'Cloverfield' has no conscience to lose
COMMENTARY
The "Cloverfield" monster -- the giant rampaging creature that decapitates the Statue of Liberty and destroys much of Manhattan in the recent sci-fi hit -- has been favorably compared to Godzilla. While the picture's box-office returns started big (an opening weekend of more than $40 million) and then seemed to stall, "Cloverfield's" success is sufficient to have all involved thinking franchise. The creature is slated to return in a sequel from the movie's original creative team: producer J.J. Abrams, writer Drew Goddard, and director Matt Reeves.
The Japanese "Godzilla" franchise, which eventually produced more than two dozen pictures, divested itself of its social consciousness right after its first giant-monster picture, a post-nuclear allegory, in 1954. And while there's been much debate over the resemblances "Cloverfield's" mayhem bears to that wreaked by the events of Sept. 11, it's worth asking whether this movie actually has any social consciousness to divest. Depending on how you want to look at it, the makers of the film are either really good at doing their homework, or they're just crass fear-mongers and tragedy-exploiters.
"Anyone who is upset about 'Cloverfield' must have had the same reaction to the recent 'Spider-Man' films or 'I Am Legend' or the 'King Kong' remake," Abrams told Time magazine when asked whether the film's destruction of New York hit too close to home.
On the one hand Abrams is absolutely correct -- Manhattan's come in for a fair amount of cinematic damage since Sept. 11 (although in the case of the "King Kong" remake, it's Manhattan of the 1930s). On the other hand, he's being a bit disingenuous, since "Cloverfield" also happens to be the first sci-fi monster movie for which video footage of Sept. 11 could have served as a teaser trailer.
The original 1954 "Godzilla" explicitly and frequently referenced the nuclear attacks that preceded the rise of its fictional monster -- "Not after what I went through at Nagasaki," one character replies after being asked if she's going to stick around in the neighborhood Godzilla's heading for in one scene -- and the movie ends on a pacifistic, don't-trust-governments note.
"Cloverfield" depicts a competent and caring military (a little too caring, it would seem to some, as one of its soldiers ill-advisedly allows the movie's main characters to leave their triage center) and otherwise shows no signs of any larger social consciousness, speculations on both ends of the political spectrum notwithstanding.
