Cthulhu Movie? By JJ Abrahms?

[smiling_bandit]

@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

You’d be the guy who pees his knickers, & wails for Mummie.

That may be, but I’d be holding an axe and killing monsters while wailing and peeing my pants. Double !

I just realized how many spelling errors were in my post previous to this one. Ouch.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

I learned about it at this message board and I’ve seen the movie The Call of Cthulhu. I thought that the Lovecraftian spirit was actually captured pretty well - but don’t go expecting a big-budget picture with major Hollywood stars.

[aruvqan]

@The New and Improved Superman

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.”

Bullpucky someone has made a neat movie from Lovecraft. Bonus because it is a fairly decent fake of a film noir of roughly the time. I own it and it is fun to show people who like Lovecraft.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

(nelson voice) Ha ha!

[Terrifel]

@Larry Borgia

In the Mouth of Madness is another good HPL movie that doesn’t specifically mention anything from the mythos.

@Cervaise

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.

I thought Carpenter’s **Prince of Darkness ** also had a very effective Lovecraftean vibe to it.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Smitty

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?

If they carry on the same way as in the trailer, that could work. Following around a group of people who never see the monster itself, but do see the after-effects of it, people affected by it, and so on.

[Dan_Norder]

@DocCathode

Lovecraft is largely out of copyright. However, Cthulhu is a trademark of Chaosium and can’t be used without their consent.

Utter nonsense.

[Dan_Norder]

@Dan Norder

Utter nonsense.

And, I should clarify that that was to the last bit, the idea that you need Chaosium’s permission, not that the stories and etc. are out of copyright.

[Dan_Norder]

And as far as the trailer goes, there isn’t a single thing about it that gave any sort of Lovecraft vibe. I suspect then that the rumors come from idiots (Harry Knowles, yup). If they turn out to be true then I fear for this movie.

I’ve seen other movies that it was really some robot or Godzilla thing, possibly even based off another Saturday morning cartoon like the Transformers, which would make far more sense based upon what we see and who it was aimed at.

[Lightnin]

@Revenant Threshold

If they carry on the same way as in the trailer, that could work. Following around a group of people who never see the monster itself, but do see the after-effects of it, people affected by it, and so on.

I’d love to see a movie like this. Kind of an end-of-the-world story, where the world really DOES end, and the main characters aren’t involved in any way with it. They just have to deal with the world and everyone in it being, you know, eaten. Ia Cthulhu F’htagn!

It’d be depressing as hell, but I’d watch it.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I think if it was an adaptation of any well-known franchise, it would already be public knowledge. I think this must either be an original concept or perhaps an under-the-radar reboot of some older property (e.g Godzilla – which actually could stand to get a decent, old school horror movie treatment instead of that stupid, family friendly piece of crap that came out a few years ago).

[BrainGlutton]

@The New and Improved Superman

The big impediment is the fact that no one has ever made a ‘Lovecraft’ film well.

Check out Dagon and the silent fanfilm The Call of Cthulhu.

[Cervaise]

@BrainGlutton

Check out Dagon and the silent fanfilm The Call of Cthulhu.

I’ve seen both of those plus Cthulhu, a new Northwest-shot take on the mythos. The first is typical of Stuart Gordon’s other work: fun, atmospheric, knows how to stretch a dollar, occasionally very creepy, lots of goop, doesn’t add up to much. The second is a love letter whose omnipresent technical limitations are marginally overcome by a thoroughly respectful approach and an evident desire to serve the original material. The third is an anti-commercial tone poem which is extremely interesting from the standpoint of an emerging “Northwest voice” (see also Police Beat) but which adds very little to the Lovecraft genre.

@Lightnin' Quote

@Revenant Threshold

Following around a group of people who never see the monster itself, but do see the after-effects of it, people affected by it, and so on.

I’d love to see a movie like this. Kind of an end-of-the-world story, where the world really DOES end, and the main characters aren’t involved in any way with it.

Check out Don McKellar’s Last Night. Very small, very low-key, very character oriented, but enormously involving and rewarding. Not an action or suspense film; a meditation on meaning and mortality. Great movie.