Grarr

Today’s entry concerns Cloverfield, and… yeah, Cloverfield.

I recently saw Cloverfield! Bet you didn’t see THAT coming! Actually, maybe you didn’t, considering that pretty much everyone has already seen it in theaters by now. The problem is, the “local” theater is half an hour’s drive from my home, and I don’t own a car or a license. Thus, I only get to see movies in theaters if my sister or mother (dad hates theaters) have the time and will to see the one I want to. This is alright by me, because we usually just end up renting the DVD anyway, but whenever I bring up waiting for a DVD release to anyone else they look at me like I’m from another planet. Still, the DVD for Cloverfield came around and I watched it. Here’s my opinion on the movie, if you care. Also, spoilers, though there really isn’t much to be spoiled.

The first seventeen minutes were basically just boring party scenes showing you some character relations, padding, and making you wonder if the monster’s gonna start smashing stuff soon or if it’s time to press the fast-forward button a few times. Finally the action sort of kicks in when there’s an earthquake and an explosion. All of the characters gather outside the apartment, and then something smashes some buildings around them, getting everything all dirty.

Everyone then is forced to migrate across the Brooklyn Bridge, but the monster crashes that party as well, and kills one of the important guys from the party. The main people find themselves back on the streets, where they decide to go back to the party site and look for one guy’s girlfriend. They get caught in the middle of a big fight between the monster and the military in which we get to see the monster’s face for about two seconds, and then they all go into the subway. Unfortunately, the monster has also brought along some huge parasite things that basically look like crosses between dogs and crabs with a taste for human flesh. These attack our heroes, and kill one of them off. The heroes meet some more army guys, and learn that unless a final attack on the monster succeeds the military will be forced to bomb Manhatten to kill the monsters.

Still, they continue their pursuit of the girlfriend, eventually rescue her, and get onboard a helicopter, from which they watch the monster being bombed. In one of the film’s best moments, everyone cheers as it seems that the monster has been killed by bombs, only for it to suddenly leap from the smoke and take out the helicopter.

Surprisingly, everyone except the pilot survives the helicoptor crash relatively well. Sadly, though, the monster somehow sneaks up on them and eats the camera man. This scene reminded me of the final scene in Jurassic Park, in which the T-Rex, despite being a big creature famous for making lots of noise by stomping around, manages to sneak up on everyone and start doing its usual routine of eating everything that gets in its way. The two survivors save the camera and hide under a bridge. There they say their tearful goodbyes to the world, and then the bridge collapses and they both (probably) die.

Oh, and after the credits apparently there’s a sound clip that, when played backwards, says “It’s still alive”. Nifty.

Basically, in short, monster destroys city, everyone dies. Doesn’t sound like that good a premise for an entire movie, but they made it work with the help of a bit of padding in the party scene and the fact that it’s short. Interestingly, Cloverfield is actually about three minutes shorter (credits don’t count) than the DTV sequel to Kangaroo Jack, which I believe was about one hour sixteen minutes.

Now, before I go into the murky waters of hatred, let me just say that I LIKED Cloverfield. It was fun, entertaining, and didn’t overstay its welcome despite dragging a bit at the beginning. It was a fun little monster movie that was easy to just sit down and watch.

But that wasn’t good enough for the film producers and fans. Oh, goodness, no. The problem with Cloverfield is how much the creators and fans have turned it inside out shoved it up its own butt (whoa, that’s a weird metaphor), each having done it in different ways:

THE PRODUCER, JJ Abrams (I believe it was him that was talking about it in one of the featurettes. I can’t pull up the internet to verify my claims because my internet connection right now is about as fast as a slug carrying a brick made of rock salt), says that his inspiration for Cloverfield was when he was in Japan, noticing how proud they were of their Godzilla series. He explained in the featurette that he realized the United States didn’t have its own monster to show off, and he sought to fix this. King Kong didn’t count for some reason. I sincerely hope that he abandoned this idea after Cloverfield was released, because while it was an entertaining movie, it can hardly be described as anything close to the magnitude of Godzilla or King Kong. I created this chart (I love making charts and graphs for some reason) to show how.

On that last one on the graph, another thing that the producers said about the monster was that it was, in fact, just a baby one, and that the reason it was destroying everything was because it was frightened and lost. According to them, that’s what really made the film scary. Pardon me for not being psychic enough to pick this up, but watching a gigantic beast tear apart a city does not immediately make me think “frightened infant”. Maybe that’s why I never really felt the “terror” that the MPAA Rating warned me of. Honestly, how many people really knew that the monster was supposed to be just a baby one that was scared while they were watching Cloverfield? The producers shouldn’t have to explain the monster to make it truly scary.

The last thing that irked me about what the makers said of their movie was their excessive use of the word “iconic” when talking about certain scenes. There were no “iconic” parts of Cloverfield. Nobody is going to talk specifically about how Lady Liberty’s head flew out of nowhere into the street and how they will forever remember the movie by it. Nobody will be eager with anticipation to tell their friends about how awesome it was when the monster actually poked its head out from the buildings and smoke that one time. The only thing they will talk about is the film itself briefly, because all it was was a FUN LITTLE MONSTER MOVIE. Nothing “iconic” about it. Speaking of what the public says about Cloverfield, let’s move on to how the fans helped almost ruin Cloverfield.

THE FANS ultimately were the best thing for the marketing of Cloverfield, especially thanks to the wonderful invention of the internet. Once there was word of the super-secret film that nobody knew about, with only several vague hints at what it was (most of which didn’t really reveal that much in the end), suddenly everyone was the online Sherlock Holmes, over-exciting themselves over their thousands of interpretations of every single thing relating to Cloverfield. The problem with this was that people on the internet have three negative qualities: They are stupid, they love spreading their stupidity, and they are stupid. I don’t know how much you may have seen of the online marketing for Cloverfield, so here’s a quick summary. Basically, everyone had a SPECULATION about Cloverfield that they tossed around as fact at every opportunity. Then they would throw a tantrum at you if you had the nerve to tell them that they were just making guesses based on poor logic. It was frustratingly stupid. However, if you want a taste of it all you need do is go onto Youtube and search for “Cloverfield”, then click on any result that is not either an actual clip from the movie or a trailer.

But luckily, when Cloverfield was released it explained everything the fans were wondering about, and they all could shut up and move on with their lives.

Oh, wait. No, it didn’t. In fact, it opened up more doors for yet MORE stupid rumors and speculations about the monster’s origins and everything else. I guess that’s the one thing Cloverfield DID defeat Godzilla in. Godzilla has had his share of stupid rumors about upcoming films, but Cloverfield, in just one movie, completely defeated all of Godzilla’s movies for the past ten years combined in the stupid rumor department. I hope it’s proud of itself.

So what’s there to do? I want to continue my mission to keep the internet safe from idiots and hackers. Thus, here is my tip for you dear readers. If there is one thing at all you must know about Cloverfield, it is this, in all caps for emphasis:

CLOVERFIELD IS JUST A MOVIE. IT HAS NO SIGNIFICANCE BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT VALUE. YES, IT IS MYSTERIOUS. THE MYSTERIES DO NOT HAVE ANSWERS. NOW EVERYBODY SHUT UP AND MOVE ON.

Repeat this to yourself until it clicks, encourage others do do so as well, and have a nice weekend.

Random thought: I wonder what it would be like if the military from a monster movie said, “Maybe if we just ignore the monster it’ll get bored and go away.”

~ by krakenzilla on June 27, 2008.