Li Mu said:
Dead Metal said:
When we said we hated it because it wasn't a normal Monster film, it wasn't because we hated to think or hated new things, it was because shaky cam sucks.
When you go see a monster movie, you want to see the monster destroy stuff, that's the whole point and fun of it. But if the entire movie concerns itself with delivering the shakiest and most scrambled footage ever to the point that your eyes and head hurt, to then deliver a disappointing monster you never see properly, well then it kinda failed.
It's like going to see a baseball movie, just to have the movie be centered on two guys walking to the baseball stadium while tossing a football around and then ending with one of them getting hit in the head by a baseball.
the only redeeming thing about Cloverfield was the hype surrounding it, it was fun searching through all that stuff to find clues to what might be going on, just sadly the movie didn't deliver on anything.
I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree. Also, you say 'we'. I didn't know that you spoke for everyone.
In the first Hellraiser film you had to wait 90 minutes before you saw the cenobites. They were shown sparingly and were more impressive as a result. As the sequels came along you saw them more and more until they became the main characters and lost any ounce of scariness they once had.
The first Jaws film barely showed the shark at all. As the sequels came, again, we were shown more and more of the shark. It could be seen it was a giant rubber dildo and all pretence of fear was lost. Of course, it didn't help that those sequels were also badly directed.
I could go on and on with examples, but you get the idea. The more you see a monster or alien, the less scary it becomes. You could be shown the monster smashing things and you would have instant gratification without having to think about it. Or, you could use your imagination a little and have much more. What the hell were those little monsters that came with Cloverfield? What kind of venom did they have in them to make people explode? Where did it come from? These questions, for me, add to the excitement of the film.
But, for many people, they don't like this. They want a Morgan Freeman narration to explain everything to them and hold their hand.
Neither approach is wrong, but I prefer to not have everything spelled out to me as though I'm retarded.
The film tried to be different and it succeeded. But in its success, it clearly failed in the eyes of many people who wanted a standard Godzillaesque movie.
Personally, I congratulate it for trying to be different. We've seen a million Godzilla / King Kong movies already. Why add to the pile?
Well, since you seemed to be able to judge everyone, I thought I may have the right to bring perspective and explain it.
Your examples may seemed like good ones, but they're not. Let me explain that to you.
Hellraiser, was not a monster film, it was a horror film and focused on the psychological and sexual aspect of fear and pain, the Cenobites were not the monsters in the film, nore were they the villains. If you want a monster in that film, then you have it in the form of Frank, who was shown in all his gory and creepy detail for a big chunk of the movie. The Cenobites are just a tool and an excuse to get the story going. That was done deliberately. The reason we saw more of the Cenobites in later films was because the public thought Pinhead was cool, so they retooled the first two sequels into slasher movies, and utter crap with the following ones.
Jaws, the only reason we don't see much of the shark was because the prop was awful and difficult to work with. It was supposed to be the center piece and main attraction of the movie. It was also not a monster movie, but a nature strikes back movie. The shark being scarier as a result was just a lucky accident.
The best examples you could have used was the original Alien and John Carpenter's the Thing, which spent their running time teasing the monster and showing glimpses (the Thing showing more but you get the picture). Those movies deliberately and skillfully built up tension. And in the case of Alien, did things no-one had done before.
The original Godzilla would also have been a better example than the ones you gave, since it's actually in the same genre as Cloverfield, and the movie that started the genre Cloverfield was supposed to homage.
The original Godzilla, from 1954 (not the US recut, but the original), spent the early run time focusing on the human characters and their social struggles (a young couple who love each other, but her very strict traditional father wants her to marry the man she was arranged with at birth), it teases the monster, shows us the fallout of its first two attacks, teases it some more until then finally revealing the monster completely, showing us firsthand what it does.
Cloverfield was sold to us as being an American Giant Monster movie in the vain of Godzilla (hilarious seeing how the original Godzilla was inspired by American movies like King Kong and the Beast from 20,000 fathoms), but from the people's perspective. It sounded great, but it wasn't.
The shaky cam ruined it completely. The full reveal the movie was banking on and building up to fell flat because the monster wasn't particulary scary or even cool looking, it seemed even more scared and confused than the original Godzilla did (which was supposed to be a wounded pain-filled and scared creature looking for a new place to hide), plus the shaky cam and distortion kinda ruined the moment too.
As for the "hat were those creatures that came with the monsters?", they were parasites, I knew they were parasites because as I said, I was deep in the hype and looked for all the clues, so I was around when the super limited (I think it was limited to 1000 pieces world wide?) collector's action figure leaked and it came with "parasites", plus the parasites thing was also something that was mentioned in the hype marketing.
So yes, I went into the movie already knowing what the monster looked like, I simply hoped that it would look better on screen, and that the movie would offer more than it did, but in the end all it was was unfulfilled promises. And the tie-in material and everything contradicts itself so there's nothing there.
Had it been a real movie, not a shaky cam mess, I would have at least gotten something visual out of it. Take for example the American Godzilla 2014 movie, it too concentrates mainly on the people and their theories of what is what, and like Cloverfield it offers us glimpses of the big guy himself and then ends with revealing him in full complete with a city wreaking scene.
As a side effect Godzilla and the other things come across as super gigantic, since again we mostly see everything at street level from the perspective of the humans, and the only time Godzilla or the other things are in full view of the camera, the camera is far away from them, evoking the feeling that they are just too large to really show in full on the screen. But it wasn't shaky cam with BS filters to make it "look like" camcorder footage and offered an actual story, while Cloverfield only had marketing and interviews.
Using your imagination isn't really a good defense for a movie, like say the Star Wars prequels aren't bad, if you use your imagination to fill out all the important plot points that just show up out of nowhere, like General Grivous. Or hey, Birdemic is a damn good film because it tries something new and if you use your imagination to come up with your own plot and explanations plus imagine realistic looking birds.
