Cloverfield - dear god that sucked (spoilers)

Cafe Society
41

[QUOTE=Freudian Slit]
Well, if he’s been under the water for thousands of years, as per the wiki article, don’t we know that he’s not an alien, then?
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The wiki is wrong, you can clearly see the monster splashing down three weeks before at the end of the movie. I watched it on DVD, i was the only one who saw some the splash at the end, mainly cause i’d heard something about it and was looking for it, but after rewinding it everyon i watched it with saw it too. I’ve tried looking for it online but you simply can’t get a video clear enough on youtube to see it.

42

One dumb question: Who or what does “Cloverfield” refer to? The tapes? The monster? A neighborhood?
Nothing?

43

[QUOTE=DigitalC]
The wiki is wrong, you can clearly see the monster splashing down three weeks before at the end of the movie. I watched it on DVD, i was the only one who saw some the splash at the end, mainly cause i’d heard something about it and was looking for it, but after rewinding it everyon i watched it with saw it too. I’ve tried looking for it online but you simply can’t get a video clear enough on youtube to see it.
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Technically, the splash is “unexplained.” JJ Abrams has said in interviews that it’s something they may explore in the sequel or they might not.

[QUOTE=vivalostwages]
One dumb question: Who or what does “Cloverfield” refer to? The tapes? The monster? A neighborhood? Nothing?
[/QUOTE]

Cloverfield is the government code name for whole “incident”, the monster destruction of NYC.

44

[QUOTE=DigitalC]
The wiki is wrong, you can clearly see the monster splashing down three weeks before at the end of the movie. I watched it on DVD, i was the only one who saw some the splash at the end, mainly cause i’d heard something about it and was looking for it, but after rewinding it everyon i watched it with saw it too. I’ve tried looking for it online but you simply can’t get a video clear enough on youtube to see it.
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But the Wiki quotes from something that J.J. Abrams himself said…wouldn’t he know better?

45

[QUOTE=vivalostwages]
One dumb question: Who or what does “Cloverfield” refer to? The tapes? The monster? A neighborhood?
Nothing?
[/QUOTE]
The codename for the area where the camera was found - Central Park, wasn’t it? Wasn’t this in the little texty non-prologue?

46

I thought Blair Witch sucked. Shaky-cams make me ill. Somehow, Cloverfield really worked for me. I took my Dramamine, bought my ticket, and went along for the ride. Twice. It isn’t great art. The filmmakers had a vision, and I think they pulled it off pretty well.

47

I thought it was boring… then creepy (‘It’s eating people’)… then unebelievable (the leaning apartment bit)… then just depressing and pointless (the end).

48

[QUOTE=blondebear]
I thought Blair Witch sucked.
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You “thought” it sucked? Don’t get me started.

Goddammit! I still want my money back!

49

Cloverfield is supposed to be the American equivalent to the Japanese monster movies of yore. The 1998 Godzilla fiasco upset plenty of people, and I feel that Cloverfield is an acceptable remedy for that gap in American movie history.

You really can’t nitpick some of these things to death without it getting comical. I mean, if we’re going into the realm of honest-to-goodness reality, then a giant monster simply cannot exist without being ridiculously strong. Normal flesh, organs, and bones are not prepared to service something that big.

There’s a reason giant steel girders and concrete columns crumble under the weight of collapsing buildings, you know. If a creature that big existed, I’m pretty sure his skeleton would need to be considerably stronger than steel or any other material we’ve come up with just to walk. To be nitpicky, how does he breathe? What must the muscles involved in that be like? How does he maintain equal blood pressure to all of his massive body?

In essence, these are all of the exact same questions we allow ourselves to gloss over for the Godzilla franchise.

As to the parasites, it’s not necessarily fair to presume anything about them beyond what we were shown. We actually don’t even know that they are parasites. If I remember correctly, someone just said that they were parasites. That could be an assumption on their part in the movie. What’s more, there’s no reason that the parasites need to conduct themselves according to any kind of behavior similar to Earth animals. After all, this whole thing might be extraterrestrial.

For those of you who don’t see the splash, I didn’t see it for a long time either. You might check on YouTube or Google for it, though. For me, I watched it on my computer, and I had to mess with the settings and size of the screen to finally catch it.

50

[QUOTE=holmes]
You could be right, but most creatures like the ramoras aren’t agressive. I mean those things attacked anything that moved…as a parasite would. You think of the type of creatures they resembled ticks, fleas, those types of creatures feed off of the host directly.

Even if you want to link them to spiders, the reason why spiders and most animals have venom ; is to catch and render helpless live food, food that can either fight or escape…yes it aids in disgestion, but I believe that’s a side effect of the venom.

If you look at say a fly, that does use it’s saliva as a digestive chemical; it does so on dead material; it wouldn’t work on prey that could get away.

Yet these creatures are fast, strong and hunt in packs…one of the guys mentioned that he felt they were trying to drag him away…ok assuming he was correct, where would they be able to drag prey living or dead unto a living creature…unless they managed to either find a natural occuring spot or borrow one on it’s body?

