Tonight, after six months of insanely secretive hints and clues and bewildering teasers, the mysteries of J.J. Abrams’ movie Cloverfield will be unveiled.
Frankly, I’m not interested.
Not because I think the movie will be bad, far from it. I have high opinions of Abrams, director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard, the cast seems able enough, and the concept (a monster movie told from the viewpoint of the frightened citizens) is an excellent one.
But could it possibly be better than the hype? I really doubt it. And I find I prefer the uncertainty of the hype.
First there was the way it was announced. Quietly, with no fanfare, in front of the Transformers movie. A simple little untitled teaser trailer that depicted a Gen-Y party that was interrupted by explosions and what turned out (after multiple viewings and by turning the brightness on our computer monitors way up) to be the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty fueled rumors galore. It was a Godzilla movie! It was a H.R. Lovecraft movie! It was a mutated 40-foot H.P. Lovecraft vs Godzilla movie!
And the name of it kept changing. Many movies use fake names during production to thwart spoiler-hunting fanboys who want to get their names into AintItCoolNews, and Abrams’ movie has been, at times, Cloverfield, Slusho, Cheese, 1-18-08, Monkey, and The Simpsons Movie before finally settling on the shocking choice of… Cloverfield.
Then the viral marketing began. And, like all good viral marketing, it didn’t explain a damn thing.
There was a Web site for the make-believe Slusho cola. There’s the Web site for the make-believe company Tagruato, the Japanese company that owns Slusho and also has deep sea drilling concerns (which is only fair; I have some deep sea drilling concerns myself). There were “commercials” that popped up all around the Web from international “news” sites, all reporting on the same clips. There is T.I.D.O. Wave, the make-believe environmental group fighting against the make-believe corporation Tagruato. There is JamieLovesTeddy.com, a Website set up by make-believe character Jamie to post increasingly crazy videos to her make-believe boyfriend, Teddy. There are MySpace pages for most of the main make-believe characters. There’s a Japanese manga (comic book) with familiar looking make-believe deep sea ships. And every one of them has clues that reveal a little more of the setting, the people, the relationships, and the disaster to come, enough to keep obsessive fans (a.k.a. “fans”) busy piecing things together for months. And they did.
So with this huge buildup, this agonizingly slow inching towards release that is the movie premiere, what if the actual movie doesn’t live up to our imagined potential? I mean, I’ve spent months poring over these sites to piece together clues. Why was part of this explosion blurred out? Why was Slusho cola mentioned on the show Heroes? Is there a connection? What’s with the stuffed bears, anyway? If I wanted to just know, I’d have waited for the movie to come out. What fun is that?
I think I’ve gotten close. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, based on the clues I’ve found:
New York is attacked by an amorphous blob that seems to really, really hate tourist attractions.
New York is attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, back for bloody revenge.
New York is attacked by a 40-foot Nathan Lane.
New York is attacked by all the monster movies of the last 50 years, all at the same time.
New York is attacked by a 40-foot Ashton Kutcher, who put on a rubber monster suit to mess with everybody’s heads.
New York is attacked by the disembodied wrath of millions of movie fans, still reeling from Who’s Your Caddy?
New York is attacked by a 40-foot Rudy Giuliani as a whistle stop before the primaries.
New York is attacked by Cthulhu, one of the Great Old Ones, who plans to rampage across the city until it flamed with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom, but quits and leaves quietly after he realizes that the residents are way ahead of him.
New York is attacked by a 40-foot J.J. Abrams.
How can the reality compare with any of those?
Sorry, Mr. Abrams. I’m going to continue digging into the viral sites and viral videos and viral viruses to discover the secret, inner truth of Cloverfield. Seeing the movie is just too easy, and I think I’ve almost got it…
Stop talking and just go see it. It is amazingly good and yes; it more then lives up to the hype. Don’t think this is coming from some warcraft/godzilla nerd. Go see it and then tell us what you think.
Don’t worry, the movie doesn’t give anything away except what the monster looks like. You leave knowing hardly more than you did going in. It’s a bumpy ride in a good way, but your search is far from over, if you want to know what it means.