CINEMISSES! Cloverfield

Today, Matt and Tug are here to break down a found-footage monster movie that feels like Manhattan is ending in real time That's right! It's Cloverfield! A fun kaiju film that uses chaos, mystery, and a single shaky camera to make every second count.  So if you love big creatures, mysterious slash viral marketing, and movies that turn a city into a panic attack, this one hits hard. Parasites! Documentary-style camerawork! And of course, the severed head of Lady Liberty! What are you doing? What's happening? Where are we going? To listen of course. LOOK OUT!

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You are listening to Cinemases, a podcast about movies that one or the other of your two hosts just never got around to seeing. I'm Matt.

Tug McTighe (00:07)
I am Tug, and we are reminding you that anybody can make a podcast about movies they have seen. We're here because we haven't. Thank you for joining us on Cinemases and Action. Alright, hi, buddy.

matt (00:17)
Hey, how are you? How's your Friday?

Tug McTighe (00:19)
my Friday's very good. I'm excited. I've got a soccer coaches meeting tonight that will no doubt turn into some beer drinking and a general camaraderie. You know, not unlike a a

Big party in Manhattan where you get a bunch of people together. Let's say one of you is moving out of the country and you want to just sort of celebrate his life and his legacy in in in your friend group and then something giant happens, literally. No, not a fight, not someone gets drunk and pukes, but literally something giant descends on your city and starts tearing it apart. Do you know what I'm talking about, Matt?

matt (00:53)
I feel like I've seen something recently that sounds a lot like what you're talking about. Was it a movie?

Tug McTighe (00:57)
I feel like I have too. my god, it is a movie. You guessed

it everyone. Today's movie is a giant epic Kaiju thriller, Cloverfield. I'm pumped.

matt (01:08)
Okay,

let's talk about it. as always, we asked the person who has not seen the film, the cinemisser, what they knew about the movie. In this case it was neither of us, but last time I kind of s we also hadn't neither of us had seen it,

Tug McTighe (01:18)
Right.

matt (01:19)
and I spoke for both of us. So this time I'm gonna let you do the same. What do you think you knew about it? Okay.

Tug McTighe (01:22)
Alright, you pile on where needed.

I didn't know much. first of all, it was hard to realize it's really hard to come to terms with the fact that two thousand and eight is eighteen years ago. so let me just start

matt (01:32)
I try not to think about it.

Tug McTighe (01:34)
there. But I knew it was written or directed or produced or all of the above by JJ Abrams, who I genuinely enjoy, and we'll talk about that later. which meant it was gonna drop us right in the middle.

Of something that he wasn't going to explain to us. He wasn't going to show it to us or or spoon feed us. He was going to make us figure out what the fuck was going on. And that's that's because it's his it's his mystery box. His mystery box concept that he loves. If you go type in J.J. Abrams mystery box TED Talk, it's actually a great tech TED Talk. And to whittle it down, it's he had a childhood memory

He always went to this magic store on his way home from school, magic shop where you could buy tricks and stuff. And behind the behind the counter was this $30 mystery box. 30 tricks. Amaze your friends. And he would pine after it and he never had enough money. And he finally saved up enough money to buy it. And then he never opened it. Because even at that tender age of 12 or 13, he realized that the imagined mystery.

was way better than the reality. So what was in the box was way less important than his imagining of what might be in the box. so that's what this is. Lost was this way. A lot of them are this way. lastly, I knew it was found footage, and I knew there was some sort of a monster. That's that's it.

matt (02:46)
And that's what I really remember. And this was almost twenty years ago, so there's a lot going on from that era that I don't remember at all. I was having coffee with our mutual friend Adam Wartime today. Hi, Adam.

Tug McTighe (02:57)
Hi Adam.

matt (02:58)
And he mentioned the internet and how our kids can't relate to an era before the internet.

So this was, granted the internet was in full swing in 2008, but it wasn't something I yet took for granted. And I do what I do remember about this movie is that they did a lot with viral marketing, with

Tug McTighe (03:18)
Yes.

matt (03:18)
websites, with MySpace pages. this was the first movie that I remember having a real strategy in that regard.

Tug McTighe (03:25)
Yeah, and and and using all the tools at at the time at their disposal, Right? So so they were they were it was really kind of a viral sensation. You know, Blair Witch was a little bit different in that s similar guerrilla style filmmaking, but flyers, have you seen this person? You know, posters.

