Cloverfield (mild spoilers)
Jan. 21st, 2008 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSo, Cloverfield.
Let’s start off with the good. This is a movie that has learned its lesson from similar “ground eye view” disaster movies like Signs and War of the Worlds. I know a lot of reviews are harping on the characters being unlikable, but I found them refreshingly human and thankfully not as urbane as these kinds of characters usually are (look at the cast of Smallville, who have a none-too-witty quip for any occasion, to see what I’m talking about). They’re people. Stupid, smart, witty, friendly, bitchy, flirty, heroic, frightened… people. No one has a dark secret, no one has a tearful confession to make, and although there is some requisite melodrama to the love subplot, it’s all very tastefully underplayed. No one kisses in the rain while complete strangers clap, is what I’m getting at.
The monster is great, if a little… generic? You don’t really get to know it well enough to see what makes it special. It doesn’t even get a name. It’s good that it’s mysterious, but unfortunately Cloverfield takes the Lost tendency to say “we know the whole story, but we’re not telling you it (but trust us, there’s a whole story)” and extrapolate it to the big screen. You know how frustrating it was when they wouldn’t just come out and say what the Rabbit’s Foot was in M:I3, and thus made it cloyingly transparent that it was a McGuffin? Same thing here.
And much like its predecessors, which also never knew how to really tie up all the action they’d presented (and this has a great action/other stuff ratio), Cloverfield suffers from a weak third act/ending. It’s always a little convenient how the characters are always bedeviled by the monster wherever they go, but in the closing moments the monster actively decides to eat one of them. That’s kind of like one of us picking out a single ant to kill. And the ending is just an insulting sequel hook, not bothering to wrap up the plot threads or offer any resolution to most, if not all, of the questions raised (and I’m not talking about, like, if God is good, why is there evil in the world? I mean like “does the Death Star blow up?”).
I guess you could read something into society from that. Before 9/11, the plot would be interwoven with the characters finally clues and piecing together the monster’s origin and finding a way to beat it. Now our definition of hero is not someone who triumphs, but someone who endures. Just look at superhero comics. So what makes a character worthy of being commemorated in film isn’t that they defeat the monster or even survive, but that they give it a good run. It’s a frustratingly defeatist trend, one that makes me what to say think of the children! stuff.
Something I do have to commend the filmmakers on is just making a proper thrill ride. Basically, they take a very real fear – an attack on New York City – and put it in the “safe” realm of the fantastical – an attack on New York City being perpetrated by a giant fucking monster! Now, some might call that exploitative, but I think the images of 9/11 have become such a part of our cultural landscape that anyone looking to scare audiences pretty much has to deal with it. Falling buildings and roving dust clouds belong to terror the same way that Yakety Sax belongs to comedy. And besides, Godzilla dealt with nuclear weapons, so this is a part of the genre from the beginning. And it isn’t anywhere near as ham-fisted as movies like Land of the Dead are. Some might criticize Cloverfield for “not saying anything”, but I’d rather stand beside a silent person than one who screams into my ear with a megaphone.
I guess the biggest disappointment is Cloverfield being a victim of its own success. The monster is… just a monster. Tremors did that, and the Graboids still had personality (even when they went aboveground). There’s no twist, no totally out-there bit where the monster turns out to be Cthulu or something. It’s just a monster. After all that hype, it’s just a monster. So it’s a great thrill ride, which is rare enough in this day and age, but I wish there were something more. Isn’t there a compromise between Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Cloverfield, a movie that has a heart to go with its thrills?
Well, it probably won’t be Rambo, coming out next week, but damn if I’m not seeing it anywhere. They did draw first blood, after all, thoseVietnamese Commie small-town America Burmese bastards!
