Cloverfield rant (spoilers)

I think Anne summed up the ending best when we were leaving the theater.
"It's like if someone were going down on you, it's feeling good, you're getting into it, and then they just get up, walk out the door and get in their car. 'Huh? Wait. What?!?!'"

First off I didn't know the whole movie was going to be shakycam. Oh well, no big deal, but I did expect there to be a plot! Some kinda story about what this thing is, or what happens to it. Not just an hour an change of people running around.

Anyone else go see this last night? What'd you think?

I lost interest the minute I heard it was shakycam. And your description of the "plot" only validates my position.

SHitty "auteur" crap that's trying to hard, from what I can gather.

Your girl Anne has some good similes going there.

It really looked like it might suck as much as "Snakes on a Plane", so I had reservations. I was considering going to another movie and sneaking in for the 'Trek teaser, but because Dickynoo posted it now I don't have to.

Huh. RottenTomatoes is giving it a 77% fresh.

It's worth seeing it on the big screen.

The Cloverfield monster!

Went and saw it. I thought the movie was fantastic.

And yes, there is a plot.

I liked it. I think if the film had been shot in a traditional style it wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

The only gripe is the characters seem to make some dumb decisions.

So what's the big spoiler?

I guess, but if a giant monster descended upon my city I can't imagine I'd be thinking too rationally either.

The identity of the Giant Monster.

True, but I think I could figure out not to drag my friends toward the death zone on a purely gut level.

Isn't that kind of a staple of the whole giant monster genre though?

Just saw it.

Really, really well done, but kinda a big 'meh.'

Agree with Anc, there isn't much there there.

But it was what it said it would be - a giant monster movie from the point of view of the guy on the street.

Unfortunately the guy on the street tends to get stepped on.

Oh, and one gripe -

I would have liked a bit more in the reason department. It seemed particularly annoying when at the end Rob looks into the camera and says 'you probably know more about the monster than I do.'

Nope, Rob, not a fucking thing. Thanks JJ.

I figured it had something to do with the Rob's job in Japan, but they never went anywhere with it.

Anyway, worth a look for the carnage. The characters are engaging, and the FX are phenomonal.

But certainly not a great movie.

There are rumours that Cloverfield is the first of a possible set of movies. We may be finding out a whole lot more if that's true.

I like not knowing a thing about the monster. The more you know about it the less menacing it becomes (the Borg in Voyager and the predators in AvP being the perfect examples).

I heard a discussion about this with the three of the main actors in the movie and it seems that this movie was the first to set the tone- display the plight of the people down on the ground. Later movies will show people who actually survive, and pull away to a traditional third person view. At least, that was what was implied.

Okay, I saw this today and it was GREAT. I could have done with a lot less 'shakycam', but you have to suspend disbelief to think that they would have held on to that cam very long in the first place.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the thing at the VERY END of the movie which justifies the whole thing being placed under gub'mint classified wraps. I CANNOT be the only person who caught this, but just in case, here are some spoiler tags:

So whaddya make of that, Batman?

The whole boring first 20 minutes or so of the party, with Hud making an ass of himself really set up the motivations for everything that happened later in the movie.

And, yeah, you do get a couple of really, really good looks at the monster, both the big one and the little ones, which may or may not be the same species. I'm actually thinking not.

This movie begs for a sequel, and I'll bet we see one at some point in the future. Just less shakycam, please.

Story I heard (bear in mind I haven't actually seen the flick yet) is

Where did you hear that theory?

I think it was the Cloverfield entry on Wikipedia. Or one of the movie sites. Don't remember now.

I'd heard the same thing.

Well, if it was an Earth-evolved creature,

We never got to see most of the movie.

Maybe a sequel will save it, but the more I think about it the more I think how much of a wasted opportunity it was.

If it's brought into a better context with a later sequel, then I might review it more favorably.

I'd have to agree with Marso that it can't be terrestrial. Physics just doesn't allow for it. One tank shell takes care of that.

Yeah, I noticed the impact in the final cam shot - but it still didn't explain anything.

I waited around after the credits to see if they inserted one of those cutesy passages at the end to give the audience some context, but nothing there either.

Hell, I liked AvP: Requiem better. LOL. It was better than I expected. Cloverfield was worse.

I actually thought it was a really good flick. But it NEEDS a sequel for closure, so that things can be explained, etc. Hell, we don't even know for sure how big a bomb went off in Manhattan at the end. Big enough to kill the last two characters, but obviously not a nuke or the camera wouldn't have survived.

Oh, and the one girl apparently got away...

I went in expecting it to be essentially Blair Witch Project 2. Yup.

See, that's why I'm not going to go see it. A movie shouldn't NEED a sequel to complete its story, it should be complete as is.

Which is why I never went to see Kill Bill in the theatres.

That's kind of a silly reason not to see something in theatres.

So you're basically telling me you wouldn't have gone to see Star Wars in theaters? Or Back to the Future?

Both of the original movies were stand-alone stories.

I'm not talking about sequels. By their nature, sequels invite continuations in the story. Back to the Future, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Matrix, Rocky, First Blood, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, on and on...the first film in each of those series is a self-contained story.

But Cloverfield, and Kill Bill, are the first movie in a franchise. As such, they shouldn't expect me to shell out money to finish the story, if I don't like the first movie.