Ads in the newspapers where the where it was playing and the and this sort of staunch their staunch refusal to admit it was a movie and that they were said, No, this is all real found footage, we found these cameras. This all really happened. So but but kudos to both. Really embracing it.

matt (03:58)
Sure. And gamification too with this. and JJ Abrams did this with, if you remember, Fringe is one of my favorite shows. And that was I have a

Tug McTighe (04:05)
Springe is a great show.

matt (04:07)
couple of qualms with JJ Abrams, but he made some things that I really liked. And Fringe was a great one. And at the end of when they'd go to commercial breaks, they would flash a symbol. And for the nerds out there who were hardcore and took those symbols to create an alphabet and figure out what the message was, they could do that.

Tug McTighe (04:23)
And it was real. It was it was all intentional. Yeah. Yeah.

matt (04:25)
It was all intentional. So this

was just more of that. I think he was one of the early guys to say, you know, there are all these different pieces and we can we can do all. And they did.

Tug McTighe (04:34)
Yeah.

It it's interesting shit, really. And as marketers, we love when when people turn a corner, turn it a half right, let's quarter turn that away from what you normally do. So pretty ex pretty exciting. And it was a success. everybody by everybody's reckoning, it was a success largely because of a lot of that marketing. Like the

matt (04:51)
Absolutely.

Tug McTighe (04:51)
hype was so crazy that it could not be successful. So really impressive stuff. Somehow Somehow we didn't see it.

matt (04:55)
Yeah, yet somehow we didn't s somehow we didn't see it. Alright,

let's talk about the the log line.

Tug McTighe (05:00)
Yeah. What's the what's the log line?

matt (05:02)
A group of friends venture deep into the streets of New York on a rescue mission during a rampaging monster attack.

Tug McTighe (05:09)
so what's it about? It's 2008 American found footage science fiction horror film directed by Matt Reeves, who we'll talk about, written by Drew Goddard. Wait a minute. This is our I'm naming him without even talking to you. Drew Goddard is our first cinemas' screenwriting all-star. We have our actor all-stars and our director all-stars. Well, now we have our first cinemas' screenwriter all-star.

This and both the Martian and Project Hail Mary were written by Drew Goddard, making this

matt (05:33)
Awesome.

Tug McTighe (05:34)
the third movie we've covered of his. I was very excited to find that out. in this film, Six Friends attempt to flee from a monster that attacks New York City.

matt (05:41)
They kind of they flee and then they double back. I feel like if I knew the geography of New York City better, this would make more sense. I feel like you can

Tug McTighe (05:49)
Yeah, yeah.

matt (05:50)
make a whole movie about, hey, we really should take you know the green line to 15th Street and jump off there and somebody's like, Well, you know what though, it's it's close south of 14th Street.

Tug McTighe (05:54)
Yeah, right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. It's just

it's are you kidding? It's gonna be packed. Right?

matt (06:02)
Right.

Tug McTighe (06:02)
so at one point to pile on there, when they're in the subway tunnels, no thank you, by the way.

matt (06:08)
Right.

Tug McTighe (06:09)
one of them says, Where are we? And I thought, having been in I've been in New York many times, but even when you live there, it's so vast and complicated, you sort of don't even know don't know who you are.

My sister in law Lizzie moved there and lived there for ten years. And when she moved there, we'd I'd I'd like I'd go there to cast some commercials or something. And she'd pull out of her purse a a deck of cards, like not even three not three by five, but probably two by four on a ring. And and it had the neighborhoods in alphabetical order and it had little street grids so you could find your way around. This was before the internet, everyone. But

Literally you you you're the live there and you don't know where you are.

matt (06:46)
Yeah, I was born and raised in Iowa and I think I Keevan, Kansas

Tug McTighe (06:49)
So not New York.

matt (06:50)
not New York, close, but even Kansas City is really very manageable. So I think these mega cities like New York City or like Mexico City, like it's a just a whole different ball game.

Tug McTighe (07:03)
Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, the Californians sketch

matt (07:06)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (07:07)
on SNL is funny because the only thing California people do is tell each other how they're getting somewhere.

matt (07:12)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (07:12)
I'm gonna take the four hundred five down to the one and cut over on Pacific Coast Highway. You're getting off with subulveda? No way. There's a it's a stoplight. You'll never get through it. I i because in LA it takes you 30 minutes

matt (07:21)
You're gonna make a left there.

