7 minute piece (MP3) talking about how CLOVERFIELD treads the ground GODZILLA '54 has tread before. Primarily featuring an interview with Bill Tsutsui. bleh.
Not great, but worth the short listen, and makes the article I started this morning completely pointless (if Tsutsui's doing it, then it must be completely obvious).
Still, here's are some images I started for that. Might as well put it here.
"We'll be joining father in just a moment! A little longer, a little longer, we'll be with your daddy!"
SPOILER IMAGE FROM CLOVERFIELD:
http://www.nearlynews.com/mz/clover_soon2.jpg
In the meantime, maybe it would be good to have our own discussion about the parallels between the two films, both the stories and the context of the times in which they were released? And what, if any, effect the success of CLOVERFIELD might have on the genre and if it will bring Godzilla back sooner rather than later?
I can't help but compare CLOVERFIELD to G54, which itself redefined the "giant monster attacks" genre. Regardless of the directions that the Godzilla series took afterwards, there was something unique about the ability of the original film to portray an absurdity with such a sense of dread, making the events feel very real and immersive. I think part of the reason for GODZILLA's impact in was Honda's ability to balance the drama with an almost documentarian approach to the subject matter. So many of the shots in G54 of Godzilla and the surrounding chaos were ground level or from a distance, shrouded in night and fire and shadow in a fashion similar to the creature in CLOVERFIELD.
Obviously we're not old enough to have seen the original at the time, but I suspect watching GODZILLA, especially in the shadow of post WWII Japan, must have been very much like the audience experience of seeing CLOVERFIELD in post-9/11 of today. These days, we have "reality TV" and YouTube as the documentaries of our day, and CLOVERFIELD capitalizes upon that to "put us there" in what I thought was a similar and very effective way.
If CLOVERFIELD does re-energize the genre, we'll probably be flooded with derivative crap, though one could argue that few of the monster movies that followed GODZILLA were at all like that first film either -- the "VS" concept almost immediately took it in a different direction. It seems it really wasn't until Kaneko took a shot at the genre that someone again executed the puny-human-POV so effectively, even if only briefly.
So what do you think? Other comparisons come to mind? If Toho were to announce something that sounded like a copycat GODZILLAFIELD project, would you want to see that, or would you rather they come up with something less derivative?
