J.J. Abrams's Super 8 gets a teaser.

There are two bad things about attending press screenings. First of all, they are often held on weeknights in the heart of downtown Hollywood or Beverly Hills. Trekking from Woodland Hills to the theater in question is often more trouble than it's worth, especially if it's just a few days before opening day, unless it's something I desperately want to see (hence, I've decided to pass on tonight's Robin Hood screening). The second disadvantage is that I don't get to see whatever brand-new trailers the studio intends to attach to said theatrical print. In this case, we've finally got an official version of Super 8, the top-secret J.J. Abrams project that recently stole the summer 2011 release slot from Mission: Impossible IV. No offense to Drew McWeeny of HitFlix, but it's a shame that the cat was let out of the bag just a few days prior to the opening of Iron Man 2. I still remember the genuine shock of seeing the first teaser to Cloverfield before Transformers, wrongly assuming right up to the Statue of Liberty shot that it was some whacked-out teaser to the Star Trek reboot (there were rumors that said teaser would be attached to Transformers prints). Anyway, Super 8 has been described as some kind of homage to the early films of Steven Spielberg, and this teaser certainly seems to fit. Now the film hasn't even been cast yet. so this footage may not even make it into the final movie. Still, purely by virtue of not being a sequel, remake, or genre adaptation, J.J. Abrams has turned Super 8 into one of the more anticipated films of 2011. As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson