Cloverfield: What the Monster Is

Based on this video, it appears that the monster really is an undiscovered form of life from deep below the ocean’s surface. That oil rig in the video is owned by Tagruato, the company who owns Slusho. They must have been drilling for the “special ingredient” I told you about on Sunday, and disturbed it or woke it up.

The dark object that the main character in Cloverfield saw at the end when he was filming the horizon might have been the oil rig being shred to pieces (though admittedly that would be dumb… the oil rig is in the middle of the ocean). I’m grasping at straws here, because I don’t know.  Although the reporter’s line at the end about “the real impact not yet being felt” is an obvious clue about the monster’s rampage in New York.

So, I no longer think it’s a mutated whale. Besides, as Kassia pointed out in the comments, whales don’t have gills.

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“ON TUESDAY, 01/22/08, AT APPROXIMATELY 1530 HOURS, IN THE CONFINES OF THE 5 PRECINCT, POLICE RESPONDED TO 421 BROOME STREET AND FOUND A MALE, WHITE, 28, UNCONSCIOUS. THE VICTIM WAS PRONOUNCED DOA AT THE SCENE. M.E.’S OFFICE TO DETERMINE THE CAUSE OF DEATH. INVESTIGATION CONTINUES.”

So, in case you haven’t heard from all over the place… Heath Ledger is dead.

One time, years back, I remember waking up on Saturday morning and having my dad tell me that “Siskel & Ebert” won’t be on because Gene Siskel was dead. That was the first time someone I knew from TV died, and I remember being kind of upset because “Siskel & Ebert” was just something we always watched on Saturday. It was really sudden, and I remember it was the first time I actually thought “but he looked so young and healthy!” when responding to someone’s death.

Apparently this was a suicide, so all bets are off. Being young and healthy has nothing to do with it if you’re still fighting demons in your own head.

RIP, Heath.

So what does this mean for the Batman movie, I wonder? Filming is already complete so it can still be released as scheduled. Delaying it would only be a knee-jerk reaction to an immediate tragedy… kind of like how The Sarah Connor Chronicles was supposed to have the ‘terminator hunts John in school’ scene redone because of the Virginia Tech shooting, then never did because we all apparently got over it in time. I hope this is not delayed, because it really doesn’t need to be, and I think the Joker will be Heath’s career defining role. And like any good “artist,” the value of their work always increases after their death.

I had doubts about him being cast as the Joker at first, but when I read director Chris Nolan’s reasoning, I was convinced. And after seeing the trailer, there is no doubt… this is the Joker. I always hated Jack Nicholson’s version, even though everybody else swears it’s the best. Jack Nicholson always just kind of looked like a guy in a Halloween costume to me. This new Joker looks as messed up as the Joker should.

I remember once hearing that celebrities die in threes. Brad Renfro was one week ago to the day. Next Tuesday it has to be someone else if this “three” theory is correct. Britney Spears is the clear choice, but that’s too obvious. Let’s say… Barry Watson. That would be just as surprising.

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When telling a story, there is a fine line between “leaving things up to interpretation” or “just not explaining it.” In one of the special features on the Lost Season 1 DVD, producer JJ Abrams told Damon Lindelof to “just make them find a hatch.” When Damon asked what the hatch would be, JJ aparently said, “don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out later.” Which is fine. People accuse Lost of making things up as they go along and therefore not being a well written show, but I feel the opposite. Making things up is what makes a story. What matters is if the things you make up make sense in the end. So the fact that there are strange ghosts named Jacob and smoke monsters running around the island is fine with me… as long as they are explained in the end.

So, when “Cloverfield” comes along, I have the same expectations. I have a lot of confidence in JJ Abrams’ ability to leave things up to interpretation (like the Matrix) rather than just not explaining things (like The Lady in the Water). So which one was it?

Spoilers ahead, so watch ya step, kid.

(more…)

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Back in 1999 when I saw the original Matrix, I had it all understood. Really, there wasn’t much to “get” beyond the philosophical stuff, which is all up to interpretation so there really is no wrong answer. Then, in 2003, came the 2 sequels: Reloaded and Revolutions, essentially a 5 hour long movie cut in half. Those movies introduced WAY MORE concepts than the first one, so much that when I saw them in the theater I was thoroughly confused and did what I do best: procrastinate. I actually figured, “I’ll analyze it later…”

Four years later, I did!

