rich tasty courage (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} calamityjake) wrote,@ 2008-01-24 17:44:00 |
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Cloverfield. Discuss.
okay, it's time for another edition of "spoiler-filled movie discussion hour"!
I just saw it and have some (spoiler-filled) thoughts:
Actually, I don't have too many. I found the movie to be fascinating, not for what was on the screen but for what wasn't.
No backstory. No big picture story (what's going on in the rest of the world?). No important characters (the protagonists only matter because they happen to be at the scene a lot, a la Forrest Gump). No PLOT, really--it's just 80 minutes of destruction that kills just about everybody we know.
And yet, it seems clear that there IS a backstory. There's all this silly viral marketing stuff that's been all over the internet, and various interviews where the director and producer and writer all suggest that there's a lot going on that we don't see, directly, in the movie. Now I'm a bit skeptical--we heard the same sort of chatter about Lost, and it's my opinion that those guys didn't figure out what was going on ANYWHERE until halfway through the second season (or later). So I wouldn't be shocked if this were all a half-assed con, intended just to bug us obsessive nerds into spending hours trying to figure out What It All Means.
I dunno.
Anyway, I thought the movie was really good, even though in some ways it seemed kinda superficial and dumb. The first-person camcorder aspect was executed about as well as possible (it requires some serious suspension of disbelief that the camera survived and the characters kept lugging it around the whole time). I thought it was gutsy to make the primary camera-toter a socially-retarded doofus--although at times I thought he was a little TOO obtuse/stupid, it was good for comic relief amidst the legitimately-disturbing stuff that was going on.
I'm not going to say much about the 9/11 footage comparisons, but I do think that the early monster scenes were really scary in their effective portrayal of the chaos and filth that accompany carnage on a massive scale.
I was sad that the internet marketing stuff didn't play much of a role--I was waiting to hear about SLUSHO--but that is part of what I found so interesting (see the above rambling about the invisible backstory). It is kind of cool, in that it puts the footage we see in the movie in its proper context--it's just the impressions of a few random chumps from a tiny sliver of a much bigger story. Or maybe not.
As for the thing crashing into the water in the last scene, I missed it. I had read about it, so I kept an eye out, but I didn't see anything. And apparently the crackling voice after the credits says "it's still alive," suggesting that there will be a sequel if they want to make one (which they probably will, considering how much $$$ this one made).
What did you guys think?
okay, it's time for another edition of "spoiler-filled movie discussion hour"!
I just saw it and have some (spoiler-filled) thoughts:
Actually, I don't have too many. I found the movie to be fascinating, not for what was on the screen but for what wasn't.
No backstory. No big picture story (what's going on in the rest of the world?). No important characters (the protagonists only matter because they happen to be at the scene a lot, a la Forrest Gump). No PLOT, really--it's just 80 minutes of destruction that kills just about everybody we know.
And yet, it seems clear that there IS a backstory. There's all this silly viral marketing stuff that's been all over the internet, and various interviews where the director and producer and writer all suggest that there's a lot going on that we don't see, directly, in the movie. Now I'm a bit skeptical--we heard the same sort of chatter about Lost, and it's my opinion that those guys didn't figure out what was going on ANYWHERE until halfway through the second season (or later). So I wouldn't be shocked if this were all a half-assed con, intended just to bug us obsessive nerds into spending hours trying to figure out What It All Means.
I dunno.
Anyway, I thought the movie was really good, even though in some ways it seemed kinda superficial and dumb. The first-person camcorder aspect was executed about as well as possible (it requires some serious suspension of disbelief that the camera survived and the characters kept lugging it around the whole time). I thought it was gutsy to make the primary camera-toter a socially-retarded doofus--although at times I thought he was a little TOO obtuse/stupid, it was good for comic relief amidst the legitimately-disturbing stuff that was going on.
I'm not going to say much about the 9/11 footage comparisons, but I do think that the early monster scenes were really scary in their effective portrayal of the chaos and filth that accompany carnage on a massive scale.
I was sad that the internet marketing stuff didn't play much of a role--I was waiting to hear about SLUSHO--but that is part of what I found so interesting (see the above rambling about the invisible backstory). It is kind of cool, in that it puts the footage we see in the movie in its proper context--it's just the impressions of a few random chumps from a tiny sliver of a much bigger story. Or maybe not.
As for the thing crashing into the water in the last scene, I missed it. I had read about it, so I kept an eye out, but I didn't see anything. And apparently the crackling voice after the credits says "it's still alive," suggesting that there will be a sequel if they want to make one (which they probably will, considering how much $$$ this one made).
What did you guys think?
