There will certainly come a time in the long life of Super 8’s promotional cycle when a backlash, charging J.J. Abrams of being a bit too on the nose with his Spielberg cribbing homage-giving, will arise. But now is not that time! The first full trailer for Abrams’s secretive alien movie builds, with great skill, on top of the hype generated by that tantalizing Super Bowl clip. (And to quantify said hype: it’s currently number 6 on Vulture’s Anticipation Index, and fast rising.) The basic frame of the story seems to be clear: Aliens are here, the government is trying to cover it up, the crew of kids know about it because they go around shooting super 8 movies and accidentally caught some footage, adults besides Coach Taylor are evil, etc. But there’s no big giveaway or spoiler — including, of course, no sight of what these particular aliens might look like. (They’re probably pretty big, though; that one busting out of the freight, at least, is impressively strong). It does feel a lot like E.T., down to footage of people animatedly skidding out on bicycles and the dramatically wonder-inducing score. But how is being like E.T. a bad thing?
