Monster Thing Needs Protein
Posted by Moose on January 30th, 2008. Filed under: Random Lists.Everyone who’s seen Cloverfield has a list of questions shorter than your average dictionary, but longer than the Bill of Rights. I do too. These are by no means ALL my questions, they’re merely the most pressing. The ones that burst out of my mouth in the post-movie recap and on the street afterward when we ran into friends. My questions are as follows (spoilers ahead – though, really, everything mentioned is UTTERLY PREDICTABLE, NAY INEVITABLE in a movie of this stripe):
1. In the course of the movie we see precisely one (rather meager) line of evacuees being herded out of Manhattan by Marine-type people. So why is the city SUDDENLY EMPTY? Manhattan has millions of residents. The idea that all of them were sent to safety in a few hours – especially after Monster Thing destroys the Brooklyn Bridge with its tail – taxes even my rather gullible brain.
2. About ten minutes from the end, the camera carrier gets eaten by Monster Thing. Only, he doesn’t get eaten so much as he gets picked up, chewed on a bit, and SPIT BACK OUT. Why gnaw on him and then regurgitate him back onto the grass, Monster Thing? The few times we saw our beloved camera carrier he look a little pasty and like he may eat too much Burger King, so I can understand he might not be the tastiest morsel, but you’ve had a big night. Don’t you need the protein? (I know he had to be spit out again so they could get the camera back and finish the movie. But this bothers me. The same thing could’ve been accomplished by dropping the camera as Monster Thing’s giant, gaping maw starts its descent. I didn’t need to see blurry photos of Monster Thing’s esophagus badly enough to justify destroying whatever storyline credibility was left. (Hint: not much.))
Questions aside, I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I thought I would – especially after reading this. (I also read this, but it made me WANT to see the movie, even though the lack of flying toasters was a grievous disappointment.) But Cloverfield 1) held my interest and 2) didn’t make me hurl the remains of my breakfast into my lap - two unexpected bonuses that catapulted it entire zip codes beyond my expectations.
During the credits, I realized that it was a J.J. Abrams contribution. (I’ve been watching Alias lately, another in the J.J. Abrams lexicon.) Which begs yet another question: where was Jennifer Garner, J.J.? MONSTER THING WOULDN’T SPIT OUT JENNIFER GARNER. Unless she was wearing one of those Alias spy wigs. Too much synthetic fiber for such a delicate palate.
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January 30th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Or Felicity for that matter (granted I haven’t seen Cloverfield, but Felicity was my personal favorite Abrams show).
January 30th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
mmmmm, Jennifer Garner.
(quickly runs to video shop to rent out Alias on dvd because it’s been ages since I watched that show and Daredevil is just not quite the same calibre)
I saw Juno instead of Cloverfield (mmmmm, Jennifer Garner). but now I might go back and see cloverfield JUST to see the inside of the monsters gullet.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I can’t think of any two movies more stunningly diverse than Juno and Cloverfield (except for that thrice removed JG connection). Maybe Godzilla and Casablanca (assuming there’s no hidden Ingrid Bergman connection).
Juno’s dialogue made my heart sing with glee. Cloverfield’s dialogue…less so. But that’s all right. What it lacked in witty repartee it made up for in Monster Thing esophagus.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
“You’ve heard of Superman?”
January 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
OK, Moose, my reaction was polar opposite to yours. I HATED this movie. And I love J.J. – Lost (back on tomorrow, woohoo!) is my favorite show, and everything else he’s done (even Six Degrees, which lasted oh all of five minutes) worked for me. I went to see Cloverfield with a bunch of coworkers, and we all came out saying, “that was it???” Where was the terror? The suspense? The intrigue? To me, it was just some dumb ole Let’s-Destroy-NYC-Because-It-Hasn’t-Been-Demolished-in-Over-a-Month-since-I-Am-Legend-Was-Released movie that cost Conde Nast a $11.75 they’ll never get back.
That said, I met up with my coworkers tonight for my going away party, and my boss was out with her sci fi-obsessed friend earlier who told her the backstory of the film, and apparently you only “get” the movie if you tracked all the viral marketing they did beforehand (which, what?? who has time to do that??): Something about toxic waste spilled into the ocean, and something or the other else interacts with it to cause the monster to form. Apparently, you see this thing drop into the water in the background of the Coney Island footage, and at the end of the movie after the credits they say “It’s still here.” I’m still quite confused about it all, but if that doesn’t make me want to go back and read all the Internet to figure out what I missed, then I don’t know what does. And rumor has it they’re making other versions of the movie from different people’s standpoints. What has the world come to??
And P.S. Speaking of being perplexed when Hud was inhaled and spit back out, remember how all those parasites were falling of the monster? Why didn’t they go after the other two? I was just waiting for Beth and Jason to be devoured, but thus, it never happened.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:20 am
Forget this shmuck, have you seen U2-3D yet? Wait, don’t tell me. I’ll be jealous. Juno’s supposed to start this week, I think. Sweeney Todd started last week. I liked it. Though, I haven’t seen it on stage so I had nothing to compare it to. I am just enamored by Johnny Depp lately. He’s a really talented actor.
J.J. Abrahms did Felicity? I would have never put Felicity and Lost together.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:20 am
Camels: I think that’s the key to all movie watching – expectations. After reading the blogosphere’s reaction, I walked into this movie expecting to be both bored and nauseous. So I was pleasantly surprised. If I’d walked in expecting something of Lost’s caliber (I’ve only seen one episode, but it was pretty darn compelling), I would have been sobbing tears of wretched betrayal.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Question #2 made me want to see the movie, even if the photos of Monster Thing’s esophagus were blurry, at best.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Nora: Greg Grunberg (Felicity’s Sean Blumberg) was the pilot of the ill-fated plane on Lost, and Eric Weiss on Alias. That’s the only connection I could draw.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I forgot to say that he an JJ have known each other since Kindergarten.
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
… and now I think I’m going to avoid this movie. I’m not sure I can handle the esophagus of a monster. Plus logical inconsistencies make people not want to watch movies with me anymore.