It’s Fantasy Friday once again, and that means it’s time for our readers to take over! This week, we’re going to cave to the pressures of the geekosphere and make it a themed contest: What do you think the super-secret Cloverfield monster is and why? Elaborate at will. At 5 p.m. PST, if we’ve got at least ten participants, we’re going to choose a winner based on whose scenario sounds like it would make the most kickassest movie — whether or not that has anything to do with what the movie actually turns out to be — and PayPal them $10 on the spot. Go have a monster of a beer! (Minors, better make it a Monster energy drink.)
1 • Jeremiah Tolbert said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:43 am, permalink
In a stunning disappointment, the Cloverfield Monster is a sixty foot tall motion-captured Harry Knowles.
2 • Michelle Muenzler said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:47 am, permalink
Based off of the high-pitched screeching like rending metal, the inability for the government to fight back, and the looks of complete terror on everyone’s faces, I would guess it is Mecha-Streisand. Looks like it’s time to call in Robert Smith…
3 • Paul Jessup said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:48 am, permalink
Bah, I think it’s just the creature from Lost. You know- the doctor guy- he’s a monster right?
4 • Jeremiah Tolbert said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am, permalink
If you identify a monster by the quality of his overacting, then yes, yes he is.
5 • Michelle Muenzler said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am, permalink
Hmm, I suppose it could also be a gargantuan robotic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man gone mad. I heard rumors recently the government was creating an army of them to bury our enemies beneath their doughy gear-ridden feet. I mean, who could fight back against the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?
6 • Nick Mamatas said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am, permalink
I bet it’s Darrell Schweitzer, taking his revenge on New York’s publishing industry.
7 • Stacy Sinclair said:
January 11th, 2008 at 11:23 am, permalink
After fast zombies , smart zombies and mall zombies, its time for the next iteration: The Giant Urban Zombie. It’s big, it’s trendy, and there’s only one – something this singular can only be single. We all know the Alien franchise went progressively down hill after it pluralized.
Why Cloverfield? As part of its “Think Positive” Initiative, the Military has started using pretty things as code names for National Emergencies. The next hurricane recovery? Operation Princesses and Rainbows.
8 • SilviaMG said:
January 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm, permalink
It’s a giant lizard. Like Godzilla. Only a little bigger and brown.
9 • Paul Jessup said:
January 11th, 2008 at 12:40 pm, permalink
Big Lizard in my backyard?
I think the monster is a muppet. Not just any muppet- but the banjo playing muppet of Jim Henson. How’s that for recursive?
10 • Michael R. Underwood said:
January 11th, 2008 at 12:42 pm, permalink
It’s obviously the Rampage movie. We’re already in an era of the ascent of geek culture, and who better to bring the mainstream and the geeky into glorious blockbuster collision than J.J. “I swear we’ll answer things by the end” Abrams?
Giant lizard-looking thing? Check.
Slusho sodas? Check.
Woman with distending midsection transforming into giant werewolf? Probably.
Thus, the main characters’ only option for surviving the rampage is to travel across the city to find the McGuffin Slusho soda, transform into another giant monster, and battle the other monsters across NYC to protect the people they love so that they can all go back to being rich and hot decadent youths in Manhattan.
Just like Gossip Girl, but with giant monsters.
11 • Livia Llewellyn said:
January 11th, 2008 at 2:15 pm, permalink
Before one can answer with any authority the question “what is the Cloverfield monster”, I think it’s important to answer the question “where is the Cloverfield monster doing his monstery things?”. Location is everything, after all, and I think examining the scene of his rampaging will give us the answer we’re all seeking.
New York City is a “destination” city – humans and monsters alike travel from all over the world and solar system to partake of what we have to offer. But what is it exactly that we’re offering? Well, just look around you: Manhattan is a city with its big ole steel and iron junk just jutting out of the water. Yes, I said it. Manhattan is Penis Paradise. Skyscrapers everywhere, “thrusting” up to the clouds. Massive pipes jutting out of our streets, “exploding” with steam and “water”. Long hard subway trains sliding “in and out” of dark underground tubes, over and over and over… Hell, we got so much stuff that the Hudson River had to split its wet self in half just to get around the island – not that the river is complaining, mind you, cause she’s kind of a slut. We got the new Godzilla so worked up, he turned into a she, ovulated on the spot, and dropped a whole bunch of eggs into Madison Square Garden. We’re the city that wants you to Do It, baby, Do It all the time. And THIS is the place to Do It. Bump your uglies right here, right on our throbbing avenues. Yes, we want you to hit ALL of that, from the Battery to the Bronx. Ok, maybe forget the Bronx and just stop at 207th Street.
