream Behind Super 8 — (16:28)

The Search for New Faces — (17:46)

Meet Joel Courtney — (14:35)

Rediscovering Steel Town — (18:24)

The Visitor Lives — (12:22)

Scoring Super 8 — (05:29)

Do You Believe in Magic? — (04:29)

The 8mm Revolution — (08:15)

These featurettes taken together are the highlight of the disc’s supplemental package.

Deconstructing the Train Crash

Deconstructing the Train Crash is really a collection of photos, sketches, story boards, interview snippets, and behind the scenes clips that have been gathered together as a kind of interactive tour of the film’s most famous sequence. It gets slightly tedious going through them all, but there are some interesting things to discover.

Final Words:

Super 8 is probably the best film that J.J. Abrams has made to date. It’s a charming throwback to the classic “coming of age” adventures of the eighties. We are happy to report that this new 4K UHD edition of the film delivers the goods. Highly Recommended.

Note: We were provided with a screener for review purposes, but this had no bearing on our opinions. We do not feel under any obligation to hand out positive reviews.