Tug McTighe (07:22)
to go three miles. It's annoying. Anyway, we need to move on, but it's all true.

so this project began when JJ Abrams, producer, and his son were at a toy store in Japan. He was promoting MI3, which is a one of the good MIs. and of course, because it's Japan, Godzilla is just everywhere. And he's like, Hey, we needed a we need a good American giant monster. And he he discounts King Kong because he thinks King Kong is adorable, quote unquote, which is funny. so he contacted this guy named Neville Page.

who's a creative type guy that graduated from the art center in center of design in Pasadena and has been his concept designer on Watch or not on JDMs, but Super Eight Star Trek. He worked on Watchmen, Avatar, and he said, Hey, why don't you build me this I need a creature. So he's like, Okay. And by the way, the creature's name is Clover. and then they it was Greenlit, secretly greenlit. I'd never heard of a movie being secretly greenlit, but they were thinking about the marketing even then.

By Paramount and then produced by Bad Robot, of course. LA, New York, were the main locations for shooting, although they did some of it on sound stages. it had several working titles including Slusho, Cheese, and Grey Shot. You wanna talk

about Slusho

matt (08:26)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (08:27)
for a sec?

matt (08:28)
Yeah, if you watch enough I I I'll talk about this more later. I think for me one of J. J. Abrams' faults is that he's so self indulgent.

Hey, did you see I put Slusho in this movie? Yeah, you put Slusho in every movie. Nobody cares.

Tug McTighe (08:40)
Right.

matt (08:41)
he tries to stick Slusho in all his movies. And and actually the viral campaign for this had a lot to do with

Tug McTighe (08:47)
Yeah.

matt (08:47)
Slusho and the manufacturers. I know in Star Trek, which I really enjoyed, the reboot, Uhura orders the slusho mix at the bar in his reboot. I don't know if that's fun or gimmicky or egocentric or what, but he does it a lot.

Tug McTighe (08:59)
Yeah, it doesn't care. Drives the car right through it, right? so that'll come back to Roost here 'cause it's one of the potential I know you have your thoughts, but it's one of the potential reasons the monster was awakened. We'll we'll get to that as we get to it. again we talked about this viral marketing campaign. This teaser trailer was released ahead of screenings for Transformers, which I saw in two thousand seven, without a title. and then there was a second teaser trailer attached to Beowulf in two thousand seven, which I didn't see, thank God.

matt (09:22)
Nor did I. I didn't either.

Tug McTighe (09:24)
But i i it was there was it was limited details, it was mystery box, so just a ton of online speculation. Forums and websites and emails trying to uncover hidden information about the film. There was a manga series, a prequel released as part of the campaign.

matt (09:39)
Yes,

Cloverfield Kishin. the plot of it. I did a little little research on that 'cause I like that sort of thing. the plot sounds a lot like Akira, except there's a monster. and the

Tug McTighe (09:50)
Okay.

matt (09:51)
character, the Kishan character is able to control the monster and later he kind of turns against him. So

Tug McTighe (09:55)
That that's that

sounds just like a manga story. we've talked about this a lot. I I wish I loved manga and anime. I've tried many times to get into it. sort of like I'm in the same boat on Radiohead. My whole life

matt (10:07)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (10:07)
people are like, Dude, you should love Radiohead I'm like, I don't like any of that. I d I like the I like creep and that's about it. And I know that's to all you Radioheadians, I apologize, but I've tried a hundred times to like I'm a charter member of the G I Wish I Liked Radiohead Club.

matt (10:19)
I feel the same way about Deathcab for Cutie. They have like the first song

Tug McTighe (10:21)
Which I understand. Yep.

matt (10:23)
I heard from them was Crooked Teeth, and I'm like, this band's amazing. And then every other song I hated. Tommy is really into anime and it's part of our weekly art drawing exercise, which is less weekly now that he's moved out. But we've done that for four or five years. And and we watch anime when we're doing it. Here's

Tug McTighe (10:33)
Right. Yeah, just you two draw yeah. And that's rather sometime. That's what's the yeah, right.

matt (10:40)
the problem with anime is that and I found this out early, is that the stuff that's like

Fun and cool and for kids and the stuff that's pornographic and creepy or weird, it all has the same style. So until you

Tug McTighe (10:49)
Yeah. Right.

matt (10:52)
start watching you don't you don't know what you're getting. Right.

Tug McTighe (10:54)
You don't know what you're getting for sure.

I

matt (10:56)
yeah.

Tug McTighe (10:57)
released on January 18th, 2008, received generally positive reviews. Who praised Reeves' direction and the cinema verite style narrative? It earned 172 million on a twenty five million dollar budget, so that's pretty good. And then it kicked off this.

