The Daily Aztec: At a time where it feels like every movie is a sequel or based on something that came before it, can you discuss how difficult it might be to really produce, create and develop a project that has no prior properties, that’s completely unique to you?

J.J. Abrams: Well it’s slightly depressing that question is so appropriate because there used to be a time when that was what movies were, which were just original ideas and things. And certainly every film has its origin, its inspiration.

And I guess they say there’s no such thing as an original idea. I’m the guy who did “Mission: Impossible III” and “Star Trek,” you know, reboots. So I am as responsible for and guilty of that as anyone.

But I was very lucky that Paramount let me make a movie like “Super 8” – but this is one of those stories that doesn’t have a star in it that people know, though I suspect that might change with some of these actors.

It doesn’t have a comic book or superhero attached to it, so I think it’s probably a harder thing to get that kind of movie made. Luckily, Paramount was excited about this idea and let me make the movie the way I wanted to make it.

But I think selling it and making it are two different things, and it’s not any easier to sell a movie. In fact, I would argue that in the summer of massive redwood trees of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “X-Men” and “Green Lantern” and “Hangover Part II” and you could just keep going down the line, “Transformers,” there are very, very few movies that are coming out this summer that aren’t based on something else or sequels to something else.

And although I’m thrilled and proud that “Super 8,” is an original script, I’m also terrified that it’s going to get lost in the shuffle of giants.

DA: Because it isn’t based on any prior primary source, can you talk about the writing process and the inspiration for the story?

JA: Sure. The original idea was that I wanted to do a movie that revolved around revisiting my childhood of being a kid making Super 8 films. And at first I thought it was, and I sort of ended up coming up with a bunch of characters whom I loved and thought there could be a story for.

But the truth was it started coming as if that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t something that would definitely draw anyone but me to the theater. And the more I thought of it, the more it needed something that was a little bit bigger than just this group of kids and their parents.

And when I hit upon the idea of combining that notion with another about this thing that escapes from a train car en route from Area 51, I thought, well, suddenly not only is it a bigger idea and has some spectacle to it, but it also allows the kids, who are making this scary zombie movie, to suddenly become characters in a much more real and more terrifying, scary movie.

And it was a sort of a fun way of using film as kind of a cinematic in the movie (narratively), so that the film itself was kind of remarking on the field that they were making. And that was the moment I realized, OK, this could be a movie that could combine the intimate love story I want to tell with this sort of bigger spectacle that could hopefully attract an audience.

DA: Do any of the kids in “Super 8” represent any of the kids you might have known growing up, or maybe yourself growing up?

JA: Sadly, yes. Without question you know they are very familiar kids to me. You know I don’t feel like I was necessarily one or the other. I’m sure it’s like a combination of a number of them. I mean, I was a kid making the movies. I was also the kid who saw the world the way the main character sees the world. I was also the kid who would take apart my firecrackers and roll my own M-80s and fill models I made and then blow them up. They all do feel like people I knew, although not that specifically.

DA: Is there a difference in your creative process between doing an original film such as “Super 8” and a franchise film such as “Mission: Impossible” or “Star Trek”?

JA: The truth is that there’s very little difference in terms of how I approach any project, because I just try to approach it from a place of being interested in the character, the premise, the world. I’ve been very lucky to get to work on projects I actually do care about, as opposed to just taking new jobs. So even (with) “Mission: Impossible III” you think, well, what’s the way to get interested in that story?

The question becomes how do you reconcile being a spy and being a man and keeping that information about your day job from the person you love most in the world. And that was the really interesting question for me, and that was my way into that movie.

“Star Trek” was very much about a family. And I had never really been a Trek fan growing up, so I didn’t have that kind of baggage when I approached it, but that was for me completely about telling a story about a family, people coming together, getting to know each other and being stronger together than they were apart. It just happened to take place in the future and in space.

And “Super 8” was obviously very much an autobiographical piece sort of in the beginning, even though it goes to crazy places that I never got to go as a kid. But the process was very much about the same characters I cared about. How do you go through something traumatic and come out the other side? And that was sort of my way into this movie. And so everything’s really always about trying to serve the characters in the story as best as I possibly can.