Movies
The Road to ‘Super 8’: An In-Depth Look at Master Steven Spielberg’s Exhilarating Career
Area 51 gives off more movie ammo than a storage room filled with AK47’s. Just about everyone who is anyone in the science fiction realm has touched upon the Nevada military base with their own story; their own theory into the existence of aliens and the trouble associated with this highly secure area of desert. Super 8 (sneak preview screenings today), one of the summer’s most highly anticipated films, will be crashing its way into theaters this Friday, complete with an array of disappearances, unexplained events, and the inhuman creature that has left moviegoers guessing for months. Though director/writer JJ Abrams’ vision has yet to be seen, one can only wonder what really did come out of that train wreck, praying that it’s more exciting than Cloverfield.
However, it’s not just Abrams who brought this picture to life. Legend Steven Spielberg is right alongside as producer, adding his own element and brutal sci-fi knowledge into the mix, making for an interesting take on an alien invasion. Over the years, Spielberg’s name has become synonymous with greatness- everything from his role as writer on Poltergeist, to the powerful Schindler’s List, Spielberg is a master at not just terror, but entertainment. Hollywood, in a lot of ways, wouldn’t be what it is without his influence and mastery.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that his IMDB profile is longer than most senior thesis’. Shark Attack
“You’re going to need a bigger boat.” Police Chief Brody – Jaws (1975)
Three mechanical sharks, two haunting music notes, and more than a few budget overages later, Jaws has become one of the most frightening displays of oceanic horror, and, arguably, one of the scariest films, to ever grace the silver screen. Jaws has, single handedly, been responsible for society’s perception of sharks and a fear of entering open waters. The film is so popular the last thing I’m going to do is waste time on yet another plot fueled rant. The fact is if you haven’t seen Jaws, you don’t belong on a horror website reading about Spielberg- you should just rent the damn movie.
With a series of smaller films as his support, Spielberg took on the novel adaption after two directors had been passed over. Once the script was in place, casting began, with Spielberg focusing on maintaining an even range of talent, keeping in mind that the shark was the star of the film. Even after mechanical failures, the ever-known presence of the shark is the reason the film exists- from a skinny dipping teenager being jerked below the water by an unseen assailant, to that iconic dorsal fin circling its prey, Jaws is a mind-fuck in its presentation- it keeps you guessing until the very end. And that’s what made it so beautiful- and absolutely terrifying.
Despite budget struggles and rumors that, due to Spielberg’s 100 day overage, his career was over, the film flourished and went on to win three Academy Awards, even garnering a nomination for Best Picture, admirably losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The ridiculous spinoffs soon followed- everything from Piranha to the recent Sharktopus mess, just about every sea-based thriller has some sort of innuendo aimed at Jaws. Now that’s something Spielberg can be proud of- that and the fact he had nothing to do with the mediocre sequels that followed. It’s incredible that such a great career flourished off of a New England beach and an underwater, bloodthirsty fiend.
Extraterrestrial Love Affair
“You could be happy here; I could take care of you. I wouldn’t let anybody hurt you. We could grow up together,” Elliot – ET (1982)
From his writing/producing stint on the original Poltergeist (1982), to producing everything from Arachnophobia (1990) to Twister (1996) and, of course, his directorial genius behind prehistoric jewel Jurassic Park (1993), Spielberg’s cinematic influence runs the show. He’s the go-to guy for everything from flying cars to friendly ghosts, and loves tugging at heart strings with his epic war dramas, but on a site like this, it’s his love affair with extra terrestrials that pops. The overwhelming desire he has to portray as many different types of aliens that can be developed is a true talent.
After all, one can only take so many little green men with gigantic heads.
Unless you’ve been living in a basement for the majority of your life with no access to general cable or the Internet, Spielberg’s obsession with outer space and its inhabitants is no secret. It all started with Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, a project he took fresh off of shark infested waters, and has made its way into not only Super 8, but also his involvement in the presentation of Cowboys and Aliens due out on July 29th. The fact of the matter is, Spielberg is a master at alien life- and we’re fortunate enough to reap the benefits.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was another high budget feature, one that Spielberg was afraid to film on location after the woes he experienced with Jaws. Ultimately he decided on a few select, integral locations and moved forward into production with a great cast, including Jaws‘ Richard Dreyfus. The movie tells the story of Roy Neary, a man whose life is changed after encountering a UFO, and takes the viewer on a wild ride into alien visitation and influence. One of the film’s most memorable scenes is when the mother ship lands on Earth, returning a group of abductees. Star Wars had already given the public a glimpse into alien transportation, but Spielberg wanted to instead focus on the luminescent look of the objects, giving a more mystifying glimpse at UFO’s. CGI was a new technology and too expensive to use, so he opted for constructing models instead. In fact, the mother ship model is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum. You can find information on the display here.
