Cloverfield: A Lesson In Frustration

Let me start this whole thing out by saying that I enjoyed Cloverfield, but it's unlikely that I will watch it in the near future again. There is a lot about this movie to be questioned. No, I'm not talking about the fact that a monster is raging through Manhattan. I understand that there's a certain degree of forgiveness I have to muster when talking about monster movies. Here's a series of things that I have a hard time forgiving, though, and these are all things that could have made the movie better.

A 350-foot bipedal monster would crush itself. This is basically what the monster looked like. I've heard that it was 350 feet tall. I'm sorry, but gravity being what it is, and the structure that this creature has would mean that all that money and manpower spent trying to bring down this badass thing wouldn't be necessary. It would just buckle and fall since the center of gravity this thing would undoubtedly produce would kill it.

See, the largest living, mobile thing on earth right now is the blue whale. It is 110 feet long. It lives in the ocean. The largest land creature to have ever existed is believed to be a sauropod that was 89 feet long and 35 feet high. See what I'm getting at here? It just seems to me like J.J. Abrams was trying to make his creature as big as possible just to have insane shots of it moving around downtown Manhattan. Which brings me to the next thing that irritated me about this movie...

What the fuck? Why is this thing so God-damned infallible? I watched some of the special features after the film, and they say that this thing was a baby. A BABY. A 350-foot BABY. God only knows how big it was supposed to get when it was full grown.

That being said, since when do babies have the ability to reproduce? This thing sweats/flakes/poops out tiny little athropodic versions of itself that can bite and thereby infect hosts. When ready to make another sweat/flake/poop creature, it bursts out of the stomach of the host Alien-style.

I understand the purpose of all of this from a plot standpoint: it's fucking scary and we have no idea what the hell is going on and it's pretty hard to grasp watching a friend burst out a sweat/flake/poop creature from her stomach. But let's say that this thing is from another world, further lending creedence to this whole suspension-of-belief concept. What planet's ecosystem could possibly support a creature that may be up to 1,000 feet tall and reproduces by parasitic spores that need a host? It would likely take less than two years for the entire ecosystem to be obliterated by Cloverfield Monsters.

Finally, this thing can withstand the full brunt of an all-out military campaign, bombs and all. A desperate millitary has stopped caring about preserving the city of New York, and just want this thing dead. That means that everything and everyone is collateral damage. In other words, full-speed ahead, United States Military War Machine. I get that this thing is 350 feet, and a lot of effort would be required to bring it down. But throughout the film you watch this bastard absorb literally tons of firepower without so much as a stratch. WHY? I'm 6'4, and pretty big, but please don't call me a pussy if I eventually succumb to a guy repeatedly kicking me in the shins. Oh, and did I mention he has a small knife blade glued to his boot?

So there you have it. Cloverfield was a decent film, and a very clever high-concept idea. Maybe I should just concentrate on making my own monster movie with my own idea of what would happen if it destroyed Manhattan. I don't know. All I know is, this movie was very annoying.