NY Times: Joel Courtney is a "Male Archetype" in Movies

From the NY Times: Male Archetypes.

The male archetypes populating contemporary movies don’t line up with reality, yet they offer clues about what the men of our dreams look like, or at least what moviemakers are trying to sell us. What do men want? What does it mean to be a man? How does a man relate to other men? And perhaps above all, how does he relate to women, who increasingly occupy a separate sphere on the big screen even as they appear to have more room on television, for themselves and in their relationships with men?

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The young hero (Joel Courtney) of “Super 8” — with his dead mom and distracted dad — is another fine specimen of this type, one concocted by the writer and director J. J. Abrams in tribute to the American cinema’s own ageless Brave Boy, Steven Spielberg.