I saw the previews for this movie Christmas day and remember turning to my friend and whispering "Well, I guess we've gotten past 9/11 enough to start blowing up NY again." The real images of that day still have the power to move me - CGI? Not so much.

I see we have taken the exhortations to live an irony-free life to heart!

Good point about commercials. I think I'll wait until it's on television because the commercials will add a lot of content to the experience. Hopefully ABC will show it instead of LOST one night.

That scheherezade thing thing went sour real fast JJ.

Until I see Cloverfield on the tube, I am keeping the image of the monster as a large polar bear with a noxious black cloud emanating from its nether regions.

Sometimes these screenplays are not about an event or a thing, but they are about the author and/or director revealing their innermost selves.

TAKE THAT!, MS LIBERTY!!!

/fight the JJ - vote ron paul

Oh, I'm sorry. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between a real crank and an ironic crank. It's hard to tell in these on-line discussions.

I am certain: north-western loggers don't all sound like they are from the Bronx...

In December 2001, I took the train up from Washington, DC (where 9/11 also happened) to do my American duty and go Christmas shopping in NYC. I visited the ground zero site, which was still being "unbuilt" at the time. When I was there, a father assembled his three children at the most open spot in the fencing surrounding the site, pulled out his camera and said, brightly, "Smile!" They did, and he took several pictures. I gaped at them in horror -- this sacred ground, this national wound, this tomb, it was a simple tourist attraction to them, something to go see in New York like Times Square or Central Park.

Less than four months had passed since the attacks when I saw that family have their "Kodak Moment." Since then 9/11 has been used for so much more -- the justification for an illegal invasion of Iraq, the backdrop of a silly run for the presidency by Rudy Giuliani, the alleged reason for an evisceration of our nation's Constitution -- that it hardly seems like such a horrifying prospect to see it be the basis of a monster movie. I haven't seen "Cloverfield" (having had a baby two weeks ago, I doubt I'll venture to the multiplex anytime soon), but it seems like the visceral visuals of the film, while causing an understandable reaction, are the least of our worries when it comes to the uses of 9/11. Abrams as a carny barker may cause a resurgence of unpleasant memories, but the uglier carny barkers -- those in the Bush administration and those in America who would blithely go along with their plots, telling their kids to "Smile!" when thinking about deaths of their fellow Americans (and other world citizens) -- those haunt our present and cast a pall on our future, and it is their plots and lazy evocations of 9/11 that should sicken us. A movie can be avoided more easily than the cost of war.

Wow. this lady is hateful. I read that "there will be blood" hacket job. Started reading this, and had to stop and read the author. Same person. man. horrible reviews.

why does salon give this lady space? How would go see any movie after reading these bile? I know gop'ers want to go back to john wayne movies and black and white of the fifites. Cult gop propoganda. Those days are over. no amount of sabotaging the future will bring you back to your past. Your living decades in the past steph. Get with the program. Grow and change. the 50's aren't coming back. Rather than hating progress. Why no join it?

Alan Moore said something along the lines of "pulling 2000 dead people out of a pile of rubble is a daily occurrence in some countries."

I have to agree with him. I come from a country that has been experiencing terrorism for decades. It's life. It stinks, but you get on with it.

So typically American to keep wittering on about trauma 6 years after the fact. I think the real trauma that took place on that day was the realization for Americans that their country is not invulnerable.

How many people here, of those complaining about Cloverfield's similarly to 9/11, have ever enjoyed a film about Vietnam? WWI? WWII? About horrible things that really happened to people all over the world? The liberals wringing their hands about Cloverfield and the conservatives cheering on the slaughter of innocent Iraqis are both saying the same thing: "We're Americans - how dare you attack us." America's pain is different, I guess. We all need to take it much more seriously than the pain and violence inflicted upon others. Because after all, they are not Americans.

Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it was a tragedy. Welcome to the world.

Being 'about' 9/11 could be fine. The original Gojira was about Hiroshima/Nagasaki. And it's no coincidence that so much anime at some point features the slow-motion destruction of a city. (Although less so now than 20 years ago, it seems.)

I expect the film to be crap, because all of Abrams' TV shows have an intriguing set-up and then pointlessly unravel into nothing.

Is there a reason (other than spectacle) that this monster attacks NY, as opposed to any other city on the coasts?

Terrorist or alien movies where they attack NY: ok, I get it, you can do research. It's a population center. You're sentient. Go at it.

But random creatures picking it always bugs me. Manhattan is a shielded harbor. You don't just happen upon it. The thing would hit ground on Long Island, Brooklyn, hell, even Bayonne before heading up the East River. With the latest Godzilla, I'll go along... "Hey, let's blow up NY, it'll be fun!"

But here, it doesn't sound like Cloverfield is supposed to be fun. It's horror veritae.

Well, give me my veritae!

Echoing the other thoughts around, blowing up NY in a movie is just starting to feel like a lazy premise. The more I hear about this movie, it sounds like something out of a South Park episode, or The Player: "It's Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project, but ya know, with heart."