J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg Talk About Their Mysterious New Movie 'Super 8' (Watch it Here)

For a movie coming out in the middle of the summer movie season with no stars and no brand, "Super 8" has stayed relatively quiet. It's a big deal for people who run and read film sites, to be sure - a collaboration between Steven Spielberg (producer) and J.J. Abrams (writer/director) that harkens back to the former's generation-defining work is the kind of thing that sends the Ain't it Cool crowd into a tizzy. But is it enough to bring in a wide audience? And Abrams' love of keeping as much secret as possible isn't helping matters much.

Today, Empire posted an interview with the two of them that offers a little bit of insight. Yes, it's a monster movie. Yes, it takes place in the 1970s, but there's a reason for that beyond emulating Spielberg. And yes, it's very difficult to make an original monster (although Spielberg, a lifelong science fiction fan, proved a good sounding board).

Abrams noted that in terms of the similarities to early Spielberg ("Close Encounters," "E.T."), there was very little distinction between making a movie about his own experience growing up that didn't in some way intersect with Steven Spielberg movies, so emulating that style was in many ways true to his story.

In a piece in The New York Times published earlier today, Abrams admitted that it was actually Spielberg's involvement that allowed him to pay "more lavish homage" to his work than he would have been comfortable with otherwise. Hopefully he doesn't tip the scales and turn it into a work of pure emulation.

As for other reasons to set it in the 1970s, Abrams said that his whole conception for the film was for it to be about a group of kids in that era. The monster movie came later.

"It was not a normal thing for kids to be doing [back then]," he added, noting it was important for his characters to be outsiders. Now that everyone has a camcorder in their pocket, the outsider status would be removed.

For Spielberg, it showed character. "You had to be a good producer," he said, fondly remembering talking his parents into giving him money or taking up a paper route just to pay for film, processing, etc. "There's a great deal of ambition and passion."

Check out the whole interview below, which also gets into how they decided to handle the revelation of the monster by referring back to Spielbeg's earlier work (as well as "Alien"), the birth of Spielberg as a storyteller, and how awesome train wrecks look on film.