Does Super 8 Have a Chance in the Ten?

In truth, the year before last might have been a better year to use as an argument FOR Super 8, but two years with ten Best Picture nominees does not a pattern make.

The bad news is the Oscars are over. ¬†The good news is Movieline’s Stu Van Airsdale is occasionally writing about the new ones upcoming. ¬†You know, this year’s Oscars that I can’t seem to face? ¬†How will my heart break this year? What fresh hell awaits? ¬†Either way, Stu’s theory on Super 8 is a good, sound one I think. ¬†I haven’t been hearing the buzz on it but I am going to take Stu’s word for it:

The response to this morning’s Super 8 trailer debut has been sweeping and overwhelmingly positive. One look, and you can see why: Standard-issue marketing voodoo aside, J.J. Abrams’s latest portends a rare harmony of sweetness and ambition, homage and envelope-pusher, sincerity and mastery. Believe the hype or not, at least one thing seems clear: At least one Best Picture nomination next year is spoken for, right?

We all probably could have deduced this without a trailer, obviously: Abrams’s Star Trek was on the bubble for last year’s “blockbuster wild-card” spot that eventually went to District 9, and friends (i.e. producers) like Steven Spielberg — whose sci-fi fantasias of the late ’70s-early ’80s are paid tribute here — definitely won’t work against Abrams. (Though the Spielberg-directed Oscar-bait War Horsemight.) “Wild card” may be too vague, though, for the creative and commercial success Super 8 is shaping up to be. When you scan the the list of summer 2011 releases, Super 8 has a monolith stature more reminiscent of Inception than District 9 — a sleek, determined, massive entertainment positioned as much for its long shadow as for its blinding mid-June flashpoint.

And the Academy loves nothing if not flattery, or at least thinking ahead with one of those 10 Best Picture slots in mind. Early spring was the ideal time for Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. to start really befuddling film culture as a whole with strategic Inception clips and hype, spoiling nothing but its cerebral creds and blockbuster potential. It was the first such summer release to really plant its flag in this expanded Oscar frontier; Star Trek was in its second month of release before the Academy even made its announcement in 2009, leaving the field to late August bloomers likeInglourious Basterds and District 9. Having already been jilted with The Dark Knight — the work that arguably necessitated the expansion in the first place — Nolan and Warner Bros. seemed not only hungry for but entitled to a Best Picture nod in 2011. Call it the Inception Exception: The spot reserved for the most ambitious, accomplished and lucrative summer tentpole. (Especially one by a writer-director, though outside guys like Nolan, Abrams and Tarantino, that is a tough prerequisite to uphold.) It wasn’t a fluke; it’ll be there forever, and a handful of films every year will jockey for it.

I like it, I like it. ¬†Nolan, Abrams and Tarantino though? ¬†Is one of these things not like the other or is it just me? ¬†Quentin Tarantino is nothing short of one of the most brilliant writer/directors currently working. Christopher Nolan is nothing short of one of the most creatively brave, unique-minded visionaries out there. ¬†JJ Abrams is … good, interesting, reliable – but he’s not quite “there” yet. ¬†Give him time.

Also, I don’t know that I would have called District 9 the Wild Card Slot. ¬†The Blind Side slot took the Wild Card slot to my mind — Star Trek maybe should have been there?

He’s throwing it out there but we can’t actually form it into a notion, turn it into a thought and then later into an idea until the crickets have their chance at bat. ¬†The crickets have to like it. ¬†The public has to like it. ¬†Upside, though: in a year clogged with sequels, an original movie like this will have no problem standing apart from the rest.

Stu is a lot ¬†more confident than I am, though. ¬†He’s got it as one of the ten for sure. ¬†Dangerous game to play before a movie opens. ¬†We learn this, Grasshopper, after many years of pie-in-the-face humiliation. ¬†Rango, though, DOES have a good chance at becoming that nominated movie. ¬†We know the Pixar slot won’t be taken by a sequel. ¬†Oh wait. ¬†Nevermind.

So, we see Stu’s wager but we’re holding our cards for the time being, ever stalwart. ¬†Just because Spielberg’s name is on it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a done deal. ¬†But — ever stalwart.

Stu’s whole article here.