So, people: what is the Cloverfield monster?
The Cloverfield monster is LOVE. It’s that pure sweet love you get when you see someone shining and beautiful in the distance, and you want them so much you don’t care how many people you have to fuck up to get at it. It’s that first giddy love that makes you knock down doors, pull off rooftops, bite Army tanks in half and set children on fire just to be with the thing than makes your naughty bits wake up and say OH HELL YEAH. It’s that raging unbridled love that makes you rush through the streets, rubbing your aching flesh against every part of your sprawling paramour, rubbing and rubbing until they’re falling apart in utter awe and ecstasy (or dying in horrible pain – still not sure about this part). But anyway, yes, people, the Cloverfield monster is Love personified, the manifestation of all our secret hopes and desires that we can take our Significant Other by storm, fuck it up and rip it apart, and leave it crying in ruins in the morning, unable to ever experience pleasure again – except by our hands. Or fins. Or hook claw bitey limbs, whatever. It’s about love. So simple, folks. And, so true.
I think the Cloverfield monster is also about crabs and lice, but that’s a different kind of love, so I’ll save that discussion for another time.
::scratches self::
12 • Silvia Moreno-Garcia said:
January 11th, 2008 at 2:18 pm, permalink
I agree Michael. It’s radioactive soda which turned a small lizard into a monster. Now we have to give the soda to a monkey so we have a giant monkey versus a lizard. Add butterfly and a squid into the mix and you’ve got Mothra vs Godzilla vs King Kong vs the Giant Calamari. Suddenly I feel like its 1955.
13 • Neil Clarke said:
January 11th, 2008 at 2:34 pm, permalink
It’s the Lucky Charm’s Leprechaun taking vengeance on a world bent on “takin’ me lucky charms.” If you play the commercial at a much slower speed, you clearly see Lucky slurping up New Yorkers and screaming “They’re magically delicious!”
Later this month, General Mills will be issuing a special Cloverfield edition of Lucky Charms complete with little marshmallow people, taxis, and Statue of Liberty heads.
14 • Neil Clarke said:
January 11th, 2008 at 2:45 pm, permalink
More proof of my Lucky Charms theory comes from the pages of Discover Magazine:
“Over the decades, the marshmallow bits have undergone radical transformations in shape, size, and color. At first it was just pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers; they were magically delicious. Then the mutants began to appear. Blue diamonds. Purple horseshoes. Red balloons. Swirled whales. A rainbow. A snowman. A pot of gold. The Eiffel Tower. The frosted oat nuggets have stayed the same all along. But that plain and unchanging substrate has only served to highlight the jarring mutability of the so-called marbits. What mysterious forces are shaping the evolution of Lucky Charms?”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_8_20/ai_55248808/pg_1
Given the mass quantities of this mutagenic cereal that Lucky has consumed over the last 45 years, his monstrous transformation shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
15 • Jonathan Wood said:
January 11th, 2008 at 2:48 pm, permalink
I think it’s likely to be the biggest disappointment of the year.
Either that or a coalesced golem of China Mieville’s head shavings…
16 • just curious said:
January 11th, 2008 at 2:59 pm, permalink
Charley the Unicorn is out to recover his stolen kidney… and he’s pissed off!
17 • Chuck said:
January 11th, 2008 at 3:15 pm, permalink
1. The Cloverfield monster is a traveling ecosystem — literally a semi-sentient clover field — from outside our world, or possibly from a part of our world we have no access to (subterranean, parallel world, etc.).
2. The smaller — but still somewhat large — skittering creatures are wingless bees, or maybe regular, but giant, winged bees that choose not to fly at the moment because Earth’s environment (less oxygen, greater gravity, etc.) won’t allow them to fly — or maybe the giant bees are just lazy.
3. The “exploding woman” in the trailer explodes because of a massive allergic reaction to the otherworldly pollen spread by the presence of the partially sentient clover field and wandering giant bees.