This Cloverfield franchise.

matt (11:13)
Yeah, and th apparently there's another one coming. I watched Cloverfield and then I was like, what the hell? I'll watch Ten Cloverfield Lane. And then at that point I had to watch the Cloverfield Paradox and

Tug McTighe (11:24)
Well you were two thirds of the way there.

matt (11:26)
there's th what they share is the name Cloverfield. They're three very different films. The second one, which was my favorite one, John Goodman and Mary Lou

Tug McTighe (11:34)
That's the one

that I want to see.

matt (11:36)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, definitely watch it. It's feels like a cross between misery and there's a twist at the end. It's it was surprisingly good. And largely and d due in part to John Goodman because he's just so good at projecting menace, cause he's such a big guy, or at least he used to be. He I think weighs about 170 pounds now.

Tug McTighe (11:55)
He slimmed down a lot, yeah.

matt (11:57)
and the third one's in space. It's like a sci-fi show that has

Tug McTighe (12:01)
Yeah,

I know.

matt (12:02)
Almost nothing to do with this. but I'd at this point I'd watch a sequel because I've seen I've seen three of them, so why not?

Tug McTighe (12:08)
Alright, fun I can I give you fun fact.

matt (12:10)
Please do.

Tug McTighe (12:11)
JJ Abrams and director Matt Reeves have been friends since they were 13 years old. It's fucking awesome, is what it is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

matt (12:15)
How cool is that? And they both turned out to be successful and that's amazing.

Tug McTighe (12:21)
Alright, we already talked about the box office. it's important to note that it beat out Titanic and Blackhawk down as the biggest.

Martin Luther King Day weekend opening gross. Again,

matt (12:34)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (12:35)
I'm not sure who's tracking this, but it reminds me of a sports stat that's like in the third quarter of games on a Thursday in December, quarterbacks that are left handed of those of that group, he's the third best. All right, man. I don't know what

matt (12:48)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (12:49)
you did to find it, but can you go back to whatever hole you came out of? Because so

matt (12:51)
Dubious distinction.

Tug McTighe (12:52)
but yes, it did it did really well. It did great.

in Japan, it got the top spot in the box office, and this is why I have a hard time with anime. It had the top spot at the box office for one week before the release of Common Rider, Den O and Kiva, Climax Decca took the top spot. Like these these animes and mangas with the with the name like Robot Police Fight Armed Wingman. I'm like, okay, I alright. And maybe that's a translation. I'm assuming it is.

But

matt (13:19)
I w

Tug McTighe (13:20)
Anyway. anyway

matt (13:20)
I wouldn't be surprised. But

Tug McTighe (13:23)
pretty good money for you know, for its twenty five to thirty million dollar budget.

matt (13:26)
Absolutely. And none of that went to salary. The cause the cast was nobody's. they made scale. 50,000, 100,000. That's it. That's amazing.

Tug McTighe (13:30)
No. Right. Yeah. So talk about

that. What do Rotten Tomatoes think? What do the critics think?

matt (13:37)
Tomato meter 78% on 214 critic reviews. Popcorn meter 68% on 250,000 plus ratings. That seems like a lot.

Tug McTighe (13:45)
I've I've I've got a

reason I've got a reason why I think it's down on the tomato meter. And we'll talk in a minute because I know you have the same reason, but Rotten Tomatoes described it as sort of a Blair Witch project crossed with Godzilla. It's economically paced it, stylistically clever, clever, and filled with scares. Yeah.

matt (14:04)
I think that's right. I don't know that we want

to watch found footage movies today, but at the time it seemed pretty novel.

Tug McTighe (14:10)
Well, I a hundred percent agree. the Austin Chronicle, Mark Savlov, said it was the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in adult movie going life. Okay. Michael Resc Reschauffen of the Hollywood Reporter, chillingly effective. liked the film's claustrophobic intensity. let's go down to Roger Ebert. Three out of f three of four stars said it's pretty scary at times, incites unmistakable evocations of nine one one.

He concludes that all in all it's an effective film, by the way. No higher praise than effective.

matt (14:37)
Right.

Tug McTighe (14:38)
You know what, Matt? That work you turned in is effective. I'll see you on Monday. Or maybe I won't.

matt (14:42)
Yeah, he wasn't

g Roger wasn't gushing here, was he?

Tug McTighe (14:45)
No,

Roger's tough. I have a another fun fact.

The severed head of the Statue of

matt (14:48)
And what is it? Sorry.

Tug McTighe (14:49)
Liberty was inspired by the poster of the nineteen eighty one film Escape from New York, written and directed by whom?

matt (14:55)
Car John Carpenter.

