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1/18/08 Cloverfield


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You're forgetting three things. First, a bad movie is a bad movie, and managing to follow that one golden rule is not a guarantee of success if everything else about the movie is crap. Also, in the worst Shyamalan movie I've sat through, The Village, he does wind up showing a clear look at the "monster" and it's pretty much a classic case example of why you shouldn't do that.

Second, "not showing the monster" is not his "schtick", even if he gives lip service to the idea in an interview. His gimmick is his "twist endings"

Finally we're talking about Hollywood. No, if something is obviously good storytelling, or makes for a good movie that does not mean everyone will do it. It does not even mean the movie will succeed at the box office. I've seen plenty of fantastic, wonderful, well written and directed movies that have aboslurmely bombed in their theatre run.

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Doesn't the monster sit in the spot light for a good bit after the chopper scene? I remember looking at its little breathing pouches on its head and thinking "not sure I like those." It also seemed like the monster was a lot smaller in that scene but I guess that's just because there isn't really a point of reference.

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I love seeing NYC get destroyed movie after movie, I hates me some of that pretentious city. Like what's up with that commercial they're running in my area (SF bay area) where New York is begging for my money to fund some truck that gives food to the homeless. Good cause and all, but is NYC really so full of itself that it thinks it can justify funneling money from all over the country to feed it's homeless? there's plenty of homeless in SF why shoud my money go to NYC.

because of this, i welcome the aliens, robots, giant monsters, earthquakes, zombie vampire virus's and anything else that feels like putting that city in it's place.

btw this ends quite possibly the rantyest day i've ever had. I'ts been great guys.

NYC, soon to be the Tokyo of the US Monster movies. I'll see this some time this weekend, but sounds like a good movie, hopefully they will make a sequel, and not the shakey handheld format. May be they could do a POV from a soldier or a chopper pilot, and intercut with commanders in the background to give more details overall. They have cameras on troops now anyway, at least in Hollywood style situations, so this would be workable.

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I love seeing NYC get destroyed movie after movie, I hates me some of that pretentious city. Like what's up with that commercial they're running in my area (SF bay area) where New York is begging for my money to fund some truck that gives food to the homeless. Good cause and all, but is NYC really so full of itself that it thinks it can justify funneling money from all over the country to feed it's homeless? there's plenty of homeless in SF why shoud my money go to NYC.

because of this, i welcome the aliens, robots, giant monsters, earthquakes, zombie vampire virus's and anything else that feels like putting that city in it's place.

btw this ends quite possibly the rantyest day i've ever had. I'ts been great guys.

well you're not welcome in my city any longer buddy! if i see you coming this way, i will unleash the wrath of the aliens, robots, giant monsters, earthquakes, and zombie vampire virus's on you! :D

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Oh, did anyone catch what the voice at the end of the credits says?

i didn't catch it word for word but it's a military transmission saying something like

"Target still active/ still alive" IE the big bomb that killed our love birds didn't kill the beast.

btw i love this spoiler tag, when did MW start using it?

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I'm sorry folks, I said Hawk, what I meant to say was Rob (I guess, I can't remember any of their names at this point). The guy and the girl that were seeking shelter, in the very end, after all the credits, you hear

help us

. You do not hear "Still alive" although the fact you're hearing anything certainly implies that.

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I agree completely, that monster had a mouth that was like 5 stories tall, why would it even bother trying to eat a human'

"humans are elvis of snack food"

Nextwave #2 pg 3

One of the things that ran through my mind while watching the movie

post-867-1201574487_thumb.jpg

Edited by Roy's Blues
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"humans are elvis of snack food"

Nextwave #2 pg 3

One of the things that ran through my mind while watching the movie

:lol: Gotta love a big dragon that wears boxers, Fin Fang Foom, heh.

