Long story short, Great White Snark’s reaction to Cloverfield differs vastly from mine, and I’d like to talk about that.

First let me make note of the two points he raises that I completely agree with: 1) the shaky-cam is awful and 2) the film doesn’t do enough of what it does really well.

I think as a storytelling device the use of shaky-cam was brilliant, as it not only adds to the drama of the story by making the action more hectic, but it’s inability to clearly see the action around us is used well in the film. You want to see more of what’s going on, but you can’t, and it adds to the suspense. The fact that you only see the monster when director Matt Reeves wants you to see it is done perfectly, and I appreciate the genius of it. But, seriously, the thing was a pain in the ass. The Snarktastic One mentioned that he had to look away from the screen a couple of times and, yeah, I had to do the same thing to, you know, not puke all over the place. Granted, it didn’t help that I had 1 glass of beer before and 64 fucking ouces of Coke and half a pound of popcorn during the flick. Seriously, that was not cool.

When Great White Snark says the film doesn’t do enough of what it does well he points specifically to the military-on-monster action scenes. Honestly, I could watch an entire movie of that, and walking out of the theater my first questions to Zach were all about the military stuff (because, obviously, an IT specialist in the Navy is sure to know how the army would react to a giant fucking monster tearing up New York City). During the movie it did cross my mind how awesome the military stuff was, and how I really, really wanted to see more of it (though not in the usual lame-ass cut to General in the bunker, cut to pilot flying F22, cut to slow-mo of child looking up at F22 with an American flag in her hand Michael Bay/Roland Emmerich sort of way).

I’d go one step farther than that, though, and say that I don’t think there was enough human suffering and mass hysteria in the film, which they also did very well. By focusing on a small group of people the film ignore the millions of other people who are probably freaking the shit out, or worse. The bits it does show were some of the more interesting parts of the film.

Where I disagree with Great White Snark is in the realization of the characters and their relationships, which is clearly where I think the main difference in our responses to the film come from. He writes:

The movie is thick with style and interesting visuals, but comes up short on substance like character development. I cared not one iota whether the characters lived or died.

I remember having a conversation with a friend about The Fountain and how I friggin’ totally loved the movie while she totally hated it, and basically it came down to the simple fact that I believed the love between the characters was real and she didn’t.

I think it’s the same thing with Cloverfield. I believed that the relationships between the main characters were real. I think you kind of have to do so to enjoy Cloverfield, because that’s really what this movie is about. I think if you’re going to grab some chicken wings and some beer and start talking about this movie that you’re going be talking about it in the context of our own relationships with each other, as brought out by the film.

Now, if you don’t believe the relationships between the characters are real, then, yeah, I think it’s fair to say the movie is annoying. Cloverfield is a movie about people, not the monster.

And you know — as I’ve come to respect in my old yet handsome age — believing in the relationships between characters, or even in the characters themselves, is totally a subjective thing. I remarked to Jackie a while back that I didn’t really like Thank You For Smoking because I could never actually believe that what’s-his-face was really that slick. That’s really not something you can argue about. You buy the characterizations or you don’t. You like characters or you don’t like Cloverfield.

So, in conclusion, I won’t be punching Great White Snark in the nuts for not liking Cloverfield, and that is a courtesy that I will extend to all the peoples of the world. I would still recommend seeing the flick, but I totally get it if you didn’t like it. It’s not like disliking Se7en, which is a completely inexcusable and unforgivable personal opinion to form. In that case, your balls beware!