While Close Encounters of the Third Kind focused on the whole of the alien race, E.T.– The Extra-Terrestrial focused on one little alien. The world fell in love with E.T. when Spielberg launched the project in 1982, surpassing Star Wars‘ financial success. Film critic Roger Ebert said it best: “This is not simply a good movie. It is one of those movies that brush away our cautions and win our hearts.”
The film first introduces us to the lovable ball of wrinkles when his family accidentally leaves him behind while fleeing the meddling government officials who interrupt their visit to Earth. Protagonist Elliott, on his way to get pizza, discovers the alien and leads him back to his house with an unconventional, yet seemingly useful tool- Reese’s Pieces. Elliott fakes being sick to stay home and his adventure begins. E.T. made audiences laugh by drinking beer and literally living through young Elliott, which results in an awkward kiss with his young lady love. But it’s the tears that were shed when viewers connected with E.T. and his young friend, when audiences thought the alien was dying and instead came alive to be reunited with his own family that really made the film what it is. This film wasn’t just about aliens- it was about the human dynamic adapting to extraordinary circumstances. It was also a heartfelt look at the parallels between an actual alien and an alienated young boy. No matter how it’s spun- E.T. is in every way a modern fairytale, only with flying bicycles instead of pumpkins.
Gremlins, with adorable Gizmo and his evil brothers in tow, came along in 1984, quickly followed by a slew of miscellaneous films- everything from The Money Pit (1986), to Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and even Hook (1991), paved the way for Spielberg’s return to alienation with Men in Black in 1997. Serving as Executive Producer, Spielberg launched the highly successful space comedy with great response. The back story comes from a comic book about mysterious men in black suits who work for unknown organizations bullying UFO and paranormal witnesses to keep them quiet, the movie stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as a pair of bumbling agents protecting the world from aliens. It’s a simple concept that launched a franchise and further cemented Smith’s career as a world class alien fighter. The talking Pug alien alone is worth the hour and a half spent watching the movie from start to finish. Spielberg returned to Men in Black for the second installment in 2002, and is set to produce Men in Black III, due out in 2012.
Transformers, the films based off of the alien-robotic toys that those of us from the 80’s grew to love, caught the attention of Spielberg in 2007 when he took an Executive Producer position on the film. He has since latched onto the franchise and continued with his role on the sequel in 2009, rounding it out with this year’s Transformer flick, out at the end of June. In between other projects, Spielberg also directed War of the Worlds (2005), starring Tom Cruise in an adaption of the famous Orson Wells’ radio performance (though I dispute the use of tripod machine aliens with great aim).
Super 8 is predicted to be yet another summer blockbuster for the Hollywood icon, further solidifying his recognizable influence in the industry. The film is set in the late 1970’s and follows a group of young witnesses to a mysterious train accident who begin noticing the strange things going on around town- and decide to further investigate. Some have compared the film to E.T. meets The Goonies (appropriate enough considering the obvious connection) while others are just hoping that the alien-reveal is much better than past experiences. With the secrecy surrounding the film, curiosity has been sparked and only time will tell if Super 8 lives up to the expectations that have been set.
Spielberg’s Future
“Who knows? Maybe you will survive… maybe they’ll take you as a pet or something. Teach ya how to do tricks.” Ogilvy – War of the Worlds (2005)
There’s no denying that Spielberg is ‘the man.’ He’s done it all- from tear jerkers to original horror, Spielberg is, without a doubt, one of the most successful, original and greatly respected filmmakers in the industry. He’s continuously cited by fellow filmmakers as not only an icon, but someone to look upon with respect, loving how he handles himself, his family life, and his professional advances. His work screams originality- something that has been lacking in recent years. His true love for his work shines through- and that’s what makes him stand out. That’s why they pay him the big bucks.
Cowboys and Aliens, is, well, about cowboys fighting aliens, and will be Spielberg’s latest addition to the outer life form series that he has created for himself. Spielberg is also a producer on Real Steel, a boxing-themed sci-fi movie starring Hugh Jackman and some awesome robots, and is directing the World War One film War Horse, as well as the highly anticipated biopic Lincoln.
Pretty much, judging from both past experience and the projects Spielberg has lined up for himself going forward, I’d say he’s set for life. If not longer.
There’s no one person greater than another in the filmmaking field. Everyone who is anyone has made a name for himself with his or her own vision. Quentin Tarantino uses beautifully violent induced chapter storytelling, while James Cameron shoots for high concept, over the top visual displays. Movie goers find their own niche and go to the movies that they enjoy watching. Be it action, horror, comedy or big budget drama, it’s the audiences that speak volumes. And even as Spielberg moves onto different projects, dabbling in a variety of different genres and fields, the audiences stay the same- in tune with his vision, his judgment, and his career. It’s nearly impossible to list every project Spielberg has been a part of, but there’s no denying that aliens caught on film wouldn’t be what they are without his influence. Even when not directly involved with a film, directors, writers, producers and even actors channel his conception, asking themselves, “What would Stephen do?”
READ MORE FROM ANDREA ON HER BLOG, THE ALBIN WAY
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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