Tug McTighe (14:56)
John Carpenter. that's where the head lies on the New York street. Reeves explained it's

matt (14:59)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (14:59)
an incre incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired producer J. J. Adams to say, Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie.

matt (15:06)
Yeah, I was thinking of Planet of the Apes had kind of a thing. Okay, great. It wasn't just me. From intro. But they never made a mick a monkey out of me.

Tug McTighe (15:08)
So was I. I hate every ape I see from chimpan A to chimpanzee. You'll never make a monkey out of me. It's incredible.

matt (15:18)
Love it.

Tug McTighe (15:19)
hey Matt, why is it called Cloverfield?

matt (15:21)
God, here we go. it was initially titled Cloverfield, changed, as we said several times throughout production to, you know, gray, gray something to whatever, slush o probably.

Tug McTighe (15:29)
Greyhawk. Greyhawk. Yeah.

matt (15:32)
and eventually ended up with that. this kind of reminded me of John Wick. Matt Reeves explained it was due to the hype caused by the teaser trailer. It

Tug McTighe (15:37)
Right. Right.

matt (15:39)
spread to such a degree they couldn't use the name anymore. And they started using all the names like Slusho and Cheese, and people always figured it out.

So Cloverfield apparently was the government's case designation for the events caused by the monster. So you

Tug McTighe (15:51)
For this event. Correct.

matt (15:52)
really had to like a Project Blue Book from Do you remember that from the 70s, 80s? It was a T T V show?

Tug McTighe (15:56)
Yep. Yep.

matt (15:58)
Yeah, that was fun. comparing the titling to that of the real Manhattan Project, though the government did not actually originate this, they just made it up for the show. but ultimately, Cloverfield Boulevard is the highway exit.

JJ Abrams takes to his Santa Monica office, which used to lead to the real to the Santa Monica Airport, which originally bore the name Clover Field. This is the real reason he did it. And this is why I find him insufferable sometimes. It's just an inside joke for him. And maybe a handful of people.

who know it, like ten people. But we have to live with it. Like it seems really lazy to me and self indulgent, but on brand for JJ Abrams, just like Slush show, to be like, I'm gonna call the movie this and it's and then I'm gonna laugh every time I hear it. But it could be better. It could be a billion times better.

Tug McTighe (16:47)
Yeah. And I'm I'm I don't care. I think it's I think it's kinda funny. But I understand.

matt (16:50)
I know you don't care, but it just makes me mad. Like when you have

when you have this much creative power and it's interesting to me, he

Tug McTighe (16:56)
I I don't disagree. Yeah.

matt (16:57)
didn't direct it, but we still think of it as a J. J. Abrams movie.

Tug McTighe (17:00)
Right, yeah. And that's how well, that's actually a really sort of case in point. He didn't direct it, but it it's a J. J. Abrams movie. Right.

matt (17:07)
Yeah. He didn't write it, didn't direct

it, and yet he's got his fingerprints all over this thing and we think of it as his movie. There are things that could have been better, but he would rather do this self dumb bull.

Tug McTighe (17:16)
Yeah. He now okay, so that okay, so you've actually

just you just scored a point, two points to Hufflepuff. I put you in Hufflepuff. boy.

matt (17:24)
Hero.

Tug McTighe (17:24)
but you just that is a winning argument for for me when I said I don't care. Ha so much creative power, so much juice to just settle on Cloverfield 'cause you think it's neat. Okay, I get I I I'm with ya. I get it.

matt (17:37)
Yeah. Because

your college roommate's gonna go like, Cloverfield that's where he works.

Tug McTighe (17:41)
they must say

well they're over here in Hufflepuff like Cloverfield. Anyway,

matt (17:43)
No. Why Hufflepuff? Like if anything

well, no, you're right, it's fair. It's Hufflepuff for me.

Tug McTighe (17:50)
You've got an

awesome but I'll tell you what, Hogwarts is lax on the not allowing third years to brew their own beer. Sorry, their own butter beer.

matt (17:57)
they can make whatever they want. Did I ever tell you about Food Warts? When

Tug McTighe (18:01)
No.

matt (18:02)
my kids were young, I would tell them that when I went to I went to a magic school, but it was called Food Warts. And we had

Tug McTighe (18:08)
huh.

matt (18:08)
Pizza House, Hamburger House, Chicken House, and there was another one I can't remember, like Pancake House.

Tug McTighe (18:13)
This is defin on brand for Matlaw.

matt (18:15)
Yeah, and the the classes were like transform it, you had to transfigure because we were reading all the books to them. They were they were young back then. So like transfiguring

Tug McTighe (18:22)
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

matt (18:24)
ice into water.

