Cloverfield (Possible Spoilers!)

[bolddeceiver]

Apparently J.J. Abrhams has made noises about sequels not necessarily being of the "what happens next" variety, but rather simulquels, possibly telling the same story from the points of view of others who may also have documented the events. (Remember the other camera dude on the bridge?)

Oh, and ditto on "cloverfield" just being an arbitrary military designation, also a way of somewhat keeping wraps on the investigation -- just like calling something "the Manhattan project" instead of "hey look this is where we're making atomic bombs w00t w00t," this way someone snooping around would have no way of knowing that "cloverfield" meant "everything we know about the monster that ate New York."

[Philippa]

Finally seen it (only opened on 2nd Feb here) and loved it for all the same reasons everyone else seems to. I liked the non-hero, non-military driven aspect - shot from the point of view of all those little NPC characters who get squished while the hero/military does their thing in most blockbusters.

Only a couple of things to add - anyone else find it amusing/ironic that the lead character was just about to leave for Tokyo? A city distinguished for the number of times it's been destroyed by giant monsters... Also I heard that in the scene at the end showing Rob and Beth at Coney Island, you can spot something falling into the sea in the background, suggesting an alien origin for the monster. I didn't see it myself, but I suppose it'll show up on youtube soon enough!

I gave it 3 stars but only because it doesn't match up to movies I'd give top marks to, like Alien or The Thing - marking out of 4 is daft anyway, so there.

Lastly, I keep hearing everyone going on about J.J. Abrams, and while it probably wouldn't have got made without his backing, how about some credit for the two guys who actually wrote and directed it?

[normsherman]

Lastly, I keep hearing everyone going on about J.J. Abrams, and while it probably wouldn't have got made without his backing, how about some credit for the two guys who actually wrote and directed it?

Seriously.

Also yah, I picked up the Tokyo thing. In fact, I've heard rumors that the company he is moving to work for is somehow tied into the creation of the monster- some corporate or military project going on in deep sea vents.

[Mr. Tweedy]

Yeah, seriously. Aside from actually seeing the credits, I would have thought the film was written, directed and produced by Abrams, like he did the film Shyamalan style. Stupid marketing.

Directed by Matt Reeves
Written by Drew Goddard

Considering all the false speculation and go-nowhere rumors that surrounded the movie, I am assuming that all rumors about a sequel are similarly false. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if blatant lies were told about the (potential) sequel just to throw people off.

[bolddeceiver]

And yet, have you known a big money studio to take "no" for an answer on a sequel to a box office smash like this? If so, explain to me the last two Matrix movies and 28 Weeks Later.

[Dustin]

I found a few links to Hasbro's toy that will be coming out of "Clovey":

http://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/ProductsBy ... 3&ID=21030

But, they did not put a pic of it, so I found sketches:
http://cloverfield-project.blogspot.com ... igure.html

http://www.jacklovesyou.com/misc/Cloverfield.jpg

http://bp0.blogger.com/_tO-rlYBwQsk/R5Q ... h2043.jpeg

[AynSavoy]

Don't knock 28 Weeks Later!

Just saw Cloverfield tonight (here in Mexico, it also only opened Feb 1), and I really enjoyed it. I liked the attention to detail in keeping the film the length of a miniDV tape, though some of the cuts felt arbitrary (i.e. convenient)...sometimes it made sense for their to be a break in recording, and other times in was random. But it IS an artifice, after all, and I really liked the film, so it obviously didn't ruin the experience for me. Anyway, back to my first point, I like time limits for one of the same reasons I like short fiction: it mandates succinct storytelling, and for me, this felt like a very self-contained story.

Re: the monster's shape, it made me think of Grendel (I think it was the arms).

I liked the aerial shot of the beast from the helicopter. Maybe it's just my own desire to see the monster (though I'm glad they didn't show any more than they did), but I found myself wondering a couple times why Hud wasn't looking around for the monster more (when they were taking Beth down from the roof, for example).

What do people think of Marlena's line from the early attack, "It was eating people?"

Finally, I'm gonna go ahead and say that I'm not interested in any kind of continuation of the story. I'm not sure what the point of a "simulquel" would be; unless it gave us additional information about the monsters, it would just be an excuse to reuse the episode and filming style to tell another arbitrary story and, be honest now, do we really need to see the same thing from another point of view?

[Dustin]

28 Weeks Later was okay, but I think 28 Days latter did not need a sequel. The fact that just one or a few infected could cause a lot of damage (and the stories of that outbreak from some of the characters) make the movie really scary to watch for me. 28 Days Later was supposed to end with a bunch of the infected running through the mine field during the storm and sacking the building, but the creators thought that was not only too stereo-typical to zombies films, but less effective to how powerfully dangerous one infected could be.

I will say that the opening scene for 28 Weeks Later was really cool (and the comic was okay).

Sorry, back to Coverfield:

I think the shape of Clovey was ingenious, because they did show it several times, but the shape was so strange, that it was hard to imagine what it looked like in it's entirety.

