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[Chump Force 1]

[SPOILERS]Hey, you guys across the pond...what did you thnk?

[Roztox]

Well, to be honest whats left to say, when its been said sooo many times before...

Sheer Awesomeness...
Seems like a good buzz over here...lots of people talking bout' the movie...(mostly wanting answers...lol)
Its the bee's knee's...

[fredthedeadhead]

Well I don't think European's would react too differently to the Americans .

I'm glad I saw it, but I have mixed feelings on how good it was. I just can't help but feel that

[Resident_Evil]

 

[Locohoco]

I'm in England, went to see it with my friends last weekend. We all loved it. However there were a lot of people in the cinema who were, how shall I say...less than impressed, and were quite vocal about.

I'd say this was just due to the film being different to the type of film everyone expects, ie no happy ending, characters die, no major story explanation.

I say they're idiots, Cloverfield was brilliant.

Oh, and a lot of the people who didn't like it were older, from 30's onwards. Miserable sods. I'm 23 btw

[themanthebelly]

Why 'allo, geezas! Apples and pears an' all tha'!

I've seen Cloverfield twice. For me, it has raised the bar for excellence in suspense, horror and realism. I've never seen anything like it, and I doubt I ever will again.

Still in shock that I found it actually lived up to the hype. That's never happened to me before.

[Keizer_G]

Hello , I'm french , Cloverfield will be released on 6th February here but we had some premiere .
For now opinion are mixed , Cloverfield had a lot of positive feedback from critics but strangely a lot of negative feedbacks came from kaiju-fans .

The point the more criticized is the lack of answer about MGP's origins ( yes we adopted this nickname) and what happened after these events...

For my part I was aware of this fact by reading production staff interviewes so I had no problem with the lack of answer . The movie was exactly what was annouced , it was even better than what I imagined . I give it 9/10 .

[Schrijvertje]

I'm in Belgium. I followed the ARG for a while when it started, but quickly gave up on it, even before the MySpace profiles were found. The reason? 50 to 100 new forum pages overnight, how're you supposed to keep track of everything? Now I'm sad I didn't follow it more thoroughly. I heard people could actually exchange messages with the characters, and it really added to the movie experience. Would've liked that as well.

Anyway, it was still the best movie I've seen in a long time!

It's something totally different. I guess it's aimed at the current generation of people who love to watch homemade movies on the internet, youtube, myspace, that kind of thing. That's the way the movie starts off, just some random stuff about ordinary people like you or me, no famous faces whatsoever. Then all that randomness is interrupted by the monster attack.

Forget the Blair Witch. That was boring. Three people running around in the woods? Big deal. This is the entire population of New York City running for their lives trying to survive! It's the entire US military fighting an unbeatable foe. The Blair Witch could creep you out perhaps, but Cloverfield scares the hell out of you. As a viewer you're smack dab in the middle of it all, buildings being destroyed, people getting killed, everything happening all around you. I don't know how it would look on the little screen, probably not that impressive. The huge cinema screen and the surround sound system put's you right THERE and you feel like you're running along with the main characters, peeking around corners, holding your breath.

However, this movie WILL disappoint you if you don't know what to expect. Don't expect a movie like Godzilla or whatever. No third person perspective, no characters in key intelligence or military places, no wise old doctor or professor explaining how it is all possible. You go out of the movie knowing absolutely NOTHING except what took place in front of your eyes. People who expect to be fed a logical storyline will not find it here. This is in essence one long youtube video doing nothing but showing events and people living them, trying to make it look as realistic as possible and succeeding very well even with its fantastical subject.

It's almost the next step in entertainment. The only way to make it more realistic would be if you could text message the characters on screen and tell them what to do.

However, it's somewhat of a novelty, and its effects might wear off in time. Too many movies in this style might very well destroy the entire genre. But I certainly wouldn't mind seeing one every so years.

Audience response was kinda weird. Most of the people didn't say anything at all, and stayed in their seats while the credits were running.

Some girls laughed when the helicopter crashed and the camera is turned back on showing a whole bunch of nothing.

Then two guys laughed when Rob and Beth are under the bridge saying they love each other. Well, not so much laughed as give a heighty snort as if to say "Get a life!" When it was over those guys said "I paid six euro for THIS?", "What an '80s movie" and "How retro." But it were only these two guys born when the '80s were already over, so ignoring them was easy.

Yes, this is partly a monster movie. But what it's really about, is that you should tell the people you love THAT you love them, because you never know when it'll be over.