And I was really good at that. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (18:27)
my god, so good.

matt (18:29)
So anyway, food warts is our thing. Tell us about the casting of this movie.

Tug McTighe (18:33)
So again, this is a JJ Abrams joint, so secret casting, no scripts sent to candidates. 'cause he's really wants to prevent plot info leaking. he sent scripts from previous TV shows like Alias and Lost. some scenes were written for the audition that weren't gonna be used in the in the film. Lizzie Kaplan, who we'll talk about, said she accepted role in Cloverfield without knowing the premise.

Solely because she was a fan of the Abrams produced Lost, and then she discovered what it really was, and she's like, I'm never fucking doing that again. That was dumb. she she she also said the only saving grace for her was that the character was the sarcastic outsider which checks out for

matt (19:10)
Stretch the herd.

Tug McTighe (19:11)
Lizzie Kaplan, whom I adore. She's has she ever not played the sarcastic outsider? She was in Freaks and Geeks.

She was in Mean Girls, she's in this. although I did mat I did think it was Kristen Ritter for a second from the bitch in apartment twenty three B and

matt (19:24)
no, I can see that.

Tug McTighe (19:26)
Jessica Jones. they look similar to me. Pretty dark. Yeah.

matt (19:27)
yeah, and Veronica Veronica Mars. I remember Lizzie

Kaplan from Party Down. Did you watch Party Down at all?

Tug McTighe (19:34)
Yeah, of course. Great. Yeah.

matt (19:36)
I like her a lot. she seems to me like every the girl that every guy in school, including me, would think, you know, nobody understands her but I do, and I got a chat shot with her, and of course there's no chance.

Tug McTighe (19:43)
I I got a chance. There's a chance. Yeah, exactly.

That's a great way to describe her. She would that would have been a great there were so many of those characters in eighties movies.

matt (19:53)
Yeah. And in my high school. It was like I was like,

Tug McTighe (19:56)
And in my high school, for sure.

matt (19:57)
she and I could be great together. It's like nope.

Tug McTighe (19:59)
it it's important to talk about with regards to production, Matt, that the film was shot and edited in this cinema verite style, which in French

matt (20:06)
What's that?

Tug McTighe (20:07)
means truthful cinema, which is documentary style filmmaking. It goes back to the fifties and sixties where they were they were just setting up the camera and they were shooting it in real life and they were hand h hand holding a lot, not

putting it on sticks, not you know, they didn't have any gear really. It was either on a tripod or or or handheld, but it was it was art

matt (20:24)
Like art film style.

Tug McTighe (20:26)
films, right? so right, we the whole movie is shot by HUD, who is TJ Miller who was enlisted to tape the going away messages, right? to Rob

And he just captures all these events. And so you're only seeing what the what the camera's seeing, which is a great trick to not show the monster, which we'll get to in a bit. But it's like one handheld camera, jump cuts, s s you know, static. The camera gets bumped and it turns to the side and it So it's a little bit hard to watch at times. You get you you get used to it and then they actually

If you watch, they smooth it out a little bit towards the end to just so just so you can capture understand what's going on. but TJ Miller, who plays HUD, has said in in interviews, he's like, Man, I think I shot about a third of this thing and half of it made it into the film. Matt Reeves is like, we want it to be like a handicam, and then just w turned this on and and saw this. and then there is a great great moment where the people when the when the statue of liberty head comes down.

They all

matt (21:24)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (21:24)
pull out their fucking flip phones and they're taking pictures, which is is a little bit like deja vu of what's going on today. Like we're all we're doing is capturing everything on our phones. so I thought that was intr interesting all the way back in two thousand eight.

matt (21:37)
Yeah, so a lot of what you see on the screen is actually T J Miller holding a handy cam.

Tug McTighe (21:43)
And how do you know it's him? 'Cause you can hear him talking nonstop the whole time.

matt (21:46)
he doesn't stop talking. I hope you like the voice of TJ Miller, 'cause you're gonna hear it.

Tug McTighe (21:53)
there here's something I wanna talk about, Matt.

the CGI and the visual effects were produced by Effect Studios Double Negative and Tippett Studio. Let me tell you who Phil Tippett is, Matt. In nineteen

matt (22:01)
Please do. Yes, please do.

Tug McTighe (22:04)
seventy-five, Phil Tippett was hired by George Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic to create a stop-motion holographic chess scene from the original Star Wars.

matt (22:13)
I saw that. I'm doing the meme of

Tug McTighe (22:14)
I know you did.

matt (22:16)
Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the T V.

