Cloverfield/Headscratchers

• What do you suppose caused that massive explosion early on in the movie? The one that Liberty statue's head is flung out of? Most of the scenery gorn throughout the movie is consistent with structural damage brought on by things hitting buildings, monsters knocking into them, etc, and things that tend to catch fire... catching fire. But where did that giant pyrotechnic come from?
  • Apparently, Clover overturned a boat made of Explodium.
    • The bluray special feature Jossed that; it states that the boat didn't explode at that point and would not explode for several hours. Maybe Clover ruptured a lot of gas mains or something?

• Everything about the creature bugs me because they're trying to justify it as being a terrestrial lifeform.
  • Firstly, why would a deep sea creature be so amphibious? It hardly looks aquatic at all. It'd be like expecting a giant squid to suddenly crawl out of the water and be totally adapted to land.
    • While there's all sorts of other problems with its biology, I can kinda accept the monster as an aquatic creature if it was a bottom-dwelling predator, like a gargantuan spider crab.
  • How could it be terrestrial? At the end of the film, if you look very hard at the right hand side when it faces the ocean, you can see something streaking towards the ocean and falling into it. I thought that pointed to it being an extra-terrestrial! Though I've only watched the movie, I haven't seen anything else associated with it (manga, marketing campaign), so if the question doesn't pertain to the movie, then my comment is moot. Move along....
  • Word of God claims the object was a satellite that awoke the creature from hibernation.
    • That just raises further questions. How is it that a satellite, slowed by the resistance of at least a mile of water, still managed to fall with enough force to wake the monster up? Especially seeing as how this is same monster that was able to shrug off anti-tank weaponry with relative ease.
      • From what I've read on the Cloverfield wiki, God Never Said That (and like you said, that makes absolutely zero sense). The Tagruato Corporation, which was looking for the satellite, had already located and was studying the dormant monster using the Chuai Station. Somehow their research activities (which, being a mining company, probably involved drills and a whole lot of stupidity) woke it up. The falling satellite was more of a Continuity Nod to the ARG and such, not the direct cause of Cloverfield's rampage. Unless of course, Word of God said something different in the commentary, interviews or such... personally, I just disregard it all as speculation save for the events in the movie, which is pretty much all we'd have to go on if something like that really did happen.
  • What could such a species possibly feed on? There'd have to be a whole ecosystem of undiscovered deepsea monsters, not just Clover, just to support the species.
    • Maybe the Clovers fed on each other, or at least the smaller individuals. It'd make some sense, since nothing else is bigger.
      • It's impossible for a species to survive entirely by feeding off of each other, for about the same reason it's impossible to create a perpetual motion machine.
    • It feeds off a high-energy deep-sea nectar, a primary ingredient in Slusho. Learn the Canon before you post a Just Bugs Me.
      • When the "canon" you're referring to is an obscure manga adaptation that has almost nothing to do with the movie and raises far more questions than it answers, maybe a little less self-righteous snark is in order.
    • There's a lot they could do with such a premise, but since good fiction is confusing and vague, especially when coming from the creators of Lost. don't expect it to ever be explored.
  • Baleen whales and whale shark feed on microscopic planktons, krills, etc., so the food source is there. The problem is that Clover doesn't seem to have the filtering mechanism...
    • Clover is a baby, correct? If the adult is in proportional size to a baby, there's no way the ocean could sustain a population of them. The Blue Whale, as an adult, is only about 100 feet long. An infant of Clover's species is 1200 feet long. An infant.
    • Perhaps Clover has been sleeping for so long, the last time adults were around was the time when there were other ridiculously large things around and there used to be other huge animals it preyed upon that lived in the deep areas. I'm pretty sure theres some big gaps in fossil record, especially way down deep on the ocean floor.
      • So it's a... what, one million years old baby'? Right.
    • Or perhaps Clover's species is normally smaller than that, and it grew so huge because A) it's the last of its kind, with no parents around to wake it up on schedule, so it just kept sleeping and growing; B) pollution of the "deep-sea nectar" (huh?) affected its growth rate, like pollution mutates animals in a zillion other bad movies; or C) some other Ass Pull excuse.
      • Or it's an ancient life form that didn't evolve our rapid reproduction or mortality.
    • Perhaps it's like the paradoxical frog, which actually shrinks to about a quarter of its original size when changing from a tadpole to a frog. Though that would take away a lot of the impact from the idea of it being a baby, so I doubt it.
  • What was the significance of the satellite if Clover was already awake?
  • Why would Clover swim all the way to New York from Japan? Yes, I know everything has to happen in either New York or Tokyo in fiction, but they're a damn long ways away and if it was rampaging around everywhere you'd think it would have left a trail of destruction in it's wake either across Asia and European waters or South America.
    • According to the All There in the Manual parts of the viral marketing campaign, it did, including a destroyed oil rig and chewed up whales (some of which can be seen here). Apparently if you listen closely in the first scenes of the movie you can hear a news report on some of what it's done.
  • The creature's skin was really tough, it could withstand everything humans throw at Clover; so how do the parasites grapple onto it?
    • Forget grappling on to it. If they're parasites, particularly nasty carnivorous flea-like ones, the implication is that they're feeding off Clover's blood - but how could their jaws penetrate bullet-rocket-smartbomb-proof skin?
      • They're parasites? I thought they were parthenogenic offspring.
    • The Fleas could secrete something that breaks down the skin's toughness. If there were a sequel (Thor forbid!) expect the troops to be armed with Flea-spit warheads.
    • Or there are places on Clover's body where its skin isn't so thick, but they're in well-concealed spots that the soldiers didn't happen to hit.
    • I don't recall, were anti-armor weapons used at any point? Kevlar is bullet proof but can still be cut and sewn, and chain mail is strong against blunt and slashing attacks but can be easily stabbed through. The creature's armor could be strong against blunt forces like explosives and standard bullets but still vulnerable to needle-sharp claws and teeth.
      • We saw various Abrams tanks firing upon the creature through the movie, and those carry "Silver Bullet" rounds, depleted uranium ammo for anti-armor purposes.
  • How come the manga seems to be going for a supernatural evil god setup when everything else has a pretty bland science fiction explanation?
    • Because the film explanation made no sense. At least if you say "it's a god", no rational explanation is needed.
      • I thought it being an extra-terrestrial life form made enough sense for the film to work. But I've only seen the movie.