Which makes sense if they used their venom to weaken the creature’s skin…then the army’s weapons should have been able to penetrate it…

Sorry for the hijack and I realize we can discuss this to the cows come home and I’m hardly expert enough to defend my position beyond the basics of biology; but I found it inconsistent with how nature should work…even if it’s alien and it bugged me…it seemed they had great idea, but ignored the rules of nature to make it work…which would be ok; if they ignored all the rules or applied them consistently.

As noted, they aren’t the first to do this and this is hardly the most horrible; but it bugged me never-the-less.

YMMV…of course.
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All good points - but what if these creatures simply feed on the ramoras and genuine parasites? They cling to Snookums, and go after other animals that also live on him. In other words, Snookie-pie has an entire food chain living on his skin. Implausible, sure - but it explains the presence of “parasites” that are too aggressive to make sense as simple ramoras, but too feeble to feed off Snookums directly.

51

I watched this movie around 2 weeks ago and enjoyed it very much. The shaky camera didn’t bother me at all and the fast pace (1:24) kept me on the edge of my seat once the monster appeared. I gave it 4 of 5 stars on my Netflix rating.

52

[QUOTE=Mr. Excellent]
All good points - but what if these creatures simply feed on the ramoras and genuine parasites? They cling to Snookums, and go after other animals that also live on him. In other words, Snookie-pie has an entire food chain living on his skin. Implausible, sure - but it explains the presence of “parasites” that are too aggressive to make sense as simple ramoras, but too feeble to feed off Snookums directly.
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An animal that big is guaranteed to have things living on it. Just look at giant oil tankers! Numerous organisms even make their homes on those giant machines.

53

[QUOTE=Antinor01]
she has some kind of metal rod stuck through her chest that they pull out,
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It wasn’t through her chest, and they didn’t pull it out. She obviously fell back when the building tilted and the piece of rebar had gone through the fleshy part of her shoulder. It would hurt, but not be anywhere near life-threatening. It would also be hard for her to move because you couldn’t get any leverage to pull yourself up. They lifted her up off the rebar. She had a hole in her shoulder but no major organs were affected. Once she was up and moving around, getting the circulation going, there was nothing to prevent her from being perfectly fine.

Well, until the end.

I had a cracking good time and saw it twice in the theater. Not saying it was a good movie, but it didn’t suck for me. It was just a good time, and for a movie like this (hello, a monster movie) that’s all I could have asked for. Not as good for me as The Host (the other recent monster movie), but fun.

54

I found to be one of the most brilliantly executed films of the last 10 years. Why? Well, I’ll let this copy and paste job from my blog tell why.

It’s sickeningly real.

Cloverfield is filmed in such a way that it feels as if you are really there – reliving these events vicariously through the cameraman. By capitalizing on this unique storytelling device – that is, having the camera actually exist within the narrative – the developers completely removed the fourth wall, thereby thrusting the audience into the face of the characters’ personal dilemmas. With conventional films, you’re left viewing the story through a magical lens, one that doesn’t exist within the context of the narrative and merely presents the story from an objective distance. In a way, it perpetually breaks the fourth-wall. While we may not always be consciously aware of it, Cloverfield made me realize just how passive that form of cinematography can be.

Of course, camera tricks alone can’t sell a narrative (see: Blair Witch Project), but acting can. And this movie has put forth some of the most believable performances I’ve ever seen. But before I continue, I just want to comment that having a bunch of relative no-names fill the cast (whether for budgetary reasons or not) was a stroke of genius. The fact that we haven’t seen these characters before, outside the context of the film, makes them all the more believable, but I digress. I fully emphasized with the tragedies the characters in the movie faced. When Rob broke down in the subway station while relaying the news of his brother’s death to his mother, it humanized him – we weren’t dealing with your typical action hero; these characters were just ordinary people forced into an extraordinary situation. This was further conveyed via the skillfully executed editing.

I can’t praise enough the brilliant juxtaposition of having the old “happy” footage from Coney Island interspersed with the horrific mayhem that was occurring throughout the city. It offered a poignant reminder of how quickly our lives can change, how we can never be sure of what tomorrow will bring, and why it’s important to live life to its fullest at every opportunity. But perhaps the moment I found most touching came at the very end of the film. After Rob and Beth are presumably left for dead under the bridge, we see one final recording of their trip to Coney Island together. Rob and Beth, sitting side by side in a Ferris-wheel looking about as happy as we’ve ever seen them, and Rob begs Beth to say one last thing before the camera runs out of tape. A smile slowly spreads across her face, then she utters these words: “I had a good day” – blissfully ignorant of the horrors soon to unfold.

Dammit, monster movies aren’t supposed to make me teary-eyed…and yet, this is the one monster movie I’ve actually enjoyed.

