Since there are some folks who are big crybabies about “spoilers” — and this isn’t one really — please note, we didn’t put an image of the actor in question and hell, we won’t even add a tag. Happy? Ok, moving on.
Much of the chatter around J.J. Abrams‘ excellent and winning “Super 8” prior to its release this past weekend was whether or not the marketing, which kept the monster hidden from view, would pay off in a climate where entire movies are pretty much sold beat-by-beat to audiences before they hit screens (yeah, we’re looking at you “X-Men: First Class“). Well, with the film topping the box office and earning strong word of mouth, the gamble paid off and really, the creature almost seems secondary to the charming and moving coming-of-age story Abrams weaves. Regardless, CGI monsters don’t animate themselves and the director nabbed a solid character actor to do the motion capture work.
In an interview with the Montreal Gazette (via Movieline) Bruce Greenwood — aka Captain Pike in Abrams’ “Star Trek” — revealed he was the man behind the pixels in the film.
“It’s not your typical acting exercise at all, because you’re really the only person in this room with all these cameras in it,” Greenwood said describing his work on the film. “It was a very weird thing to offer up all this big emotion while . . . the rest of the people in the room are picking away at the craft services table. And you never really how it will turn out because it’s all left in the hands of the artists and animators who are putting your work together.”
Well, as usual, he did a great job giving the monster — codenamed Cooper — both presence and sympathy. And this isn’t the first time Greenwood has literally disappeared in a role in recent memory. He was practically unrecognizable under a massive beard and period garb as the titular character in Kelly Reichardt‘s “Meek’s Cutoff.” So all that said, if you haven’t seen “Super 8,” don’t believe the naysayers and nitpickers and go check it our for yourself.