• From what I can gather from the above, the sequence of events is thus: a sattelite falls out of orbit and plunges into the ocean, some japanese corporation (Targruato?) go after it and find much more than they bargained for i.e. Clover, presumably nomming on "high energy seabed nectar". They try to study Clover at first but this only disturbs it, cue film. However, if that is the case, how the fonz did Clover's mum even come to Earth in the first place??
  • Since Clover's a kaiju, there are a few choices: 1) Clover's mum is of some mundane species of sea-beast, and Clover is simply a mutated form. 2) Clover's mum hails from space, fell off NY's coast millions of years ago, and produced Clover. 3) Clover's mum is of some mystical monster race, either bred as guardians or simply evolved as Earth's protectors, and Clover was lucky enough to be awakened before he'd grown. 4) Clover's mum, and by extension, Clover, is the result of a mad science experiment that was buried beneath the sea. Most kaiju have at least one of those as their origin.

• Does anyone know what the significance is of the number six to the franchise? Because there definitely is one, the girl in the Happy Talk section of the slusho! website even asks you this question directly. Not only that, but according to the contest rules for the "Slusho! Happy Commercial Contest of Joy": "requests [about the contest winners] must be received no later than six weeks after the end of the Contest Period. These Official Rules will be posted on the Website during the Contest Period and for six weeks thereafter". Their slogan is even "You can't just drink six!", what does it mean???

