So, maybe we’ll know more about what the film’s effects artist calls “Godzilla Meets Escape from New York” when the real title is revealed at Comic-Con next week. But in the meantime, I do know what I hope it turns out to be.
Based on the trailer, it would seem that Abrams and company are making the first post-9/11 monster movie. I mean that not just from the standpoint of an attack on Manhattan, but from the standpoint of the verite-style home video camera approach.
Much of the material we later saw of the 9/11 attacks and aftermath came from such home video cameras. I don’t think that Abrams going that route with Cloverfield is an accident. Or, at least, I hope that is isn’t.
Imagine if 9/11 had been an even larger attack than it already was — imagine what it would have been like with an entire island trying to evacuate not calmly over the course of the days (as we saw on 9/11) but in sheer mass panic all at once.
And imagine that later on, what we saw of this was footage from all of the home video cameras being wielded within those masses.
All of which kind of brings me to my second hope: That this isn’t a monster attack movie about the people “in the know”. Not about those who understand what’s happening and what the monster is, and who are trying to stop it.
Rather, let this be about the rest of us. The ones who would have no earthly idea what the hell was going on, what was attacking us. The one who would just want to get the fuck out of there.
With all the hype already surrounding this movie, I want Abrams and company to make a movie where the audience never finds out what the monster is or why it attacked. Because the main characters — in essence acting out the way we ourselves would be in that situation — have no way of knowing. Nor, in the hysteria of it all, would they care.
That’s what I hope Cloverfield is.
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