55

I really *wanted *to like it, but I found all of the protagonists (the only name I remember is Beth) to be just godawfully boring and annoying. The party stuff, the relationship stuff - all excruciating. Things got mildly more interesting once they started running for their lives, but then whatsisname had to go rescue Beth (the most dull, waste-of-space character in the film) and it just went downhill for me.

I was intrigued by the conceit of the you-are-there raw footage, but the problem was that I was stuck hanging out with these people for ninety minutes, when I would have much rather hung out with the army guys, or the bodega owner (kudos, The Host!), or a group of tourists. Personally I couldn’t wait to see all of them get mushed or gobbled up. Beth might be dead? Good! Rodney about to chomp the camera guy? Yay, monster! Whatsisname and Beth trapped on an about-to-be-carpet-bombed Central Park? Serves you right! The only one I thought was mildly sympathetic ended up getting away (one presumes) in the first helicopter, and the one I found somewhat amusing exploded.

I ended up wanting a lot more monster in my monster movie. But now I am thinking that part of the fault lies with the film’s “viral marketing” campaign. I, like many, got sucked up in the mysterious websites and references to shadowy corporations, even if the timelines were skewed (some of the website events led to or focused on the film’s opening date of January 18 rather than the actual event date of May whatever in the film). Thus, I went in to the movie much more interested in the relationship between Slusho and the Monster than between a couple of yuppies. And, of course, ended up frustrated since the nature of the film made further monster back-story impossible to explore.

Seems to me that the people who liked the movie the most weren’t burdened by the artificial backstory and marketing gew-gaws and took the movie as it came, the beginning, middle and end all up on the screen and not bleeding off the edges. Were I to do it over, I might have enjoyed it more on its own terms, although I can’t imagine those characters being any more sympathetic.

56

[QUOTE=Rachael Rage]
I ended up wanting a lot more monster in my monster movie. But now I am thinking that part of the fault lies with the film’s “viral marketing” campaign. I, like many, got sucked up in the mysterious websites and references to shadowy corporations, even if the timelines were skewed (some of the website events led to or focused on the film’s opening date of January 18 rather than the actual event date of May whatever in the film). Thus, I went in to the movie much more interested in the relationship between Slusho and the Monster than between a couple of yuppies. And, of course, ended up frustrated since the nature of the film made further monster back-story impossible to explore.

Seems to me that the people who liked the movie the most weren’t burdened by the artificial backstory and marketing gew-gaws and took the movie as it came, the beginning, middle and end all up on the screen and not bleeding off the edges. Were I to do it over, I might have enjoyed it more on its own terms, although I can’t imagine those characters being any more sympathetic.
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Agreed. What little I heard of the backstory (something involving a Japanese cola company and the monster having a thirst for people who drink a lot of it) turned me right me off. So I avoided all of the viral marketing crap and I definitely think it helped me enjoy the movie more because that viral crap just wasn’t needed when the movie was so cool to begin with.

Of course, I avoid viral crap as a rule (I’m looking at you Lost), so that’s probably a good thing.

57

[QUOTE=Equipoise]
It wasn’t through her chest, and they didn’t pull it out. She obviously fell back when the building tilted and the piece of rebar had gone through the fleshy part of her shoulder. It would hurt, but not be anywhere near life-threatening. It would also be hard for her to move because you couldn’t get any leverage to pull yourself up. They lifted her up off the rebar. She had a hole in her shoulder but no major organs were affected. Once she was up and moving around, getting the circulation going, there was nothing to prevent her from being perfectly fine.
[/QUOTE]

It looked like it through the left side of the chest to me. But I have no interest in rewatching it, so I’ll just take your word for it.

58

[QUOTE=Rachael Rage]
I really *wanted *to like it, but I found all of the protagonists (the only name I remember is Beth) to be just godawfully boring and annoying. The party stuff, the relationship stuff - all excruciating. Things got mildly more interesting once they started running for their lives, but then whatsisname had to go rescue Beth (the most dull, waste-of-space character in the film) and it just went downhill for me.
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This was a common complaint, and one that I share. I didn’t care at all if those schmucks lived or died (even Lizzy Caplan, who I like a lot). I liked it otherwise, and I look forward to a sequel.

I assume a sequel would basically be the same movie, as seen through another person/group with a camera, which opens things up pretty infinitely.

59

Personally, I liked Cloverfield a lot. I haven’t bene able to get my hands on a DVD copy and see if the “alternate endings” are worthwhile. Any thoughts from those who have checked it out?
Regarding the apparent invulnerability of Rodney (hehehe), I thought this article from Wired was interesting.

Their thoughts on bombing the monster:

I’m sure someone smarter than me can chime in on how right or wrong Wired’s thinking is here.

60

[QUOTE=HenryGale]
Personally, I liked Cloverfield a lot. I haven’t bene able to get my hands on a DVD copy and see if the “alternate endings” are worthwhile. Any thoughts from those who have checked it out?
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The SO had the remote so I saw them. The only thing that changed was the footage from the date a month earlier. There were a couple different settings, but they were basically the same as the regular ending.