• What exactly is the creature's skin made of that it can stop anti-tank weapons? Modern tanks have reactive armor made of the most dense material feasibly stable enough to create armor from on Earth, in degrees so thick it requires, in the more extreme cases, a jet engine to move. And yet a missile that can make mince meat out of that, is utterly befuddled by a big wall of flesh?
  • If the tie-in manga's any indication, the thing possesses a Healing Factor that probably accounts for this and means that it might take damage, but the damage goes away really fast. Case in point: It regenerates its eye after being shot by a shoulder-held missile in only a few seconds.
  • This troper feels much the same. I am not a fan of the military constantly losing against the big bad monster in any movie, but Cloverfield struck me as particularly ridiculous. Highly-advanced technology from aliens being able to resist attacks from puny Earthlings? Alright, that can slide. But Clover is apparently just as much an Earth creature as a dog, crocodile, or humans. Yet it took an ungodly amount of punishment that should have been enough to vaporize any organism and kept right on truckin'.
  • Giant Monsters being absurdly hard to put down with conventional weaponry is actually more justified than it looks like at first glance. Somewhere on the internet, in reference to Cloverfield, even, it was pointed out that 1) attacking a monster that big with most weapons is comparable to attacking a human with red-hot needles and firecrackers, and 2)Given that it can move around under its own power, whatever it is made out of is a lot tougher than conventional materials.
  • Seems plausible for small arms, sure, but our heaviest stuff allows us to hit way above our own weight, so to speak. To the point that it's not so much like attacking a human with firecrackers, but more like at least attacking him with a .22, etc. Even if it was all just comparable to needles, even that should eventually slay Clover — "death of 1000 pinpricks" anyone?
  • The answer is pretty simple: Because that is how giant monsters roll. Nobody ever complains about Godzilla and his pals being able to shrug off everything the military throws at them, because, well, they are giant monsters and that's what they do.
  • Weapons designed to destroy armored vehicles aren't necessarily very useful on a gigantic animal. Kinetic energy penetrator ammunition (such as the "Silver Bullet" used by the Abrams tank) is far more efficient on hard targets than soft ones. High explosive anti-tank ammunition probably wouldn't even detonate as Clover's skin is too different from vehicle armor, and even if it did it has a very concentrated "pin-prick" effect. Canister rounds would probably be the best choice, but then you need to fire at close range and it would still take a lot of them to bring down a creature of that size.
  • And for all we know, Clover might've already been dying a slow death from many, many small wounds when the Hammerdown was launched. When you're that big, even your disoriented death-throes are going to trash buildings and play Helicopter Flyswatter with whoever's nearby.

• Hud is clearly smiling while cleaning the camera, hoping the rag obscures it. Apparently, no one in editing noticed.
  • He's um.....very happy to have a clean camera.
    • Maybe he was having a little bit of a breakdown, considering the circumstances.

• "Oh, there's something weird coming up behind us in this dark tunnel, we should wait and see what it is!" What the fuck?
  • That's not what happened. They saw rats running away from something, and then they quickened their pace. Hud turned around for a second to turn night vision on to tell if he could see what was scaring the rats. The reason they didn't all immediately run was because it's unwise to waste your energy running if you don't know what's behind you. They might need that energy later. Those were rats, rats scare easily.
    • Huh. Me, I was nearly yelling 'Follow the rats, follow the rats!'. I am glad I was mistaken.
    • The rats weren't just 'scared'. If there are legions of rats - New York subway rats, mind you, I don't think they'd scare easily - running away in waves from something, then that alone should tell you they're trying to get away from something very, very bad.
    • For all they knew, the rats were running away from other humans, not monsters only Hud had caught a glimpse of on the shop TV. And running along subway tracks in the dark is a good way to fall and break an ankle, which is not a good thing to risk unless you're sure the alternative is encountering something deadly.

• Later, I was also calling 'Ma'am, you are in a female's apartment. Look for some normal shoes'. The woman's near constant use of heels bugged the living bejeebers out of me. You simply do not cross half the city and go spelunking in heels.
  • Even shoes with heels can be better than shoes that don't fit. Too loose, and you'll slip constantly. Too small, and your feet go numb.
    • These were young women 18-30 we're typing about here. At their ages they can climb mount everest in high heels. It's the over 30 women who have to creatively hide their age related inability to wear high heels all night.
    • Does not reflect this female troper's experience. Some women don't feel discomfort in heels, even cheap ones. Some feel lots, even in quality ones. It has nothing to do with age. This Troper's mother wears heels much more than she does.
    • And that's not even mentioning that it's extremely hard to run for your life in strappy high-heels, much less over debris, gravel, on a slanted-roof, etc. Even if a woman in comfortable is them, they're very impractical shoes.