Tug McTighe (22:18)
I know, right? yep. He does that. then in nineteen seventy seven, Joe Dante we need to watch a Joe Dante movie here sometime, and John

matt (22:29)
Yeah, we probably should.

Tug McTighe (22:29)
Davidson approached Tippet to create the fish for Roger Corman's Piranha. Have you ever seen piranha?

matt (22:34)
I've seen parts of it. On TV. Yep. Maybe.

Tug McTighe (22:35)
Add it to the list. so he made the piranha.

And then in 78, tippett was the boss of the ILM animation department, and he developed the animation techniques they called Go Motion to animate the walkers and the Tauntains. And

matt (22:50)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (22:51)
the way that they made the Tauntauns not look so herky jerky Ray How Harryhausen style was they created a camera that had some sort of a

Like a vi a wiggle of vibration that still that didn't make it over blurred, but it blurred it just enough like real life. 'Cause my hand isn't going like that. It's

matt (23:07)
Like a smoothing. Okay.

Tug McTighe (23:09)
and that's why the Tauntauns looked looked looked more real. And by the way, he continued using Go Motion for Dragonslayer. I love that movie. It's it's really not great. and he won his first Academy Award for that. and then he did all the shit

Again in Return of the Jedi. Anyway, Phil Tippett. Star Wars.

matt (23:25)
Can I ask a quick question about Star Wars?

Tug McTighe (23:27)
Of course.

matt (23:28)
in Empire Strikes Back, w were the AdAts the ideal vehicle for that planet? Was that smart?

Tug McTighe (23:34)
I'm listen, I'm not a I'm not a mechanical engineer. The answer is no. Hey,

matt (23:38)
What? You lied to me. Okay.

Tug McTighe (23:41)
by the way, we have to attack this base at.05 miles per hour.

matt (23:46)
Right.

Tug McTighe (23:46)
Should we create some sort of a rolling tank that just rolls in there over this terrain and and and blows everything up? We also have spaceship technology, I'll have you know. We could just bomb it. Nope.

matt (23:56)
Sure. Like you can have like some

with a vehicle with like a low center of gravity, maybe, or should we just put it up on stilts? Yeah. Anyway, that's something. But it looked cool. They looked really cool.

Tug McTighe (24:01)
No, no, no, no, no. Very spindly dangerous legs. Don't get me started on the two legged ones. Can we can we get this to be any less stable? Yes. Look cool dinosaurs.

matt (24:13)
Man, do I remember that. All right, sorry, go ahead.

Tug McTighe (24:17)
Alright,

so I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead here. this is a neat little tidbit. Let's we'll call this a fun fact. This will be the third fun fact already.

If you go to the Wikipedia entry for this movie, there's a sign at an AMC theater that reads, Due to the filming method used for Cloverfield, guests viewing this film may experience side effects associated with motion sickness, similar to riding a roller coaster. They had to put a sign up. It's great.

matt (24:37)
It does. I can confirm. Right.

Tug McTighe (24:40)
so they Roger Ebert called it La Shakily Queasy Cam. it caused some movie viewers to experience motion sickness, nausea, temporary loss of balance.

audience members prone to migraines, side of the film is a trigger. anyway, just Okay, well done, JJ. And by the way, nobody thinks that's more amusing than JJ Abrams and his buddies.

Yeah. All

matt (24:59)
Yeah, for sure.

Tug McTighe (25:01)
right, Matt, tell us about the creature design.

matt (25:04)
Visual main effects supervisor Nick Tom and Phil Tippett, who he mentioned, were enlisted to develop visual effects for Cloverfield. Because the visual effects were incorporated after filming, and we see this now all the time with green screen. the cast members had only seen early concept drawings, so they had to just react, right? To probably

Tug McTighe (25:21)
Yeah, they're just basically running through the city.

matt (25:22)
absolutely just reaction shots. artist Neville Page designed the monster and I to my understanding did a lot.

of concepting around like what it would actually be like, what it would eat, how it would respond to the environment.

Tug McTighe (25:37)
Like giving

it giving it a true a true life.

matt (25:39)
More than mo way beyond just, hey, draw me a monster. there was a biological rationale including an elongated articulated external esophagus that's a mouthful, which

Tug McTighe (25:50)
That's not what I want

either. I don't want an elongated articulated external esophagus.

matt (25:55)
And I don't know that we ever saw it on screen. he had an idea about real life circus elephants that get frightened and lash out and he thought

Tug McTighe (26:03)
Which I thought

was a really great corollary for what this monster was doing. If you drop a monster down into a city that that lives on another planet in the ocean, in a different plane of existence, and it's in New York, it's gonna have a freak out.

matt (26:17)
For sure. And I feel like, and mate, you tell me if you agree, even watching the show and know knowing nothing about the monster, I still always got the feeling that it was lashing out instinctively, that it wasn't intelligent, that it wasn't malicious,

Tug McTighe (26:29)
One hundred percent. No

matt (26:31)
that it was just, like you said, an elephant creature that they the size of a

This the umpire state building that they just dropped into the middle of the city.

