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ComingSoon.net has posted the official production notes for the ultra-hyped monster movie online.
They contain lots of spoiler-ific information. We'll see if this turns out to be that rarest of films: A mid-January blockbuster.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I have some affection for this movie, if only because I was convinced after the first trailer that it was called "Bad Robot."
Clearly a bad robot destroys the city. It even said the name at the end of the trailer. I didn't get what the big mystery fuss was, because that is a beautifully descriptive title.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Interested as I might be in this movie...I have a natural disdain for movies that intentionally try to be vague in an attempt to whip up intrigue. It's cheap, and annoying.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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And as I read through the production notes...I realize this is probably not something I'd pay to see anyway. First off, the whole shakey cam thing isn't revolutionary or new. Second, I think I'll just wait for The Happening later this year.
Extra Spoiler warning by the way, since I'm going to quote the notes:
quote:An important quality of this technique – one which adds incredible terror and tension to many scenes – is having the camera operator “just miss” much of the action, including sightings of the monster.
That's dumb. Sure, not seeing something can be scary, but I find it extremely hard to believe that a giant Godzilla like monster attacking New York is going to be THAT hard to miss. If this was Ghostbusters II, that'd be like everyone missing the fight between the Statue and the Marshmallow guy.
quote:“There’s something very scary about what you can’t see,” adds Reeves. “You’re in there with Hud, and there’s no reverse angle showing you what he’s not seeing. They don’t have any more information than you do. Every moment becomes charged, because you know that, just off-frame, there might be something horrible happening. But you don’t know what it is, because he hasn’t turned the camera there yet. It becomes all about what your mind fills in.”
This strikes me as something that works perfectly fine in real life...but in a movie it strikes me as something we've seen, oh I don't know, SIXTY MILLION TIMES in horror movies. They are always doing crap like that, and it's old hat by now. What he think is new and cool I think is Blair Witch meets Godzilla (Abrams actually calls it that!) meets every horror flick made in the last five or THIRTY years. Sometimes you get points for pulling together old ideas into something new, THIS doesn't.
quote:“We wanted to make a movie that no one knew about and then let them discover it, the way we used to discover movies growing up,” says Abrams. Interest in the film, based on just the trailer, has been, to say the least, remarkable. “I certainly didn’t expect the outpouring of curiosity and intense scrutiny of this project,”
I don't believe that for a second.
Ugh. This looks like it could really, REALLY suck. I might catch a matinee of this if there is absolutely nothing else on, but I don't think a gimmick is going to make Godzilla into something more palatable. I don't mind that the movie is from the point of view of a regular guy (that's why I want to see The Happening), but a lot about this makes it seem like Abrams thinks he is being uber clever, when in reality it's a regurgitation of a lot of stuff that's already been made.
A lot will depend I guess on reviews from friends. In other words, I'll let Puffy pay to see it first, then I'll decide Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Eh. As I said in an earlier thread (where I was told my spoilers must be phoney, because I hadn't played the ARG ), this doesn't seem like my kind of flick.
Anyone else want to be the guinea pi-....er, brave one? Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Ack, that ruins my carefully laid plan! I'm sure we'll get someone to see it and report back. If not, Netflix!
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:If this was Ghostbusters II, that'd be like everyone missing the fight between the Statue and the Marshmallow guy.
Dude. I'm not alluding to the awful and annoying beer commercial, either, but dude. Don't be quotin' my Ghostbusters, I or II, if you don't know what you're doin'!
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I haven't seen it in like a decade. But now that I'm actually thinking about it, didn't they use their gun backpack things to roast the Marshmallow guy in the first movie and then hotwire the Statue of Liberty in the second movie to bust through the weird goo shield in the second movie?
::sheepish grin:: My bad. Okay okay! Let's change that to, it would be like King Kong without the giant Gorilla (actually, the most recent King Kong could have benefitted from less monsters, so that wasn't the best example). Okay! Let's say it would be like Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs, just a lot of near misses and roaring sounds. Still not the best example, but you guys get the idea.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Let's focus less on that and more on Lyrhawn's cinematic sacrilege, I say.
Really, the only way you can expiate your shame is to name the song they Ghostbusters piped through Lady Liberty while on their second big mission to kick ass.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Well, too bad. Now I've got to limber up my stoning arm. And get some stones. Don't move while I'm doing that, OK? You'll only make it worse for yourself!
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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They didn't hotwire the statue of liberty. THey sprayed goo all over it and then the song was supposed to make the goo respond and make her move. Remember, all the goo was under the city filling the sewers and stuff. It reacted when people got angry.
They had to stop the dude in the painting from taking over Sigourney Weaver's baby.
Posts: 1042 | Registered: Jan 2001
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Yeah yeah yeah, I was being, well I guess I wasn't, but I was attempting to be funny when I said hotwire, which I thought would be obvious from the fact that there's nothing to actually hotwire in the Statue.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Come on! I had all the toys when I was a kid. I had the gun with the backpack, the little ghost catching trap thing that you slide out and open by stepping on that pedal. I even had Egon's little scanner thing.
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If there's one thing this thread has told me, it's how much I never want to see Ghostbusters 2 again. The villain was so lame. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Why did I not have to look that up? Seems like of all the crap to remember in my life, the name of the villain in Ghostbusters II doesn't seem like it should have made the cut.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Oh, sure, the fight between the Statue of Liberty and the Marshmallow man didn't happen, but that sure would been cool.
I agree with Lyrhawn about Cloverfield. The "just missed" tactic sucked in Blair Witch, and it won't work now. If that danged monster can throw the head of the frickin' Statue of Liberty for miles, I want to see it! Wouldn't a skyscraper-sized monster be even more frightening when seen in full, and not in shadows?
I think Abrams and co. just didn't have the right body design for the monster, so opted for a cop out instead.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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The career of J.J Abrams annoys me. Okay, "Felicity" was never to my taste but "Lost" strikes me as a show who's main idea is to pile on one bizarre mystery after another without any resolution. The idea that spawned it was "Survivor meets Cast Away." The show is as lame as its pitch.
Mission Impossible III was the worst one of the trilogy--the screenplay was nowhere near the caliber of the first two and the direction--well, let's just say it's clear that Abrams is no De Palma or Woo.
From this track record I am going to predict that his Star Trek feature will also suck. Look who wrote the screenplay--Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the same duo that brought us the horrendous Mission Impossible 3. So mediocre director + mediocre writers will = mediocre movie.
And yes, everything about this Cloverfield looks lame too.
Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:...but "Lost" strikes me as a show who's main idea is to pile on one bizarre mystery after another without any resolution...
I take it you didn't watch X-Files much, did you?
And, for the record, J. J. Abrams PRODUCED the movie; he didn't direct it (Matt Reaves did) or write it (Drew Goddard did).
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:...but "Lost" strikes me as a show who's main idea is to pile on one bizarre mystery after another without any resolution...
I take it you didn't watch X-Files much, did you?
I guess my description would also apply to the X-Files. But to be fair, what was the percentage of stand alone X-Files episodes versus ones that tied into the alien/conspiracy arc? Even the various arc episodes tended to be episodic--sure, the larger mystery would never be solved but some episodic element would get resolved. This made the "alien/conspiracy/abucted sister" element of the show almost always a mere macguffin.
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