YouTube: The Movie
By Steve
Cloverfield is an an OK version of Godzilla, where the Japanese people are replaced by the most diverse collection of people assembled. We have generic 20-something hot guy, generic 20-something hot girl, generic 20-something hot girl 2, generic 20-something ethnic hot girl, and generic 20-something not-so hot but funny and endearingly goofy guy. There’s the 20-something athletic guy, the 20-something kind of athletic guy, the 20-something arty-looking but athletic and good looking guy…. These people probably exist in some alternate universe in Manhattan, but for the normal people of the world, this is an alien culture of attractiveness and perfect teeth. (There isn’t a single gap or yellowed bicuspid on display.)
The first 20 minutes are torturous. They’re literally watching someone’s home movie, which is as boring and mundane as the real thing. No one’s interesting, no one seems to have a brain, no one is particularly funny… it’s just, “Oh, Rob, you’re so cool.” “Oh, that girl is hot.” “They slept together.” “OMFG, NO WAY!” It’s like the movie version of The Real World or Laguna Beach, without the contrived drama.
And then the contrived drama shows up, in the form of a giant lizard thing that attacks Manhattan. There’s no explanation, which is a good thing; the kids in the movie wouldn’t know what was going on, so why should the moviegoer? As soon as the monster shows up, the movie kicks into high-gear. The next hour is another 9/11 homage/parable as New York gets trashed while the main characters do stupid things and the guy holding the camera “documents” their actions. People are dying around them left and right, but the guy keeps filming his friends with his super camera.
(I need this videocamera. Seriously. It never breaks, has amazing image stabilization and focus, and manages to go for about 12 hours on a single charge, despite running its light and switching to night vision. Good job, unnamed Japanese company.)
And then it ends, after about 80 minutes. It’s a decent enough time, a solid B-grade movie that will no doubt be elevated to something bigger by the geek contingent who’s pumped because it’s produced by JJ Abrams. (He’s another guy that “gets” us, or something.)
But Cloverfield is also the ultimate expression of Generation Narcissist. There’s a running gag about the camera dude “documenting” the action, but it’s really what sets the movie apart from its obvious b-movie-ness. Writers and journalists have been “documenting” things forever, but today we have the unprecedented ability to share it with anyone as quickly as we can turn on our computers and type it into a document. This allows news to travel at light speed, but you have to wonder if it’s making us all more passive.
Think of the Don’t Tase Me, Bro” video. It was funny, sure. But more interesting to me was the fact no one helped the guy. It’s as if all of the outrage in the room was being put on hold so they could see how it played out. And within minutes, you just know all of those people posted angry screeds on their blogs and MySpace pages to express their outrage. Outrage!
Now take one scene in the movie. As people have seen in the trailers and commercials, the Statue of Liberty’s head rolls down the street at one point. The first thing dozens of people do is whip out their phones and start taking pictures; mind you, this is before anyone looks around to see if it hit anyone. If this was a real event, I’m sure some of them would have it up on YouTube before the first lizard sighting.
So, maybe it isn’t just a B-movie. It nails the age of YouTube, and how it’s creating a generation of narcissists who feel a compulsion to share and “document” every single detail of their lives in public. It’s the idea that nothing really happens anymore unless some guy documents it with a camera and uploads it somewhere, Twitters about it, or writes an angry forum post or blog entry. And what happens, in the global sense, isn’t nearly as important as how the event impacts individuals and their direct circle of friends.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Best monster film I have seen in a long. And I basically disagree with everything you said. :)
It brings a new twist to the formulaic trash that we have all seen before. (eg. Godzilla US version)
Like it or not it is a film made for the current internet generation and it succeeds brilliantly. It also compares well with the South Korean film “The Host”.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was OK. But what “new twist” did it bring?
Was it the “regular joe” view of an invasion/disaster? OK, but the War of the Worlds remake did this too, even if it’s hard to think of Tom Cruise as a regular joe. (I’ll go against the geek grain and say I loved that movie… well, assuming you forget everything that happened after Tim Robbins shows.)
Or do you mean making it a video diary like The Blair Witch Project? (It even had the same sort of first-person, “I’m so scared” scene.)