• The scene in Central Park near the end. I understand everyone was severely rattled (and lucky to be alive at that point) but nobody felt Giant Monster-San sneaking up on them?
  • A couple possibilities, 1. It was already there and the footsteps are just it coming a bit closer. 2. They just got out of a crashed helicopter, so severerely rattled doesn't begin to explain it. 3. Clover is just that fricken stealthy.
    • Or, seeing as how Clover is a giant, it could have just taken a few long steps rather than a bunch of small ones and ended up there. Or it sprinted/jumped. Its like if you saw an ant a few yards away. To the ant, those few yards are a lot of miles and take a while to cross. To you, those few yards are just a few yards that might take you a couple steps or one long jump to cross.
  • Maybe Clover entered the park to get away from the nasty stingy little bugs who kept shooting at it, and he stopped to investigate the crashed helicopter?
    • Sneaking up? It had just batted their helicopter out of the sky! They got so disoriented by the crash they sort of forgot or assumed he had gone. He may have stayed put.
  • Sneaking aside, what is the monster's motivation for killing unrelated and unimportant ants? And why with its mouth if it wasn't going to eat them? - It has perfectly good limbs to stomp and smash anything with. And why waste time and energy performing the magical death-bite that doesn't leave puncture holes?
    • This troper took it as less of a "killing" motivation and more of a curiosity thing. Clover's a baby. For a similar experience, watch a puppy explore; it will never consider actually killing something, but it will gum anything in sight to figure out what exactly it is and what to do with it. This explains why Clover stared at Hud for a sizable few seconds before actually touching him; Clover was observing and noticing that Hud wasn't going to fight back so it assumed it was safe to pick him up to see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately for Hud, exploration for Clover involves picking him up with some hella-big mandibles and dropping him a fair distance when it realizes humans aren't anything exciting.

• For that matter, how did the monster knock them into Central Park in the first place? Matthew Broderick's Godzilla is supposed to have helicopter pilots who cannot go upwards. It was already established that the monster can throw things hella far, a chunk of something (maybe a famous statue) clipping the helicopter would have been much more realistic then 'OH HAI ALL YOUR COPTERS ARE BELONG TO ME'.
  • Worse, it looks like the pilot was not only incapable of flying upwards but was deliberately trying to give Hud the best possible camera angles. I suppose it didn't occur to him/her or anyone else on that helicopter to fly away from the giant monster on the receiving end of a Macross Missile Massacre.
    • The pilot could not simply fly away. With artillery and bombs falling all over the place, he would probably be flying through a very specific flight path to avoid getting hit. His mistake was being interested in the apparently dead monster and flying slightly lower to get a better look.
      • I have a hard time buying that the only 'safe flight path' would be the one right next to the huge bombardment of the huge monster. This isn't so much a battleground as tracking and shooting a moving target, which then means that anywhere away from said target is a certified safe zone. They still fly right alongside it, and low enough to be within reach of the monster. That pilot was just asking for it, and it's the kids' bad luck that they were flying with him.
    • There must've been other helicopters deployed to keep tabs on Clover's movements, that the pilot had to avoid colliding with.
      • So it is more important to get a couple extra seconds on Clover's movements than to move out of the way to let the civilian helicopter to get away? Also, they're sending THAT many helicopters that crowded the sky to the point where the civilian helicopter can't get away? Some military organization, huh.

• After the subway tunnel battle against the Giant Fleas of Doom, nobody thought to -keep- a metal pipe with them? Especially since they figured out a bite makes you explode.
  • They didn't figure out the 'splodey until it happened pretty much in front of 'em, and how would they know if the bugs would come out the subway?
    • Plus only Marlena had the pipe, and she dropped it when she got bit. The rest of them were more concerned with getting to safety than grabbing a weapo.

• What kind of cell phone did the main character steal? He gets a call from outside the city (in a sub station whose entrance is under debris) after many buildings fell. Sadly, we KNOW what happens to the cell phone network after two buildings fall. And why wasn't the cell phone network overwhelmed by everyone calling each other in this emergency situation?
  • It was a Nokia, and a jammed cellphone network means people are using it. He might've just been one of the few lucky people who actually got calls through.
  • As for getting reception in the subway, there has been a drive for New York's subways to be rigged for cell-coverage so that people can use theirs in emergencies. Indeed, given the state of near-by areas, the subway may be the only local place with coverage.
  • He didn't steal a phone. He stole a new battery for his phone, because the original battery died on him. He listens to a message that was left on his phone, and later gets a call from his mom, two things that couldn't have happened with a completely new phone.

• At one point in time the army has one space for a civillain and they... take the one that doesn't have a giant hole through her chest. It doesn't make any sense at all.
  • It's possible they thought the one with the hole in her chest would have died anyway, and they wanted to make sure somebody made it.
  • They had another chopper inbound. Besides, I don't think Rob would let her go alone and I suppose the army guy reached the same conclusion.
  • The first chopper might've already passed around whatever medical supplies it carried, while the second had a fresh supply.

• The DVD's alternate endings were not. I know that is confusing but the plot was not affected one iota.
  • Just watch them with the commentary on, it explains just how much (a.k.a. A LOT) was different with those endings.

