Some movies are just made for the movie theater experience.
They demand a larger than life screen, sticky butter coated popcorn, an oversized mug of Coke, a sugar coma inducing bag of Skittles and a group of rowdy and annoying teenagers in the front row.
Case in point: Cloverfield.
The movie theater going experience was invented for movies like Cloverfield. And you better believe I was there.
The events leading up to the release of the movie formally known as the Untitled JJ Abrams Monster Movie should be familiar to any pop culture addict so I won't waste time recounting them here. But if last summer you were living under a rock and missed the teaser trailer that launched a thousand Google searches, then you can check out my very first blog, which will provide you with a niblet of Cloverfield info.
Anyways, back to my point: Cloverfield is a movie made for the theater. If you didn't see it when it was released in January, then you've really missed out. Nothing beats seeing on the big screen the Statue of Liberty's head fly through the air, hit a mile high sky scraper and come to its final resting point in the middle of a street teeming with onlookers.
Though for me, what was most amazing that day in the theater was not how I bitched out a group of teenagers making noise during the opening reel (true story) but how monstrous the monster truly looked up there on the screen.
That's not to say I imagined he'd look anything other than terrifying. Actually, I had no clue what he'd look like before I walked into the theater. But I knew from the half a second I saw of him in the trailer that he'd be bloody fantastic. And since JJ Abrams was involved with the project, I knew I'd be blown away to the Hawaiian islands, captured by a group of Others, and attacked by a smoke monster. That's how crazy I knew it would be.
And like I said, I wasn't let down. I loved seeing the monster crawl through Midtown taking out buildings with his long praying mantis type arms. And in a particularly stunning scene shot from the helicopter, we see what appears to be the monster's final moments as he collapses in the wreckage of Manhattan. Hud, the man behind the camera (and the second best thing about Cloverfield), shouts with glee at the monster's destruction. That is, until the monster lunges out of the smoke and grabs the chopper, sending it crashing into Central Park.
What followed was the monster's marvelous "I'm ready for my close up, Mr. De Mille" moment before he gobbled up poor Hud. His grill was all up in mine and frankly, I was scared. To see that face only a mother could love tower over me on the big screen made me want to hide behind my fingers. It truly felt like I was going to be lunched on instead of Hud.
But when the dust finally settled on a ruined New York City and the credits rolled, I thought ahead to what Cloverfield's DVD release might entail. And that's when I knew it wouldn't be the same watching it on my tiny television.
Flashforward to this weekend when I bought a copy. And I have to say, the experience isn't as good. New York City is tiny, the buildings are tiny, the monster is tiny. But I guess that's to be expected. Movies are never the same once you get them home and pop them into your DVD player. That is unless you have a movie theater sized tv in your living room. And let's face it, we're not all Mariah Carey so we don't have that luxury.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy a second viewing. I still jumped at the scary bits. I got a much better view of the monster babies (they're even creepier than I thought). And since JJ Abrams is a tv man, I'm sure he thought about what the movie would look like on the small screen so I trust that it's the best it can be.
Yet I'm still a bit sad I'll never get that experience again, going to the theater to see a monster trample through New York City, while I scarf down on Sour Patch Kids and yell at the kids in front of me.
I guess there's always the sequel: Cloverfield 2: Electric Boogaloo. You know I'll be there.
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