Let’s start off with the good. This is a movie that has learned its lesson from similar “ground eye view” disaster movies like Signs and War of the Worlds. I know a lot of reviews are harping on the characters being unlikable, but I found them refreshingly human and thankfully not as urbane as these kinds of characters usually are (look at the cast of Smallville, who have a none-too-witty quip for any occasion, to see what I’m talking about). They’re people. Stupid, smart, witty, friendly, bitchy, flirty, heroic, frightened… people. No one has a dark secret, no one has a tearful confession to make, and although there is some requisite melodrama to the love subplot, it’s all very tastefully underplayed. No one kisses in the rain while complete strangers clap, is what I’m getting at.
The monster is great, if a little… generic? You don’t really get to know it well enough to see what makes it special. It doesn’t even get a name. It’s good that it’s mysterious, but unfortunately Cloverfield takes the Lost tendency to say “we know the whole story, but we’re not telling you it (but trust us, there’s a whole story)” and extrapolate it to the big screen. You know how frustrating it was when they wouldn’t just come out and say what the Rabbit’s Foot was in M:I3, and thus made it cloyingly transparent that it was a McGuffin? Same thing here.
And much like its predecessors, which also never knew how to really tie up all the action they’d presented (and this has a great action/other stuff ratio), Cloverfield suffers from a weak third act/ending. It’s always a little convenient how the characters are always bedeviled by the monster wherever they go, but in the closing moments the monster actively decides to eat one of them. That’s kind of like one of us picking out a single ant to kill. And the ending is just an insulting sequel hook, not bothering to wrap up the plot threads or offer any resolution to most, if not all, of the questions raised (and I’m not talking about, like, if God is good, why is there evil in the world? I mean like “does the Death Star blow up?”).
I guess you could read something into society from that. Before 9/11, the plot would be interwoven with the characters finally clues and piecing together the monster’s origin and finding a way to beat it. Now our definition of hero is not someone who triumphs, but someone who endures. Just look at superhero comics. So what makes a character worthy of being commemorated in film isn’t that they defeat the monster or even survive, but that they give it a good run. It’s a frustratingly defeatist trend, one that makes me what to say think of the children! stuff.
Something I do have to commend the filmmakers on is just making a proper thrill ride. Basically, they take a very real fear – an attack on New York City – and put it in the “safe” realm of the fantastical – an attack on New York City being perpetrated by a giant fucking monster! Now, some might call that exploitative, but I think the images of 9/11 have become such a part of our cultural landscape that anyone looking to scare audiences pretty much has to deal with it. Falling buildings and roving dust clouds belong to terror the same way that Yakety Sax belongs to comedy. And besides, Godzilla dealt with nuclear weapons, so this is a part of the genre from the beginning. And it isn’t anywhere near as ham-fisted as movies like Land of the Dead are. Some might criticize Cloverfield for “not saying anything”, but I’d rather stand beside a silent person than one who screams into my ear with a megaphone.
I guess the biggest disappointment is Cloverfield being a victim of its own success. The monster is… just a monster. Tremors did that, and the Graboids still had personality (even when they went aboveground). There’s no twist, no totally out-there bit where the monster turns out to be Cthulu or something. It’s just a monster. After all that hype, it’s just a monster. So it’s a great thrill ride, which is rare enough in this day and age, but I wish there were something more. Isn’t there a compromise between Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Cloverfield, a movie that has a heart to go with its thrills?
Well, it probably won’t be Rambo, coming out next week, but damn if I’m not seeing it anywhere. They did draw first blood, after all, those
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 12:52 am (UTC)I didn't mind that the monster is just a monster. For one thing, the characters don't ever learn more than that and they're our POV. For another, well, the very concept of a skyscraper-sized monster is absurd and no technobabble explanation is really going to satisfy, so...why bother?
Nor did I mind that we don't get a real resolution. That seemed implicit in the whole "found footage" conceit of the story. Of course it's not going to explain everything (or much of anything, really). If I had expected more I probably would have been disappointed, but I didn't. (I did expect more from LOST, which is why I abandoned that show after one season when I realized I was never going to get it.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 04:26 pm (UTC)