Abrams has refused to reveal the plot of the film as he wants to keep it a mystery and let the images speak for themselves.[citation needed] What has been confirmed is that it will take place in 1979 and it will be a homage/tribute to Spielberg's '70s and '80s science fiction films with a mystery and supernatural feel from Abrams.
Abrams revealed the plot will follow a group of children in the 1970s as they film a movie with a Super 8 camera but while they are filming, they spot an alien escape from an Area 51 cargo train and it runs loose in their small town.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_8_(film)
Few filmmakers have ever had a run at the tables like Steven Spielberg, whose output from 1971's
Sugarland Expressto, say, 1982's
E.T.displayed an amazingly unforced melding of huge set pieces and small human gestures. Even at their most chaotic, they somehow felt organic.
Super 8, writer-director J.J. Abrams's authorized tribute to classic Spielbergisms, hits all of the marks (Lived-in suburbia backdrop, check. Awestruck gazes upwards, check. Parental discord, check. Lens flares, amazingly huge check), but its adherence to the formula squelches much of its own potential. Appealing as it is to see a summer movie that retro-prioritizes character development over jittery quick-cut explosions, the viewer is always aware at how furiously it's working to seem effortless. Set in 1979, Abrams's script follows a group of movie-crazy kids ...
But the alien theme with Spielberg, I can get behind that because every director has their interests or obsessions. Christopher Nolan seems to be extremely big on dead wives, strangely absent wives or dead lovers (but it is never the MAN that is absent or dead). Case in point the only film where someone isn't haunted by a dead love or something along those lines (or where the wife/girlfriend doesn't die) is Batman Begins. And even then he uses the death of Bruce's parents as compensation for that. But Memento, The Prestige, Insomnia, The Dark Knight and Inception are all movies that deal with characters who either do not have wives (Insomnia) or whose wives were killed (The Prestige, Memento and Inception). In the Dark Knight it's Rachel who, while not a wife or even really a girlfriend, is still someone that Bruce has strong romantic feelings for. The next Batman movie might not do that... because Nolan will find himself in a situation where that possibility isn't there. On the other hand what he does NEXT just might involve that... unless, of course he decides to kill catwoman. And Nolan has done the "Dead/Absent Wives" thing in his directed films at a much more alarming rate than Spielberg does alien themed stuff in his directed movies. By that I mean Nolan has only ONE movie where he hasn't gone in that direction. Even though he's directed less at least for the longest time Spielberg only had two movies we could point to with aliens: E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. After that Spielberg had resisted Aliens for nearly two decades despite it being his biggest interest. In particular, I'd say Steven Spielberg has a MUCH bigger interest in the disconnect between fathers and sons than anything in his movies. It is prevalent in a whole lot more movies than aliens. Even movies where a man has no children Spielberg makes sure that, at some point, he has to express how nervous it would be for him to be a father. I don't think any of his films express the disconnect between father and son more clearly than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
So I'm not too down on Spielberg especially considering that a HUGE portion of his filmography doesn't even feature aliens. Right off the bat the only movies that come to mind with aliens are E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (maybe), War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spielberg didn't even want to do aliens... George Lucas did. I'm sure there are probably more, but my point is that with his big breath of films people only focus on the aliens because, it seems the ones featuring aliens just happen to be the standouts. But so many of his films and productions are devoid of Aliens. But I also think there's a big difference between Spielberg as a Producer and as a Director. I have little interest in Spielberg as a Producer.