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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Cloverfield (1-18-08) » Cloverfield: General / Updates
[Spec] MGP and the Cicada: Shared Characteristic?
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jamman1
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 		 [Spec] MGP and the Cicada: Shared Characteristic?
An insect that MGP may be like.
I've been lurking on this site everyday since just after the first teaser hit, and its bothered me for a while that MGP was able to lay in stasis at the bottom of the ocean for so long.

When I read that J.J. said MGP was like an infant, I thought that the monster was either full grown, yet child-like in its innocence of the world, or that it just had an extremely long life span, which means that he grew extremely slowly. This reminds me of another creature - the cicada:


"When the eggs hatch, the newborn nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow. Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts from two to five years. Some species have much longer life cycles, e.g. the Magicicada goes through a 17- or occasionally 13-year life cycle"

"These long life cycles are an adaptation to predators such as the cicada killer wasp and praying mantis, as a predator could not regularly fall into synchrony with the cicadas. "

"The insects spend most of the time that they are underground as nymphs at depths ranging from about 30 cm (1 ft) up to 2.5 m (about 8½ ft). The nymphs feed on root juice and have strong front legs for digging.

In the final nymphal instar, they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then moult (shed their skins), on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as adults. The abandoned skins remain, still clinging to the bark of trees."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada

Edit: I just want to stress that I do not think MGP is a giant cicada. I just think that the insect shares three important qualities with MGP: (1.) It is long lived (2.) it spends an extremely long time burrowed underground (3.) it spends that time in an "infant" state. If we look at a real creature, we might be able to draw parallels with the fictional creature. After all, I assume that the film makers at least did some research to get ideas about the whys and hows of what their monster is.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:56 pm
Last edited by jamman1 on Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:29 pm; edited 6 times in total
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Ryomi
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 		i agree with the cicada theory a bit. The arms and the head look alot like the cicada... i thought druring the attack that they ran to the subway there was a good view of MGP's face and his mouth dropped down and wide open. YOu can see this scene on youtube (gotta find cause i won't post links). The nose on it in that scene looks like a bats nose

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:36 pm
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OEQUE
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 		Hm

I guess a cicada fell off a tree and into a cup of slusho :]




I'm sure we've all lost our minds by now.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:39 pm
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jamman1
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Ryomi wrote:
i agree with the cicada theory a bit. The arms and the head look alot like the cicada... i thought druring the attack that they ran to the subway there was a good view of MGP's face and his mouth dropped down and wide open. YOu can see this scene on youtube (gotta find cause i won't post links). The nose on it in that scene looks like a bats nose


Yeah, I thought that there was a similarity as well, but I wasn't just talking about looks...

From an evolutionary standpoint, every characteristic that an animal has is dictated by survival pressures. We know that MGP is long lived, but why? The Cicada is another extreme example of an animal that is absurdly long lived (an insect that lives 17 years, and most of that time spent as an "infant" in the ground), so we know that, comparatively, it might be possible.

If MGP isn't related to the cicada (which I don't think that it is), then we may be able to at least look at its parallel characteristics and draw some conclusions.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:48 pm
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NorsU
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 		If MGP is Jon Secada I'm out of here.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:54 pm
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jamman1
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NorsU wrote:
If MGP is Jon Secada I'm out of here.


Ha! "Jon Secada," that sounds like a South Park parody of Cloverfield.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:58 pm
Last edited by jamman1 on Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:19 pm; edited 1 time in total
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danieltx13
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 		This is reaching a little too far now.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:03 pm
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jamman1
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danieltx13 wrote:
This is reaching a little too far now.


I'm not saying that MGP is at all related to the cicada, but I do think that the insect supplies us with a real-life example of a creature that may share some things with it.

Think about it - the way that cicadas spend the first years of their lives is a lot like the way we think Grumpy Pants did.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:10 pm
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danieltx13
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 		I understand what you're saying. I think you're just getting way too serious about this. This creature shouldn't be compared to an insect.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:38 pm
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jamman1
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danieltx13 wrote:
I understand what you're saying. I think you're just getting way too serious about this. This creature shouldn't be compared to an insect.


I may sound like I'm being too serious, but what I'm trying to say is that I'm NOT trying to compare MGP to an insect (at least not in the way that you are thinking), I'm trying to understand what the evolutionary reason is for such a weird life span (not to mention size).

Whether it's an insect, or a human, or a monster, there are characteristics of many different species that originated from the same kind of needs. When you see something as specific as two creatures who may burrow in the earth to mature at an extremely slow pace, then you can't ignore the similarities, no matter how different the two creatures may seem to be. You say that MGP shouldn't be compared to an insect, and I ask you to tell me why

Let's pretend that we are just speculating about scientific reasons for mythical creatures (kind of like Myth Busters). What are the scientific reasons for something like a dragon to be so large, and live so long? That is one example, and if you take a Myth Buster's "scientific approach to ridiculous topics" attitude towards it, you would come up with some interesting answers.

In this case we have a real life creature that has real life reasons (survival pressure) for being the way that it is. I just thought it would be interesting to talk about the reasons that MGP is the way that he/she/it is.

I'm not even going to go into his seemingly invulnerable body, that's freaking crazy.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:57 pm
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