• Interesting sidewalks, dude. I know, budget concerns means we don't get ten minutes straight of Fifth Avenue in flames, but the amount of time the camera was pointed straight down bugged me.
  • Side effect of Shaky Cam. Hud's not pointing the camera every second it's recording, so it hangs around his neck quite often.
  • This troper admits that she sometimes forgets the camera is on and points it down at the floor/sidewalk/ground repeatedly. Although efforts are being made to stop that habit, because it annoys viewers of the video later. Hud probably forgot the camera was on at a few points in time, because of fleeing for his life and all that.

• Why in the hell did not one of the survivors even attempt first-aid on one of the girls after she was bitten? She had dozens of deep punctures on her torso, and the only thing they do is give her water to wash the blood off. No one rips off pieces of their clothes to make bandages or even help with compression. Even when they come across a field-hospital, no one even thinks of immediately telling the medical staff about their hurt friend. It's only until she's about to explode does someone even notice her injuries. Nice friends you got there.
  • It's very common for ordinary people to either overestimate or underestimate the severity of injuries. Then too, different people react differently to traumas - some will faint from one tiny cut, some will appear fine for several minutes after receiving an ultimately fatal stab, cut or gash.
  • And Marlena (or whatever her name was) came off as the only likeable and heroic one of them, and was punished for it. Nobody else seemed to care about anyone else, except the main guy's "WAAAAAAAALT! WAAAAAAAAAAALT!" hunt for his impaled girlfriend.
  • Considering the size and weirdness of the wounds, and the way they were oozing rather than bleeding copiously, it's possible her friends just didn't know how to treat them properly. Trying to dress the bite-marks without a clue what they were doing wouldn't have accomplished anything except to cause her pain.
  • Well, that, and maybe it's just that they were regular people, and not everybody just knows first-aid. I know, many people do, but to just assume that when a person is bleeding the people with them will always make bandages out of clothing and administer all the first aid that they need is too much to ask of the general population.

• Most of these Just Bugs Me bug me. It is so difficult to accept that normal, ordinary people - people who only a few hours ago considered one of their friends having sex with another to be the most earth-shattering thing in existence - would make less-than-intelligent decisions? Hell, real life disasters provide innumerable examples of how an unexpected situation, lack of training and/or preparation and constant danger result in people doing incredibly stupid things and often getting themselves killed as a result.
  • There are understandable foolish choices, and then outright stupid choices. For example, going into the heart of the disaster area to find your injured girlfriend is incredibly unwise, and yet totally understandable. Not trying to arm yourself with a weapon after nearly being horribly mauled by giant creatures is stupid. Making these judgements might be because the audience have never been in that sort of situation and therefore don't get it, or maybe because they really are foolhardy.
  • Also, I don't think the military counts as "normal, ordinary people" when they're supposed to be trained for stressful, dangerous situations.

• For me, it's that soldier who helps the kids sneak out of the field hospital- sure, it makes it seem like he has a heart, but he's letting three teenagers out on their own while there's a huge monster on the loose! He has to be one the most irresponsible soldiers in all of fiction.
  • The main characters are all in their late twenties, and the soldier lets them go very reluctantly, and is clearly worried they would just try to break out if they were held there.

• Did no one notice that there is, very briefly, music in the movie? I'm not talking about the party scene; there's a jump chord as the monster comes around a building before they go into the subway, and there's "scary" music when they get attacked in the tunnels. It's really faint, but I noticed it, and it took me right out of the movie. I hate jump chords. (Is there an It Just Bugs Me section for movie score tropes?)
  • This troper does not have the DVD with him at the moment, but the "music" he thinks you're referring to is actually high-pitched vocalizations from the monster and the parasites.
  • I second that. The creators of this film really took a lot of big creative risks, enough that they'd leave out some background music. I'm pretty sure it was just the critters' whalesong-in-hell vocalizations.
  • Thirded. This troper thought it was a scare-chord at first, too, but went back during later viewings and listened to the sound a few times, and it definitely sounds more like a high-pitched roaring.

• There's a part right after Hud rewinds the footage to show everyone when the monster walked by. If you focus on the woman's voice, you can hear her saying near the end 'It was giant, like (a) cloverfield!'. I put 'a' in parentheses since I'm not sure whether she says that in between or not, but it still doesn't make sense. It's just too weird for a name tie-in moment; why would she say the monster looks like a cloverfield if she added 'a', or how would she know a monster thing named Cloverfield?
  • that's easy... she didn't.

