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Friday, January 18, 2008 12:00 AM

"Cloverfield"

Do we really need the horror of 9/11 to be repackaged and presented to us as an amusement-park ride?

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  • Friday, January 18, 2008 10:03 AM

    Actually...

    I think saying "this is another 9/11 movie" is, um... dwelling. Is any movie that has a boom-boom theme anywhere near NY going to be a 9/11 themed film? Does everyone who looks at me in a way I don't like anti-semitic or homophobic?

    I kind of think of it as a homage, and a revisit, to something more akin to the original Godzilla. You know, the one that had him/it as an analog to an environmental effect - and not some monster mash, however fun that might be. The success for me of the original Godzilla was the focus on the effect on people. The nuclear attack on Japan was the kernel for the movie, but it addressed that kind of thing in a less specific way.

    This could just as easily be any city; New York was just chosen as it has a lot of iconic bits that work better for cinematic purposes (and people don't care as much if LA or SF gets stomped). If there is a lesson at all in this I don't see it as 9/11 so much as when a place is trashed - New Orleans, Baghdad, Kabul, or New York - there are humans on the other side suffering.

    Ridiculously naive and wishful thinking, but the next time someone thinks "we'll bomb them back to the stone age" I'd like them to consider what that really means.

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