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I've been watching Cloverfield's numbers to see how well it was doing. I was expecting another Blair Witch phenomenon with how well it opened but it seems to be sinking like a stone in the box office lately. I can understand the explained reasons why (stiff competition from other new releases, the general "blah" of a January release, etc) but it just seemed to start so strong and has fallen so much... it makes me wonder if the movie doesn't have good "buzz" and is becoming more of a Snakes on a Plane than the next Blair Witch.

Either way it's made it's money. Cloverfield has a big thing going for it, it was super cheap to make. It doubled it's money opening weekend so everything else is gravy... I was just expecting more gravy. They've all but pulled the marketing in my neck of the woods (I have not seen a TV or print ad for it since it opened) and it just feels like the studio has "made their money and is moving on".

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Really a shame. Especially as it's really the sort of movie best seen the first time in a theatre, and it's actually a very enjoyable flick. Much better than Blair Witch, in both quality and presentation, though that really isn't saying much.

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I've been watching Cloverfield's numbers to see how well it was doing. I was expecting another Blair Witch phenomenon with how well it opened but it seems to be sinking like a stone in the box office lately. I can understand the explained reasons why (stiff competition from other new releases, the general "blah" of a January release, etc) but it just seemed to start so strong and has fallen so much... it makes me wonder if the movie doesn't have good "buzz" and is becoming more of a Snakes on a Plane than the next Blair Witch.

Well, another big difference between Cloverfield and Blair Witch is that Cloverfield was actually pretty good, and Blair Witch was awful.

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I'm more or less comparing the movies financial box office performance. Blair Witch started slow but then exploded and held a high return for a few weeks. Cloverfield started off with a massive bang then suffered a 65% downturn the next weekend, and if the weekly trend is any indication of a continuing cycle it will have another 50%+ drop this weekend. Given that the advertising is pretty much gone here in Saint Louis I assume they have yanked most of the ad campaign, favoring the "money in the bank" approach (why spend more money on a movie they have turned a profit on when you can simply let it ride out on word of mouth then scoop home video sales).

I was just expecting this thing to be a $150M+ movie... on it's current trend if it hits $100M it will be near the end of it's "shelf life" and just by a hair. This movie is by far not a "fizzle" but it's performance is certainly an "all up front" affair it seems.

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... it makes me wonder if the movie doesn't have good "buzz" and is becoming more of a Snakes on a Plane than the next Blair Witch.

The drop is word of mouth in action. It just shows that many people who saw it disliked it enough to not suggest seeing it. Which means Clover2 probably won't see the same numbers.... unless it gets a lot more interested viewers when the DVD is released...

I just hope that HW doesn't turn it into a trilogy!! :wacko:

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I'm a fan of the movie but I'm not sure another random group of people and their view of the same night is exactly what I wanted to see.

I think the film was great in putting you in the place of these normal people going through these extraordinary events. Now that we have seen the story told that way and the monster has been revealed a sequel involving maybe the media and the way they handle it would be really interesting. And I think someone else had this idea but I like the idea of a military documentary going over the events of the disaster as well.

Or better yet maybe they can just go all Aliens on it and have hundreds of the monsters tearing apart the rest of the world.

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The drop is word of mouth in action. It just shows that many people who saw it disliked it enough to not suggest seeing it. Which means Clover2 probably won't see the same numbers.... unless it gets a lot more interested viewers when the DVD is released...

I said it before and I'll reiterate. This film was a lot like porn. You watch it once, it's visually fun, but there's absolutely no depth to it to warrant seeing it again (at least, not until it comes out on DVD so it won't be so fresh in the mind). All the elements that make it cool the first time through will be lost upon a second recent viewing. You're not going to have that same "RUN RUN RUN!!!" feeling. So you get all these people coming out of the theater and telling their friends it's a thrill ride with no substance and people hear that and think they're not going to carry anything from it so they'll just wait for DVD and watch something like There will be Blood or No Country for Old Men now. Still, I think a Cloverfield 2 could recapture that initial excitement if done well and have that same big opening crowd.

EDIT - There/This

Edited by jenius
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