• The Hammerdown protocol just bugs me. Laying waste to the most heavily populated and valuable real estate in the entire country makes no sense and would end up killing far more people than the monster could if it stayed in Manhattan for a month!
  • Nothing else had worked against the Cloverfield monster. Although the amount of damage and loss of life is arguable, the fact is that the Hammerdown Protocol was their last-ditch attempt to actually hurt the damn thing. Like that army guy said, Clover was winning. (Not to mention that the parasites were already travelling through the subway tunnels. You really want waves of those things escaping and breeding outside the city?)
    • Also, valuable real estate? I don't think anyone is going to buy half-destroyed and parasite-infected apartments any time soon. Not to mention that eventually Clover might have decided to move out of Manhattan.
      • To be honest, I don't think real estate was their main concern at that time, sort of like playing Angry Birds in the trenches.
  • Note that they don't use it until Clover is in Central Park, which is by far the most expendable part of the city to drop a bomb on if you're trying to minimize casualties and infrastructure damage.

• When was the Hammerdown Protocol created? Was it something that was quickly developed and approved once Cloverfield started attacking the city, or did the government actually have a protocol on stand-by in case they ever needed to bomb one of their own cities? And if they did, why would they create such a protocol?
  • Presumably it was an existing protocol, with a justification along the lines of "If a city is completely overrun by invaders and we have exhausted all options for winning it back, it's better to blow the place up and kill the invaders than let them have it." It would only need a bit of modification to apply to assault by giant monster and Fleas of Doom.
  • After all the more and more realistic science fiction movies and whatnot, I think it's foolish to think that the government doesn't have at least one "OK, what if there actually is a giant monster attacking one of our cities?" protocols. That, and just as the above troper stated, it's likely just a "exhausted all options" option.

• How did a bite from the parasites make someone explode? Is it some sort of venom to make flesh easier to eat? Is their saliva full of a cocktail of chemicals that causes an extreme reaction? Do you get infected with some sort of deep-sea bacteria that bursts you from the inside? And besides all that, how is it even possible to do that, especially with no real symptoms or noticable physical changes until it's pop-rocks time?
  • One of the more common explanations hinted at in the ARG is that the parasites' saliva had an enzyme that a) caused blood to flow easier/decrease clotting (like leeches), b) caused an inflammatory response to bring blood closer to the surface(like mosquitoes) or c) some combination of a and b. Only, this isn't an itty-bitty buggle ... the enzymes were in a concentration in the saliva (and the creatures transferred an amount of saliva) meant for a very large target. Thus, disastrous results. Whether or not the results mesh up to how a human body would really react under such conditions is moot, as it probably wasn't meant to be examined that closely.
  • Yeah, the parasites' bites are probably just like fleas and mosquitoes, with circulatory enzymes evolved specifically to work with the monster's size and exotic blood chemistry. Take a Godzilla-sized dose of chemicals meant for a creature unlike anything else on Earth, inject them into a human being... and stand back, 'cause it's going to get messy.
  • I have no evidence, but could the parasites' saliva maybe have something in it that caused a victim's temperature to rise really fast? That could be the reason for the exploding and eyes bleeding...
    • I was watching the bluray special feature for the movie, and one of the facts it brings up is that there's a theory that pouring water might have caused a reaction which "accelerated the deaths of [Marlena] and other victims." So perhaps the salivia is meant to kill them slowly, but it being mixed with H2O ends up making them explode.
    • But if the monster lives underwater, then how... why... Huh?
  • It bugs me that after going to all the trouble of making a film from a handheld perspective, they deliberately missed the opportunity to show some really graphic gore with an exploding person. If they'd done it on camera it would have made the film into really High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Instead they decided to opt for a behind the screen discretion shot. Face-palm...
    • That's due to Executive Meddling. The filmmakers were forced to keep a PG-13 rating, as it would make more money. Hence the Gory Discretion Shot as opposed to full-on explodiness. Although honestly, it seems more disturbing behind the screen, since you don't know exactly what happens to Marlena, just that it's horrible and there's a lot of spewing blood involved.

• Is the manga canon? and if it is, why wasn't there somebody Telepathically linked to the baby in the movie?
  • Well, I would assume so based on this link. If the credits are to be believed, I don't think the writers and producers would just make something about the monster that basically had no other connection besides that. As for your second question, either it's a new baby that hatched and doesn't have a link or the fact that the movie takes place in New York and the link just wasn't there.
    • As someone said above, the manga inexplicably takes things in a drastic different direction than any other. A movie version of Oddball in the Series, more than likely.

