I spent about fifteen minutes combing through the web, trying to find leaked images of the tightly-guarded monster from J.J. Abrams' upcoming film, Cloverfield. That's all I could stomach before realizing I'd rather just see it when everyone else does. The amount of time some people have put into analyzing the trailer (which reveals nothing) and analyzing cloud patterns in the teaser poster (which just looks like clouds to me) is staggering. Every time there is a highly guarded event movie in the geek world, there are tomes-worth of speculation spun from the web. Everyone insists, "No, THIS is exactly how the plot of Spider-Man 3 will unfold!" or "THIS is the new grille design for Optimus Prime!" And, invariably, everyone is wrong. This is TIME WASTED, people. Go solve that theorem you've been working on, or play a video game, or spend more time with your pet iguana. Anything else would be quality time in comparison.I certainly hope many of the bloggers are wrong about one thing: even though the web suggests that it's been denied by Abrams, one of the most prevalent theories out there is that the monster is Cthulhu, the unpronounceable master of people's nightmares from the work of the grand-daddy of modern horror, H.P. Lovecraft. But, while Cthulhu is indeed a big slimy monster (above), the beauty and horror of his story is what happens when he's not on the page. The Cult of Cthulhu is perhaps more frightening than the monster itself. This god-like entity can haunt and control the subconsciousness of a population... can drive men who haven't seen or heard of him mad with fear... can make murderers and psychopaths of anyone through ancient, demonic magic. Cloverfield, on the other hand, seems to be a simple, good-old-fashined disaster/monster flick. Nothing wrong with that. It's been a long time since a truly good one. But I see nothing in the trailers that indicates any build-up in collective fear and subconscious paranoia. I somehow doubt there will be any bloody orgies of the damned in Cloverfield (Lovecraft really was a sick f%#*).
Cthulhu could make a really good movie (there's a straight-to-video one I haven't seen). But I sort of hope Cloverfield is just a big slimy monster movie (à la the original Kong or the kaiju big-boy himself, Gojira). When they do Lovecraft, I want them to do Lovecraft.