I watched the Matrix, the Animatrix, and then Reloaded on DVD and it just so happened Revolutions was on HBO-HD so I stayed up until 4am to catch that one as it aired in high definition. And the conclusion I now have is: it’s all about the Oracle.

She’s just as much a main character as Neo, if not more. Everything that happened was set in motion by her. Everything. In the theater, I was disappointed by the end of Revolutions, because I had no idea what just happened or what the conversation meant. But the Architect (the creator of the matrix) says to her: “That was a pretty big gamble.” Essentially, she risked everything–humanity, her own kind (machines), the very matrix itself–because she was a program built to study humans so well that she knew coexistence between man and machine was the only right thing to do. The problem was, she was only a computer program. She had no physical body in the real world and even if she did, she’d be a machine. She needed bigger players to go up against the mainframe, so she got them.

The Oracle eventually sacrificed herself and allowed Agent Smith to ‘assimilate’ her into his programming, so that he could use her eyes to see the outcome of his final battle with Neo, with him the victor. But the Oracle is just that good. She told Neo from the beginning “every beginning has an end,” and when Smith inadvertently said it to Neo just before he beat him in the final battle, Neo put the pieces together: “…and every end is a new beginning.” So Neo lets Smith win… he gives himself to Agent Smith, whose sole purpose at that point was to grow so large as a virus that even the machine mainframe couldn’t touch him… except at that time, Neo was jacked into the Matrix using the machine mainframe itself. Since Smith assimilated Neo and essentially became him in the ‘real world,’ the machine mainframe now had a direct connection to Agent Smith, and killed (er, deleted) him. Unfortunately, that also means that Neo dies, right? This part is up to interpretation but I think the mainframe “backed up” Neo before Smith assimilated him, and therefore Neo now exists as a program within the Matrix (possibly even given the ‘purpose’ of locating and freeing the minds that are rejecting the matrix, but that’s speculation).

As a way of saying “thanks for taking care of our computer virus,” the machines would now free whoever rejected the Matrix, and reloaded the Matrix itself to be a little more loving. Because that’s the bottom line: love. As soon as the programs within the Matrix starting having kids and creating other, new programs (like Sati, the kid in the train station at the beginning) they learned the value of love.

Or something.

Also, the “human resistance” in the real world was all set up by the machines. They built Zion (the last human city) for those that rejected the Matrix (the ‘anomolies’) in order to keep those people under some form of control. Zion could have even been another layer in the Matrix, and not actually the “real world,” but that’s all speculation.

Seems obvious now, but for some reason, none of this clicked when I watched the movies the first time. I think I actually tried to think too hard about it the first time around.

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This morning I was waiting for the bus to take me from the commuter lot to work and it was waaaay late. Then, when it arrived, as it was pulling up I noticed a strange bus driver I haven’t seen before. It was a small woman with short hair but… she had a mustache and crazy glasses. My heart skipped a beat. I thought something was up. Why was this strange woman dressed like a man? Then I realized it was Halloween. So I went to work and that was the highlight of my day.

On Friday, Katy and I saw Saw IV and I was pretty entertained even though the last one kinda sucked. The first was great, the second was better, the third was bad, but the fourth really had a lot to it. It had a lot of backstory about Jigsaw, the “killer,” and it got me thinking that, you know, he’s not really a bad guy.

I’m not sure that identifying with a “serial killer” is healthy, but that’s the thing — he’s not really a killer. He’s never killed anybody.

I actually see Jigsaw as sort of a perverted superhero. None of his victims were innocent. They were all guilty and deserved some form of punishment, but he didn’t kill any of them, it was ultimately their choice. That’s why, in the third movie, he “punished” Amanda because she made the games unfair… the victims had no way to escape. I kind of found myself rooting for him in this one because you find out what makes him put his first “victim” through a test and you get the idea that the guy really learns his lesson. More-so than a 30-day jail sentence would, anyway.

For example, one victim in the latest film raped 3 women on film. The “justice system” let him go. Jigsaw’s justice was to tie him to a machine and make him choose between escaping and loosing his eyes in the process or… getting each limb ripped off until he died.
The fact is, the real world be a better place with some people just not around, or at least served up with some nice eye-for-an-eye style justice.

Or rape-for-an-eye. Same thing.

Go get ‘em, Jigsaw. See you next year.

Happy Halloween!