• It bugs me that the movie makes sense if you don't read or view any of the supplemental material. But as soon as you get into Slusho and Japanese corporations, and sea critters, it all falls apart. Why not just let it stand?
  • Because the creators of the film wanted the audience to be in the same situation as the characters. The wanted us to relate to them. In other words, they wanted us to have absolutely no ****ing idea what this thing was, where it came from, and why it was in New York. They wanted us to feel like we were at the going away party right with Rob and CO. when **** hit the fan.
    • They accomplished that at the beginning, though, when there was absolutely no background material. However, once you do start looking into the background material, it stops making any sort of comprehensible sense at all. When all you can do is guess at the monster's nature and origins the movie works. When it's said to be a deep-sea baby monster that fed off of algae, it becomes ridiculous.
      • More or less ridiculous than a somehow-still-living species of carnosaur who gained monster status from an atomic bomb?
        • More. Godzilla never attempted to play things realistically. The original Godzilla was basically just a walking metaphor for the dangers of nuclear weapons. Then when stuff started being expanded it became a whole world full of unrealistic stuff: mutant powers, psychics, magic (mostly Mothra), aliens and sci-fi technology. Cloverfield tries to act like its set in a more realistic setting and we are meant to sympathize with the characters as none of us know anything. But then they trickle out "could be" and "this is what we thought" type stuff and things start to make less and less sense. Most of the ARG stuff just over complicates this even further and Kishin literally just makes it an incoherent mess. Things would honestly work better if we were told that Kishin was just an attempt to sell Cloverfield to the Japanese by making it a full blown Kaiju and less of a thriller.

• When me and my dad re-watched the movie, dad thought the characters' plan was very stupid (he also agreed with the Developing Doomed Characters problem, and he kind of agreed when I commented after Marlena's death "Congratulations, movie, you've brutally killed off your only likeable character."). I'm not well-versed in New York's geography and even with Wikipedia I still ended up confused as to what was happening, but he said was that he was led into thinking everyone was heading into New York instead of out - this was before Rob went off to be the Big Damn Hero and save Beth. Me, I never managed to get where they were going. So... er, were they heading towards the way out of NYC or just moving to a different part of the city? I have to admit that getting out of the city would strike me as the best choice in such a situation...
  • Wow. This isn't ignorance of NYC geography, this is just not paying attention, and blaming the movie for it. They were headed for a building in NYC to get the guy's girlfriend, and then they went to the helicopters in an attempt to evactuate like everybody else. Not complicated at all.
    • Okay, maybe I expressed myself poorly. What I was trying to say was that before they went off to save Beth, during the "Let's go to that Whateveritsnameis Bridge!" scene, I was completely confused as to where the main characters and the crowd they were part offwhere heading, and I got the impression that they were heading to a different part of NYC instead of trying to get out of the city. That scene is kind of hard to follow for me. Also, I don't remember the helicopters being a factor in that scene where they're crossing the Nameescapesmeatthemoment Bridge, so maybe that's why it struck me as stupid - I guess I thought they'd get out of NYC on foot by walking northwards. Probably not a good idea either.
  • They were trying to get off Manhattan Island by the nearest route, which happened to be the Brooklyn Bridge.
    • Okay, thanks! I assume that scene wouldn't confuse me as much if I was a NYC resident?
      • Its worth noting that New Yorkers refer to Manhattan as "the city", so leaving for Brooklyn would be thought of as evacuating the city.

• So does Staten Island not even exist in movies? Clover and American Godzilla just swim right by. Are they repelled by Axe Body Spray and orange tans, or is Manhattan somehow a higher priority target for mindless rampaging monsters?
  • Imagine you are a giant monster. Would you want to eat a guido? Or would you swim a little further to get something tastier?
    • Joking aside, a lot of Staten Island is paved-over landfills. That may have kept it away.
  • One of the things that made Jurassic Park scary was that there was a chance the dinos might escape to the mainland. I suppose Clover and Godzilla just skipped that step for the sake of the scary.
    • Did you just insinuate that raging Kaiju partook in impromptu executive meddling? (of course, that would explain how the gang keep finding the monster by sheer coincidence!)
      • (...Not to mention the unfortunate broke bridge very early on...)

• Is the manga ever going to be released in the US as anything other than a Godawful scanlation?