I do think it’s tapped into the Internet zeitgeist better than any movie has… and it’s $19 million opening night says it’s going to be a pretty huge blockbuster, probably the highest-grossing January movie ever.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I enjoyed the movie immensely. However, my enjoyment came after the movie was over, because I was too nauseous over the jumpy handi-cam perspective.
But the thing that really set this movie apart was that every other Godzilla-like flick were in the perspective of the military hot shots and the uber geek that saves the whole world; however, this film tells us what happens to the folks that are in the buildings that the monster/government is blowing up. While generals and commanders in an underground Pentagon bunker are cheering that their final Operation was a success, unbeknownst to them people were saying their last good byes.
It was a great flick that shows us a new perspective for an all-too-familiar plot line.
(Just don’t forget the dramamine…)
January 20th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
How does that make it different from War of the Worlds?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Steve:
I liked the mix of a bit of Blair Witch, The Host, and War Of The Worlds.
Probably what I liked most is that the people involved didn’t have a “gods eye” view of the events. They were regular people who had no idea what was going on.
One thing that did surprise me though was the number of people that walked out of our session because of motion sickness. Even my wife felt slightly sick afterwards. Having never suffered such a thing I was amazed at the amount of people who were having problems watching the film.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I also like withholding information from the audience. It eliminates some typically leaden and clunky exposition, but also has the nice side effect of giving the fans something to discuss. (I think games would be wise to do this too; consider Half-Life, for example.)
There were a few people that left my screening too. They even had a warning outside my theater.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:52 am
I think the difference is that there wasn’t a Tom Cruise character to make us feel like everything was going to be alright.
Clovervield was certainly a more visceral experience.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:40 am
True, having an unknown cast probably makes you think anyone will/could die at any moment.
I’m not sure I’d agree 100% that it was more visceral. That scene in the car was pretty damn intense in War of the Worlds. And the Ferry. And the flaming train. And the opening attack. And the weirdness with Tim Robbins.
Which isn’t to say that Cloverfield isn’t pretty intense at times. Again, withholding information from the viewer is, in this case, way more effective than just showing everything all the time.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:02 pm
FWIW the Cruise version of WOTW is one of my favorite monster films. Just can’t beat that initial scene when the tripod walker first emerges from the ground. :)
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I liked the movie, but in some ways I think there is a different connection in this movie to the WOTW film. In Tom Cruise’s character, you had a bad father figure, blue collar that many people in the audience could identify with and maybe even feel sympathy/empathy towards.
With these young, rich, urbane Manhattanites, I don’t think you get the same emapthic feel. You do move with them through this horrendous event, but you aren’t really as attached to them as characters. When they die, the emotional attachments aren’t there. I think this helps feed into the Internet age/narcissism that Steve was commenting on.
With this lack of empathy to these characters, the events become just a spectacle to view. It is another documented event, like a news story, from a first hand account. I don’t know if it was intentional, but it gives you reason to question why these characters didn’t elicit the same emotions. They are still humans, they are still suffering through a horrendous event. It is almost a commentary on our news culture today.
We can watch horrific events happen to people, but without that emotional connection, they are just events. Yeah, we feel kind of bad, but it doesn’t really compel emotions in most people to do things.
Again, I think I may be reading too much in what they were striving, but I felt bad for the guy running down the street in WOTW and gets zapped. I didn’t feel that same for the party goers who didn’t make it out at the beginning, and I find that part very interesting.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I suspect you are reading too much into it, and turning Tom Cruise into a blue collar guy is just as contrived as the kids.
I also suspect that the 20-somethings were chosen because the intended audience generally aspires to be those douchebags.
Or maybe the makers realized that these are the kinds of narcissists who choose to “document” things instead of experience them. The Statue of Liberty scene, where the cameras come out, is just perfect.
February 16th, 2008 at 1:20 am
I’m glad you’re as lukewarm on the movie as I was. I had the same complaints. A lot of qt3ers were dissing me for not loving the movie. Maybe it’s because they were older and thought all the characters were SO REAL and such. I’m that age and felt they were just unrealistic.