Cloverfield Mysteries Continue With New Manga
You’ve got to hand it to the marketing crew behind Cloverfield – they’ve managed to successfully stoke the fires under the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie to an amazing degree while keeping the ‘Net rumor mill relatively spoiler-free. The level of online curiousity regarding the film is so high, in fact, that some sites have even ventured outside the U.S. to advance their quest for more Cloverfield clues.
Case in point: The strange path to (and revelations within) Cloverfield: Kishin by the crew at Comic Book Resources:
"As seen in the Cloverfield trailers, a character called Rob is set to leave New
… and the investigation continues:
"After consulting with Cloverfield experts, we soon found ourselves navigating the website of Kadokawa –a major manga publisher in Japan, known for books like Sgt. Frog, X/1999, Cowboy Bebop and others, as well as the leading manga magazine Newtype – where we discovered a manga featuring a boat with the Tagruato logo plastered on the side. This certainly piqued our interest, but as we here at CBR don’t speak or read Japanese, we enlisted the aid of some people who do, Audrey Shiomi and Justin Clemons, who helped decipher the 22-page comic."
You can find out what they discovered over at CBR, but keep in mind that it’s the journey, not the destination, when it comes to the quest for Cloverfield info.
Would it be a spoiler if I told you that none of the viral backstory stuff is required to enjoy the film?
While I'm sure there are already a thousand sites dedicated to explaining the origin of the Cloverfield monster, part of the appeal of the movie is that you experience the events exclusivley from the perspective of the hapless main characters — actually almost exclusively from the perspective of the guy with the camera (who is mostly never on camera but has all the best lines). You don't know anything they don't know. You're just as confused and clueless as they are, which heightens the tension. While they do spend some time musing about where the heck the damn thing came from, they're mostly preoccupied with not being its next victims.My 20 year old daughter and I loved it. My wife hated it.
My girlfriend just left for a week and now I'm stuck with an important decision: Go to see it without her and risk the inevitable fight or hold off on seeing it until she returns and risk the inevitable spoiler! Ack! The agony!
The choice is obvious, Rick. Wait until you can see it with her. Take the risk. The worst thing that can happen is you find out the monster is a sled. Not as bad as screwing up your relationship.And Dear Abby's got nothing on me.
"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."Take it from someone who's been married for 10 years, the above statement is true.
Take it from someone who has been married for over 20 years, that tidy little aphorism works better at work than at home. My wife may be willing to forgive me for a variety of sins, but AFAIK she hasn't forgotten a single one of them yet.
Agreed: they never forget. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we're talking about seeing a horror (not sure if it can be described as a horror) movie in a theatre, not trying out for a role in porn. ;)
It's a giant monster movie, which IMHO is a different genre than horror movies. And the solution to Rick's dilemma is obvious: Go see the movie now, but don't tell your girlfriend. IMHO, it's worth seeing twice — but if you don't like it you can just tell your girlfriend that you "heard" that the movie sucks.
Hmmm…. both points duly noted. We'll see how the temptation builds this week.
My friend AJ, who has a jewelry blog, titled a post "Cloverfield Sucks" and has lots of strangers posting. Apparently they google her title and show up to post. So if you'd like to read reactions, head over to: http://erthefae.blogspot.com/2008/01/cloverfield-…