Every time I hear something new about Cloverfield or 1-18-08 or whatever, I am more and more drawn to the belief that the emperor has no clothes. We’re four or five months away and don’t have a title for the movie yet, which is interpreted by some online as ‘kewl.’ To me it’s ‘kweer.’
The latest news on the film, courtesy of Dread Central, only makes me doubt this film more. According to a trusted scooper to the site, the rumors of multiple monsters in Cloverfield are true… but only one of them is giant. The rest are smaller velociraptor types that chase our camera-wielding heroes around. Wow, why does this remind me of a Hank Azaria movie?
Oh yeah, because this was part of what made the 1998 Godzilla chug shit. When I am watching a giant monster movie, the only creatures smaller than the main beast I am interested in are those tiny Japanese twins, and that’s mostly prurient. If this rumor holds water, this bodes exceptionally ill for the movie – the idea of keeping the action amped up by having smaller monsters hunting the main characters feels impossibly gimmicky and dull. Having a street level view of a giant monster attack was intriguing to me because it seemed tricky – how do you keep the characters involved in the monster attack and defeat without unrealistically dragging them into every step of the military planning? – but smaller monsters means that the heroes have to outwit and survive these beasties while the giant monster rampage is in the background. Snore.