I forgot that Marlena said that people were being eaten. Hey, when you are a HUGE monster, you got eat all the time and humans were the most abundant food in that city. That leaves one question: Why did that guy with the camera at the end of the movie not get eaten, but instead it dropped him after a proper mauling?

[Mr. Tweedy]

I forgot that Marlena said that people were being eaten. Hey, when you are a HUGE monster, you got eat all the time and humans were the most abundant food in that city.

This is a good argument for keeping cows on your roof.

That leaves one question: Why did that guy with the camera at the end of the movie not get eaten, but instead it dropped him after a proper mauling?

I had the impression that he was bitten in half and the monster had eaten everything below his ribs. I don't remember his friends saying anything like "Is he okay?" or "Man, can you hear me?" That makes me think that his injuries were extensive enough to make such questions silly.

[anadrea]

I liked the movie a lot more than I thought I would (the camera thing made me nervous going in), and you guys have gone over much of the discussion that my friends and I had following it. Yay!

I have to admit though, I kind of bought more into the water origin theory. With the boat capsizing in the news at the beginning, I could just imagine it crawling out of the bay. The other thing that kind of got me - did the monsters in the subway look like the ones coming off of the big guy? It may have been the "night vision" that threw me off, but I thought they were different...

[Mr. Tweedy]

I thought that too, although I'd forgotten until just now. The one we saw falling on the news videos seemed a lot bigger. The one tackled the soldier like it was a 400 pound gorilla, but the ones we saw seemed German shepherd sized.

Good eye.

[normsherman]

This is a good argument for keeping cows on your roof.

One of the many...

I have to admit though, I kind of bought more into the water origin theory. With the boat capsizing in the news at the beginning, I could just imagine it crawling out of the bay. The other thing that kind of got me - did the monsters in the subway look like the ones coming off of the big guy? It may have been the "night vision" that threw me off, but I thought they were different...

I'm still sold on Tweedy's observation/conclusion that the morphology of the monster didn't seem to indict it of being of marine or deep sea origin. Something like that would require so much food to sustain itself that it couldn't possibly have originated anywhere on this planet. I've settled on rogue scientists or some shady government unlocking a dimensional portal, quite possibly deep under sea, and letting that puppy through.

That's cool to think of those little biters as larval stages of the big fella- carried around the same way praying mantis's (manti?) carry around young. Hadn't thought of that- I was thinking they were more sentient, using him as a massive organic tank or what have you.

[AynSavoy]

I know people (including myself) like theorizing, so I won't post any actual links here, but in case anyone is curious, the film's creators did in fact write an entire backstory for the monster that explains its form and its behavior. All the information is not public, of course, but you can find some of it if you hunt.

[Mr. Tweedy]

I've come across some obvious erroneous/silly "backstory" explanations. Where do you find the "real" ones? (Post links: No one has to click them. And we can always assume that anything we don't like it a lie.)

Some purportedly authentic info made it onto Wikipedia: The monster is 1.) a baby of its kind, 2.) frightened, 3.) from the ocean, where it's been in some sort of dormancy or pupation.

All of which is too vague to really conflict with any particular theory.

The little biters are also referred to as "parasites," but that doesn't make any sense. Parasites of a big monster would be adapted to eat little pieces off the monster, like fleas eat little bits of dog. These things were obviously made to attack and kill creatures around their own size: Predators, not parasites. Fleas don't eat dog and other flea-sized creatures. The biological adaptations for eating slices of monster and for eating people would be totally different, if not in actual conflict with each other. The biter teeth, for instance, would be useless in a parasitic context.

Which leads to a strange question: What do fans do when the writer/producer/director of a movie says something dumb that ruins it or doesn't make sense. Like, if George Lucas announced that Chewbaca is actually Luke's father, would we be compelled to believe it and reinterpret Star Wars to accommodate this revelation or would we be free to tell Lucas to shove a plastic light-saber up his, um, nose? Or like The Matrix: I, for one, do not acknowledge that there is a "Matrix Trilogy." There was The Matrix, and (Behold!) it was good, and no sequels were ever made. There was also never a sequel to The Ring.

Basically, do we really care what the "official" back-story is (to anything)? The movie is what it is, and for the makers to come by after-the-fact (sometimes years later) and announce what was "really" going on seems to me like cheating. Does an artwork stand on its own or is it eternally malleable according to the whims of it's artist? Did Han shoot first? Is Dumbledore gay? Are the little biters parasites? Can there be an "official" answer or is the audience interpretation just as official as any other?

[Goldenrat]

So Tweeds, if you had to formulate a theory on what the thing was and where it came from, what would it be?

Do you guys remember right at the end when the camera skips and we see the two young lovers at Coney Island? In background of that shot you see two large objects fall in to the water off in the distance. I've read some theories on line about what that was.

Also, Cloverfield refers to Central Park. Clovers are one of the first plants that grow after a place is bombed in to oblivion.

I heard that Cloverfield 2 will be the same type of movie - a handheld camera account of the attack but from someone who witnessed it from the other side of the bridge.

[bolddeceiver]

When they were talking about parasites I assumed they were referring to whatever in their bite made people go all blood-explodey...