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I saw Spider-Man 3 over the weekend and it was good.

That’s it.

Actually, I think I might want to say more.

It was good, but I wouldn’t call it the best of the three. It’s pretty much on the same level. Which is good, because at least it’s not worse than the other two.

What?

Kind of like Eminem’s first three albums. They are all good, but it’s hard to compare because by the third he grew as an artist so much that it was kind of a completely different album.

Anyway… things I liked about Spider-Man 3:

*The fact that it was Spider-Man 3
*The fact that it was 2 hours and 30 minutes long.
*Venom (Side note: I think of all the supervillians I would not want to find in my bedroom lurking in a corner late at night, Venom is on the top of that list. He’s fucking creepy. I think it’s the insanely muscular body and little-ass alien head.)
*Sam Raimi, Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst
*Thomas Hayden Church is a good actor and I had not heard of him before this. Although in some parts he looked like Jim Varney. I wanted him to turn to the camera and say “Knowwhadimean, Vern?”
*Bryce Dallas Howard?
*Spider-Man kickin ass.

My concern about the movie is that, somehow, it managed to have TOO MUCH going on so that I felt that it dragged on in some parts, even though it was rushing through. How is that even possible? Although the more I think about it, that’s kind of the way I feel when reading comic books.

I kind of felt like the whole Sandman story could have been a movie all by itself. There’s so much story there they could even theoretically do it without Spider-Man.

[spoilers from this point on]

There was so much going on that a lot of the scenes were rushed. The Sandman character wanders into a nuclear test site (somehow in the middle of the city) and gets the sand fused with his molecules, and… that’s it. No explanation as to what the hell was being tested, and why the scientists didn’t decide to try and track down whoever it was that sumbled into their test zone. Must happen all the time. “Oops… I think we created another supervillian, here, guys. Maybe we should reinforce the fence surrounding the nuclear test site.”

And the Venom symbiont just fell from the sky. It just felt kind of silly. MJ and Peter Parker are chilling on his web, looking at the stars, a meteor crashes, and the little alien thing clings to his bike and then that’s how shit hits the fan. I mean, I know, what else could it have done? I’m not sure what I was expecting but it just seemed like, “Okay, that’s cool, but I want to see more Sandman. HOLD ON A FUCKIN SECOND VENOM!”

I kind of felt like I spoiled the movie for myself because a lot of it is really similar. I read up on the stories in the Spider-Man comics before I went to see it, and But, it turns out that wasn’t really true. Gwen Stacy doesn’t die like I had thought. I thought that the Green Goblin would take her to the bridge after he ‘remembered’ what happened like the Green Goblin did in the comics. Then he would drop Gwen Stacey and Spider-Man would try to save her but she’d already be dead.BUT, the twisty thing was that the Green Goblin ended up saving the day, which I thought was GR-8. I like friendship and loyalty and shit like that. Except if all it took was the butler to say, “oh, yeah, B-T-Dubya, Spider-Man didn’t kill your dad,” why the hell didn’t he say that sooner?

Anyway, that’s it, mainly because I don’ t feel like typing anymore. Sorry for the suck-ass review!

AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS INVOLVING SUPERHEROES

Part 1: SPIDER-MAN

Mary-Jane: So, Pete, I have a question.
Peter: Yes, Mary Jane? You’re so sweet and I love you.
Mary-Jane: Gee, thanks Pete. I was wondering, though… about your… webbing.
Peter: My webbing? What about it MJ?
Mary-Jane: How does it…? I mean, does it just shoot out of your skin?
Peter: [holds up his wrists] You never looked?
Mary-Jane: [squeemish] Actually, no.
Peter: Well, when I press my two finges into my palm, this little flap on my wrist opens up and it just comes out. [demonstrates]
Mary-Jane: Oh. I’ve never looked at it that closely before. Why is your wrist wet?
Peter: Oh, that’s just the after-effects. I’m not really sure what it is. [smells it] Some kind of lubricant, probably.
Mary-Jane: So… your body just makes that stuff?
Peter: Yeah. I have to eat like crazy, otherwise I’ll run out and get tired.
Mary-Jane: I always just thought it was some kind of artificial fabric or something.
Peter: Nope. That shit’s all natural. It feels SOOOO good when it comes out.
Mary-Jane: [gulps] Peter I have nightmares that I’ll give birth to baby spiders.

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