shamrock pitch.

we went to see cloverfield the other night. I went in with low expectations, and upon leaving got pretty much what I expected, plus a really horrendous headache.

but after thinking about the movie a bit, I've realised it was a really awful movie, actually.

I'm all for suspension of disbelief, especially in the case of a ginormous monster devouring new york city. but this movie was pushing it a bit. I would have have done things a bit differently...

for one, why was the monster so frickin' huge? pretty sure that would have been the largest creature on earth by far. was it supposed to be an alien or something? 'cos while they made a reference to coelacanth as the possibilities of the abyss and how no one knows what exists deep in the oceans, I'm pretty sure we can rule out a thousand foot long creature the size of a city block. hell, even those gargantuan squid are only a couple hundred feet long, and they don't weigh thousands of tons. hell, even the blue whale is only 200 tons, and it can't survive outside of water, it would be crushed under its own weight on land. why couldn't they have made a smaller monster? maybe more of them? a brood of a dozen or so of those fuckers, maybe fifty feet tall? that would have been a lot more terrifying, and believable.

the parasites were pretty cool, but weren't fleshed out enough. they could have had a much larger role in the carnage. and if these parasites lived off the host monster, wouldn't that mean they'd have some way of getting to its gooey insides? most parasites nourish themselves with blood or something, tho I suppose it's possible they ate dead skin cells or something. but if that was the case, why would the monster be rubbing them off in annoyance? larger creatures, like sharks and sunfish, tend to encourage those symbiotic relationships because they're beneficial. if these were harmful or annoying parasites, they must have been hurting the creature somehow. which means one of two things: they should have either ripped humans (and our soft, pink skins) to shreds, or the monster shouldn't be invincible.

neither of those criteria appeared to happen. while the side effect of a parasite bite WAS cool (probably the best part of the movie), it was no way as instantly damaging as yo would have expected. and seeing as the military was having some trouble with the monster, it would appear impervious to the best the military could offer. so how do you posit a parasite that is kinda bad for humans for not ridiculously powerful, and yet able to get through skin that smart bombs couldn't penetrate?

the worst part had to be the ending... it had the same problem as AI, in that it should have ended about ten minutes before it did. they had a perfectly framed shot for the end credits, and they blew right past it for a cheesy ending that defied logic. either that, or those kids were nearly as invulnerable as the monster. they managed to get up and run away from injuries that should have killed them ten times over, and they just kept doing it. it's sad when the most unrealistic part of a movie about a giant space mutant (or whatever) devouring a metropolis is that the damn kids just won't die.

I probably wouldn't have been as annoyed with the movie if the shaky cam would have stopped. I understand the idea behind it, that it added a sense of urgency and authenticity for the audience, but did they really have to give the RETARDED guy the camera? there were several scenes (the bridge, for instance) that I had no idea what was going on, and was only able to infer from after the fact. I don't know if that was intended or not. but running down a corridor, with the camera bobbing all over the place, or worse, pointed at your feet, is a great way of having me feel REALLY unwell by the end of the movie. I'm wishing I would have brought some dramamine. or watched it at home on the small screen.

after the movie, as we were walking back to the car and staring up at the space needle, we were pondering why seattle never has any apocalypse type movies. I guess it's easy to attack places like new york, where you have millions of people in a small space. to get that kind of carnage in seattle, you'd have to traipse all over several suburbs, and it's just not as exciting (or efficient).

I guess if I want to see bad things happen to the space needle, I'll just have to settle for this.