In the other movies Abrams directed, the third Mission: Impossible and the retooled Star Trek, he ornamented familiar mythologies. Super 8, his first feature as writer-director, required that he build his own box — and open it. "Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial," he says. "It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that."
在另外两部艾伯拉姆斯执导的电影《碟中谍》和新版《星际迷航》中，他利用了人们耳熟能详的一些神话。而作为他首部自编自导的作品，《超级8》要求艾伯拉姆斯自主创造自己的“神秘盒”——并将其打开。“如果没有打好坚实的基础，叙事过程中的悬念和包袱都是空谈。”这样子的悬念只能是一些可有可无的“前戏”，没有人想看这些。

Abrams adepts will recall a similar story, of young people banding together to face a ravenous monster, from Cloverfield, the 2008 alien-invasion film he produced. But Super 8 has a gentler vibe: it leavens the apocalyptic threat with the budding bonding of Joe and Alice. Joe's beloved mother has recently died in a steel-mill accident. His father (Kyle Chandler), Lillian's deputy sheriff, has his hands full trying to save the town. The lonely 12-year-old, clinging to his mother's necklace as a talisman, is aching for the sympathetic company of an older woman — even two years older.
艾伯拉姆斯新作让人联想到2008年他参与制片的外星人入侵类电影《科洛夫档案》，在那部影片中，也是一群年轻人聚在一起面对可怖的怪兽。但是《超级8》更平和些：故事随着乔和爱丽丝关系的的微妙变化而层层递进。乔的母亲刚刚死于轧钢事故。他的爸爸作为莉莉安镇警局的副警长，全部的时间全花在了拯救小镇居民上。这个孤独的十二岁男孩将妈妈遗留下来的项链作为自己的护身符，他渴望得到一个年长一些的女性的同情和关爱——甚至是只比他大两岁的女性。

Alice, just crossed to the other side of the great puberty divide, possesses a maturity that comes as much from abiding her angry father as it does from her natural poise. She's lonely too. Their inchoate romance could prove therapeutic for both, with Alice finding pure friendship and Joe learning to let go of morose childhood. All these kids, Abrams says, are "on the precipice of something — the end of a time. I wanted to catch kids at the very edge of full-blown, raging puberty, in their last moments of innocence."
刚刚度过青春期的爱丽丝有着别样的成熟，这一方面源于她对她那爱发脾气的父亲的忍耐服从，另一方面，是她与生俱来的。她同样倍感孤独。他们的懵懂之爱对于他们两人来说都有疗伤效果，伴随着爱丽丝找到了纯纯的友谊，而乔学会了遗忘孤苦的童年。按照艾伯拉姆斯的解释，这些孩子“都处在某种临界状态——时间的临界状态。我想要捕捉的正是纯真时代行将结束之时孩子们尚未成熟的叛逆青春。”