• It bugs me that the movie let way too many things go unanswered and then (depending on who you talk to) either tried to use the ARG and interviews to fill in the gaps after the fact; or didn't, and they were well and truly yanking plot points out of their rectums. I get what they were trying to do; I know that your average person in that kind of survival situation wouldn't have access to those answers. But it seems like they took the "We don't have to explain ourselves lulz" excuse and ran with it, to the point where nothing makes sense and the plot is impenetrable simply for the sake of being impenetrable. Hell, the whole thing smacks of either Viewers are Morons or Ass Pull; remember what a big deal JJ made out of the fact that the title was only a placeholder and that he'd be releasing the real title any day now, only to reveal that they decided to stick with Cloverfield because "the fans already know it by that name and we don't want to confuse them"? Bullshit, Mr. Abrams. Either you think so little of your fans that you don't trust them to know the difference, or you never thought of anything better and you were trying to covering your ass (not that that would be without precedent).
  • This Troper is inclined to agree. The movie was a pretty entertaining monster flick, until I started to delve into the background. Now it's just incomprehensible and a bit of a joke.

• What bugs me are the interruptions when the camera stop recording and show those Tastes Like Diabetes moments. My reason is that right at the begging we are told that the recording was found and that is, IIRC, from a SD memory card and not form a video tape, and some how the new video is recorded over old video, and i don't think that, if the SD card had suffered damage, the process to recover the data would have overwrite one video over the other.
  • Clearly, this is a special kind of SD card damage. Or it might've been a tape after all.
• I have a problem with the whole "lets go save Rob's Girlfriend" plan. Not that Rob thought it was a good idea or that his friend's followed him, but that Marleena also went with them. She makes it very clear in the beginning that she doesn't know Rob, and by extension Beth, from Adam and it is also implied that she doesn't know any of them very well so why go with them? You can argue that you'd feel safer in a group, but that falls apart when you realize that she doesn't actually know them and she believes their plan is horribly unsafe. She could have easily joined the mass exodus of people leaving the city when they were in that alley. However, instead of giving a legitimate reason for why she would stay the camera cuts away for a few seconds and she is seen following them where ever they are going. Lazy writing on the part of the screenwriters.
  • Hud was Rob's friend. Marleena was Lily's friend. Lily went with Rob, so we get all four. Still a bad plan, but if you bought Hud and Lily's following Rob, Marleena was not all that much further.
  • Also, Marleena probably didn't feel any safer running around on her own when there was this handy group of people whose names she knows to help watch her back (for all the good that did), so she made what seemed like a sensible decision to stick with them.

• This is a relatively new problem when it comes to Kaiju movies, because usually they surround either the monster or people who have some reason to be looking for the monster or to be hunted by the monster. While Manhattan is not a large place, it is certainly big enough that the monster would not be everywhere you were by sheer happenstance. There were at least 3 situations where the monster just happened to be where they were or where they needed to go. This of course doesn't apply to when they were in massive groups of people, like on the bridge, but when they were just in their little group. It seemed unrealistic that the monster would be drawn by whatever little noise they would be making.
  • The group was heading deeper into the city to find his girlfriend, right? While everyone else is trying to evacuate. The Army probably set up some sort of cordon to defend the evacuation of the city that ended up driving the monster deeper into the city, which was where the group was headed.
  • The monster might be drawn to them. Certain people have been known to "draw" kaiju to them before in the genre.
  • And presumably the reason why this piece of salvaged video was considered so important, in the aftermath, was that it happened to have been recorded by a group that did encounter Clover several times and get some good shots of him. How many thousands of other video clips were collected from the ruins, or gathered from the phones of New Yorkers who made it out? We're looking at the one recording out of all of them that contained the most information about what happened that night; videos of survivors who were lucky enough not to have so many run-ins with Clover or the ticks presumably exist, but it's this one that merits special attention because the filmers were unlucky.

• Hey, it's me, the dude from earlier who was confused at the Brooklyn Bridge scene. Now, looking over The Other Wiki's map of New York, I can't help but wonder if it would have been a better idea to just go through the Bronx (YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO LEAVE THE BRONX) and then to whatever's north of NYC? (... Westchester County?)
  • The party most likely took place in SoHo/West Village/East Village. These are areas around Houston Street, which is the equivalent of First Street; the Bronx starts at around 219th Street. It's about twenty street blocks to a mile, so that would be eleven miles to walk north, through an apparent attack in the most densely packed part of America, to go to the Bronx, when within a mile you have the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Manhattan Bridge.