NewRecruit

Fair enough then, I hadn't actually seen that scene before.

It drops mini monsters, not shoots them.


I'd encourage you not to avoid movies just because of similarities to September 11th as I don't think that's being fair to the people who made the movie. In addition to that, if you avoided films that had something that looked like it was from 9/11 then I assume you didn't see the War of the Worlds remake with all that ash and you'll avoid He Was a Quiet Man because a office building explodes, or Spider-Man 3 where a office building gets badly damaged or Transformers where planes are blown up and a city badly damaged?

To avoid movies because they might have parallels with the September 11th attacks just doesn't seem that rational to me… the parallels, intended or not are always going to be there so you might as well accept them rather than avoid them.

I'd encourage you not to avoid movies just because of similarities to September 11th as I don't think that's being fair to the people who made the movie.

…

I respect those who made the above, it is sufficient. Their work has its quality. But it doesn't mean I have to follow the herd. Especially not in these circumstances.

I do the same thing that you do when you don't like a specific movie, I don't go see it.

In addition to that, if you avoided films that had something that looked like it was from 9/11 then I assume you didn't see the War of the Worlds remake with all that ash and you'll avoid He Was a Quiet Man because a office building explodes, or Spider-Man 3 where a office building gets badly damaged or Transformers where planes are blown up and a city badly damaged?

The images speak for themselves, this has nothing to do about destruction… We are talking about direct similarities between an artificial scene and a true event filmed, like the images above: a copy/paste of one event, (specifically a drama) to entertain.

now the monster in cloverfield (…) shoots monsters?!

They probably lived in symbiosis with the monster, much like a tick, or a flea.

I have thought about something like “symbiosis”. Or maybe a natural cavity, like Seahorses have; the “flea”, like you call them, the monster in its first stage of life.

It drops mini monsters, not shoots them.

YES, THAT THING SHOOTS MONSTERS!
SPOILER! A big catapult is used specialy for that! :p :-)

To avoid movies because they might have parallels with the September 11th attacks just doesn't seem that rational to me

Oh, I think you understand.

okay, to answer in pictures.



do you have the same problem with this? I think you're missing how much reportage always becomes incorporated in art. Do you think the stormtrooper gathering in the Star Wars movies would look the way they do if not for referencing WW2 newsreel footage of Nazi troopers? Do you take the same issue with this? The Jewel of the Nile directly references the Nurembourg rally in it's finale - is this as bad*?

I understand how you're getting at direct homage, as opposed to suggestion - yes, those videos posted above are very similar - but where you see exploitation I see the beginnings of cinema getting to grips with what happened. This is how things are parcelled so folk can move on and they become scars rather than a fresh wound. See A Night To Remember for example.

But yeah, you may as well complain that the destruction of the blimps at the beginning of The League of Extrordinary Gentlemen is too close to archival footage of the Hindenberg explosion. What, in the storytelling capacity is actually lost by that? What you aren't convincing me is that the shot above somehow cheapens the film - i'd far more say that it gives it a resonance.

if you want to look at it as exploitation, at worst the message is “New Yorkers will try and try and try to overcome” which certainly doesn't make jokes at the expense of the Trade Centre victims. That a film of this kind can exist now, with vague satirical nods towards governmental procedure following a disaster in THAT city, featuring photo-realistic destruction that ivokes images of 9/11 is testament to a continuing freedom of the arts in corporate American film making. which is IMPORTANT and hugely encouraging.


*i am loathe to use the Nazi example here, but I feel these are films everyone is likely to at least have some knowledge of.

What you aren't convincing me is that the shot above somehow cheapens the film

Not only it cheapens the film but it laughs at what the victims had lived! Turning their death in some kind of freak attraction we see in circus! By all the media and their knowledge, they could have done something different! Better!

i'd far more say that it gives it a resonance.

And I'm now deaf by it, the less I can say!

but where you see exploitation I see the beginnings of cinema getting to grips with what happened.

I see a slap at the face of the victims and family; there's a difference between a documentary and a movie made to win money from “Fx Fans”. And “the-cinema-beginnings-to-seize-what-happened” is not a reason to copy the events for a “plastic movie”.

But even some documentary exaggerated 9/11, turning the drama in small movies where the “heroes” die… almost like if they wanted you to forget what made all this… it was no more a reality, it was a product!

WW2, the nazis, the Nurembourg, etc, I can only be sad for these time. Like you. But all the violence disgust me today. I can still watch some: because my youth liked some; a time where you're not interested in what the ideas are based. But now I'm in a time where I discovered sufficiently to enjoy more a movie like “Broken Flowers” than “StarWars” or “Cloverfield”, if you want to know.

This is how things are parcelled so folk can move on and they become scars rather than a fresh wound

Ok let's “Cloverfield” all drama to heal mother earth!

Happy ending and the end to this “soap opera”.

Man, I don't know how to talk to you.

9/11 was my birthday anyway, so I had a great day - maybe that's why I'm less sensitive, I dunno. Yeah, i think we should let this one go.

NewRecruit
Not only it cheapens the film but it laughs at what the victims had lived! Turning their death in some kind of freak attraction we see in circus! By all the media and their knowledge, they could have done something different! Better!

If it were making light of the disaster or if it were saying “stoopid peeple, terrorizts pwned you!” or something on a similar vein, then that'd be disrespecting them and their memory, but it's not like it's out to exploit the disaster.

There's a difference between reference and exploitation.

If this is the reaction to a scene where we don't actually see anybody die, and just a cloud of dust outside of a store I wonder how you'd react if they had a scene that was nearly a play-by-play of the sequence showing that man falling after he leapt from the World Trade Center.

We probably witnessed one of the “communication problems” that the Indians and settlers have had in the past concerning perception of values.