It's all summed up in the conversation between Rob and Lily, where they talk about couples that argue, and the difference between Rob and Beth fighting and Lily and Jason fighting was that Jason knew that Lily loved him anyway. Then comes the ending where Rob tells Beth he loves her.

That's all. To me, that's the essence of this movie. The monster is a means to an end. It could've been all kinds of different situations they found themselves in. The creators made a choice to tell it this way. Sure, it could've been done differently. But then it wouldn't have been their movie anymore.

When I compare American audiences with European audiences, based on comments on forum boards like this one and first hand experiences of being in a European audience, there's a huge dividing difference and frankly I don't like what it implies.

It can all be summed up in the reaction in the European audience when at the start of the movie, when everyone is running up to the roof, one girl says "Is it another terrorist attack?" or something like that. My audience went: "Oh no, here they go again."

Due to 9/11, it seems American audiences very easily connect the dots toward terrorists attacks. That's only natural, they've had a very traumatic experience.

But the average European audience didn't have that experience and won't think of terrorists as a first suspect.

The majority of movies shown in Europe are American. It can't be ignored that many movies after 9/11 refer to this event, to terrorism, albeit in a symbolic way or in a literal way. Newspapers and television reports deal with this subject a lot, so when it appears in what most people consider to be entertainment, they get this feeling of overkill. That the message is being drilled into their heads, forcefed through their throats like geese getting fattened.

I'm afraid we're heading towards a future where some European audiences will react rather insensitive and start yelling at the US to "shut up already!". Even now forum messages include reactions like "get over it", "move on", "stop whining". That's not a good sign. Because then the real enemies are no longer the target. When the good guys are too busy arguing amongst themselves, the bad guys see their chance. Like the third dog winning the bone.

But who's to blame? Europe for not understanding America's need to express itself in this way? Or America for keeping to express itself in this way?

[Atyxs]

Excellent point

[carlosos]

Here ins Spain the film was shown under the unlucky title of Monstruoso.
One of the critics I red had one interesting point when talking about this film belonging to the Youtube era. This same critic also says the film is indeed a love story before the Apocalipsis (or in my own words a hand cam recorded Titanic), which it's said to be an underground trend in Abrams work.
Of course, the critic stressed the great importance of the viral campaign.

Nacho Vigalondo, once a oscar finalist for his short movie "7:35", wrote in his blog he felt proud about the connections a reputated critic found between Cloverfield and his movie "Domingo". But the interesting part comes later, when he talks about the following topics (I'm summing up a lot):

"Rule Number 1": The monster appears while the leading character is going through an emotional crisis.

"Affaires": There's a love story that is trying to be forgotten at the same time that the tape is being deleted by new "memories".

"The best moment in the film": The sequence in the electronics store, the mixture between being in ground zero and the news report seems to have impressed this film blogger.

"The monster's origin": Something unknown in the film, here he talks about the viral campaign and how it becomes what he describes as a "third narrative floor". He also sugest the paradox of a film that invites people to come to cinemas with recording tools precisely in the age of piracy.

"The campaign": More on the misteries around the movie.

"The cam falls down": He highlights the fact that most of the movies based in the idea of a recovered tape happen to be dirty with the blood of the owner.

"We have no idea of what's going on": A regular viewer doesn't knows more than Rob, despite his final words.

[underwaterdonkey]

I'm from England, and it seems to be doing pretty good over here. A few boys from my school had to sneak in (due to their age, they were in the years below me) and had to watch it from behind the seats at the back and they still thought it was amazing. And all my friends want to see it now because when I was bored I made a Cloverfield comic in my sketchbook and they think it looks cool. But yeh, most people agree that it the best film out at the moment (well, until Juno comes out tomorrow, but there totally different films)

[Mikeyj]

[rekdal]

From Denmark

[caoslayer]

Im also from Spain.

As has been said, the spanish title of the movie 'monstruoso' is ratter crappy, it can be translated into 'Monstrous' being more way more blunt.

My girlfriend almost puked because the camera and left the cinema when the helicopter crashed and I got a headache, I seriously don't like at all the camera.. is right, it gives realism to the movie but is too unpleasant and can ruin your enjoyment of the movie.

I liked the movie, that is the reason of why I'm here.

The general reaction about the movie is very negative, people just can't accept a movie where is not an explication of the plot and how everybody dies and nobody survives (of course is usual here that nobody stays in the credits, I just left early because my girlfriend was outside, so nobody knew that he stayed alive at least a little longer).

This movie reminds me to Cube.

[Kon-Foozed]