…here comes the important part…
4. The reason why you can’t drink just six Slushos is because Slusho, by a miraculous coincidence, happens to contain the exact antihistamine that will counteract the catastrophic allergic reactions triggered by the alien pollen. But you can’t drink just six; you have to drink at least seven to get enough of the accidental antihistamine.
…and…
5. The information about Shusho will be revealed in a life-saving plot twist in the last five minutes of the film when Matt Reeves is terminated from his post as director of the film and J. J. Abrams replaces him with M. Night Shyamalan.
6. M. Night Shyamalan will take further liberties, and the Cloverfield monster will be driven back toward the sea when a street-side toy vendor afflicted with hypertrichosis — excessive body hair, which he has dyed fluorescent green — discovers he can repel the beast by throwing his inventory of illegal Chinese toys at it (turns out the monster hates lead-based paint and GHB more than we do). As the retreating beast is about to back into the sea, it trips over the Statue of Liberty’s head, which had been dragged there by the kid with Down’s Syndrome (using his dad’s psychedelically-painted tow truck) who just innocently wanted to repair the Statue of Liberty. When the monster trips, it flips over, landing in the water clover field-side down, instead of up as it had intended, killing all the Clover and wiping out all the alien pollen.
18 • Paul Jessup said:
January 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm, permalink
BTW, Jim Henson as a banjo playing muppet does exist
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zGTs-ooDZq4&feature=related
Not just something I made up, I swear.
19 • Edward Brock said:
January 11th, 2008 at 10:14 pm, permalink
Having finally breached the dimensional veil that separates our worlds, the Old Gods have returned. Mighty Azathoth is the first to cross over & bring chaos to our world.
The others will soon follow.
20 • Sean Wallace said:
January 12th, 2008 at 11:09 am, permalink
This was actually a difficult contest, and so we come to a monstrous tie, between Chuck and Neil Clarke . . . and a special shout-out to Livia’s!
21 • Chuck said:
January 12th, 2008 at 6:26 pm, permalink
It just now occurs to me that the pollen thing and Livia’s idea about love could be feasibly combined. (After all, what is polleniznation, really — no matter how deadly allergic it is?)
And, in the end, what might the defeat of the monster represent?
The rejection of all the destructive, explodey love.
Sad.
22 • Mr.Dave said:
January 19th, 2008 at 8:31 pm, permalink
Personally, I really liked the one single giant zombie scenario. It could have possibilities involving spores (it could be a spore-filled zombie with a cloverfield growing on its back, or it could just have a cloverfield on its back because it was raised out of the ground from beneath a cloverfield) or it could just be a giant kaiju raised from the dead. (”Hey, didn’t we kill that giant ape? What’s it doing back in New York again?”)
The scary thing about a giant kaiju zombie is that you can’t kill it easily – you have to destroy its brain, which may be very small and well protected. It might also be hungry for brains, gobbling up people wholesale because it is just too much trouble to crack open their tiny skulls. Or maybe it would just bite people’s heads off and throw away the bodies. The giant zombie also might go after other living dai-kaiju and try to eat their brains – thereby also turning them into giant zombie monster versions of themselves. Maybe something like that happened to the Statue of Liberty – except when the giant zombie monster found the head was empty of brains it got mad and threw it into the city.
I am also suddenly reminded that there was a giant Frankenstein kaiju movie:
http://buncheness.blogspot.com/2007/07/cinema-shithouse-frankenstein-conquers.html
Maybe the giant zombie could be the reanimated corpse of the giant Frankenstein monster? Or, even more disturbing, maybe the giant zombie kaiju can be sewn together from the parts of various other dead dai-kaiju. Or (and for some reason, this really icks me out) it could have been made by painstakingly sewing or otherwise scientifically/magically melding together entire graveyards (Cloverfield cemetary?) of corpses to create one giant zombie corpse.
Yeah, I’d watch that movie.
23 • RetroitRegulator said:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:25 pm, permalink
I think its the Geico Lizard. He was feeling small so he visited Roger Clemens and did a bunch of roids and HGH. He went into a rage cause no one in New York wants to save 15% on their car insurance.
Didn’t you see his name on the Mitchell Report?