If anyone saw Transformers over the weekend, they most likely saw a teaser trailer for an as yet untitled movie that is shot entirely through 1st person, using a consumer video camera. There’s rumors it might just be a Lovecraft based story set today. I was pretty impressed by the teaser, and if the flick actually turns out to have that same perspective and tone all the way through, while based on Cthulhu… hot damn.
But why do disasters of this sort, always happen to NY first, and not, say, Iowa?
According to Wiki, the copyright status is kind of murky but I would still be surprised if a movie were to use Lovecraft’s signature character (Cthulhu) without crediting him in any way.
Even if Lovecraft’s work is under copyright, he was known to be very free with the characters and ideas he created, actively encouraging fans & SF / fantasy writers to use the Old Ones in their stories, so I don’t think that would be any impediment to making a movie based upon his work.
The big impediment is the fact that no one has ever made a ‘Lovecraft’ film well. Too often the mere idea of the Old Ones ‘inspires’ Hollywood hacks to churn out forulaic monster splatter flicks that are heavy on disembowlments and dismemberments, but completely miss Lovecraft’s sense of dread of the unknown, of the unfathomable mysteries of Things From Beyond This World. Either that, or they descend into dreary, incoherent psychedelia. Re: “From Beyond” or “the Dunwich Horror.”
As to why New York City is always the target for such catastrophic attacks - it’s because it’s chock full of recognizable landmarks. No offense to Iowans, but if one of the Old Ones appeared there, it would be rampaging through mostly a lot of open flatlands and stripmalls. In NYC, you have lots of big buildings to trash dramatically. What would look better on the screen - Cthulhu destroying a dairy farm or the Empire State Building?
Everyone complains when aliens land in front of some farmer in Iowa and not in NYC, and then they complain when NYC gets destroyed by aliens or monsters. Make up your minds!
Shooting the film via a very eprsonal perspective could be good. The problem with most such monster movies is that monsters aren’t actually very impressive or scary. Frankly, an actual Cthuhlu would be an ugly waste of flesh, to be blown up by anyone with a bazooka. Same with pretyt mcuh all the Lovecraftian monsters. It was only the books’ esoteric writings and personal viewpoints that make them interesting or scary.
Right. I mean, the whole POINT of Lovecraft’s creatures are that they are so horrible that to look at them is to go mad. How do you translate that to film?
“They’re DOGS and they’re playing POKER! AHHHHHHHH!”
Quatermass and the Pit is an almost perfect Lovecraft movie, except for the fact that it has no direct connection to anything written by HP Lovecraft. But it absolutely nailed the themes and tone he was going for in stories like At the Mountains of Madness.
But the point is that, push come to shove, mot movie mosters are really just ugly=-looking animals. The Aliens from… Aliens are really just a particularly nasty version of tigers. And tigers are only scary when you’re all on your own. Which is why so many movies come up with ridiculous scenarios or somehow disarms all the characters. It gets boring after a while.
Even the Lovecraft monsters aren’t particularly frightening except that they’re mysterious. The “we’re so incredibly horrible that we cause instant madness!!!110” is just a leeeeetle unbelievable to me. But maybe I’m odd. Fact is, I just don’t find monsters terribly scary. I’d be the guy who grabs the wood axe and charges the monsters looking for a nice trophy to put on my wall.
Good counterexample: Carpenter’s The Thing. The creature remains scary to the end because despite several up-close encounters you never really know what the hell the thing actually is.