Tug McTighe (26:40)
Just having a panic attack, literally.

matt (26:42)
Did you like the creature design?

Tug McTighe (26:43)
I did. in as much as we saw it, I I I liked it. Sarah watched this with me, which is a rare for her to watch. She really, really liked it, by the way, everyone. but she would never watch a movie like this at her own choosing. And she goes, That thing is so non animal like. She said like something like that, like 'cause it's got all these bending arms or a pe and they're the wrong way.

You know, there's lots of stuff that just weird and then at the very end when you see when HUD you know, it looks right in the camera finally. And it's got these like balloon breathing apparatus. but yeah, I thought it was cool.

matt (27:16)
The the long legged creatures from the Dark Crystal, I'm sure you know what the names of those are.

Tug McTighe (27:20)
Yeah, the land striders.

matt (27:22)
I feel like there was something to that of really long appendages.

Tug McTighe (27:25)
Yeah, where it's got the

long yeah, and it's kind of creeping and yeah.

matt (27:28)
we talk about music a lot on the show. Rob's party mix, also called Cloverfield Mix, is a collection of the music that was played in the party sequence at the beginning of the show. in lieu of a traditional soundtrack album because there is no it's all found footage, you're hearing what's on the video. So that's kind of a challenge. I'll give him credit for that too. Having seen eight billion movies, you know that music is

Even when you don't notice it, but it's there and it makes you feel things.

Tug McTighe (27:53)
Is making a big impact. Yep.

matt (27:55)
This didn't have that. the only part of the score was the Cloverfield Overture by called Roar by Michael Giachino, who I love.

it plays over the end credits, it's not featured on the album. but you could at one point get the mixtape. a CD called Rob's Party Mix.

Came packaged in special edition of Cloverfield, made available for sale in Canadian Walmart stores beginning on April twenty second, two thousand eight. So I assume you were in Canada in April twenty.

Tug McTighe (28:26)
yes, nobody goes to Canada

for a D V D release more than I do.

matt (28:30)
Yeah. for any

if you're interested at all, it's it's worth listening to. You can find all the tracks on it. acts included Kings of Leon, Parliament, Funkadelic, love those guys, Gorilla's Spoon, also love Spoon, the Black Keys, and then a bunch of others I wasn't familiar with. So kind of a snapshot of early two thousands music, which is cool.

Tug McTighe (28:49)
Yeah,

so like again, like we talked about this quote unquote viral marketing, which wasn't called viral marketing in those days. J J has always been really good about using other mediums to move his narratives forward. So like the music, the website, you know, you could get set up for an email about loss and they would send you an email.

so my J J beef is different than yours, which is if you're gonna watch a JJ Abrams movie or show you have to read a book or websites or watch YouTube videos about the show that you wanna watch. So you you have to watch a bunch of videos about the show you wanna watch so you can watch a show, which I'm not gonna do. Full stop. but this was an early entry into that sort of thing, which again, like we said, was tw almost twenty years ago.

matt (29:27)
Well

and also

Tug McTighe (29:28)
It's why

I quit it's why I quit watching Lost. I'm like, I'm not gonna read some website and play a fucking puzzle

matt (29:33)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (29:33)
game to try to I'm not gonna decipher the code on the interstitials on fringe. I just wanna watch a show. so again, I'll get off the soapbox.

matt (29:38)
Yeah, I just want to watch the show. Watch your damn show. but it's having been in the

room a billion times when it's like, what can we do that's different? let's make a a Spotify playlist. You know, there was a time, people won't realize this, but there was a time when that was a fresh idea. Like,

Tug McTighe (29:54)
A hundred percent.

matt (29:55)
that's cool, let's do that. I mean, that was 20 years ago But it's just interesting to see that he they were doing all these things.

Tug McTighe (30:01)
which is really hard to come up with a concept that ties into your movie, that's using nascent technology, right? That nobody kind of it was hard to understand what all this was gonna be. Speaking of hard things, it's hard to come up with a really good concept to help push your brand forward. That's where Little Bear comes in. As everyone knows, Little Bear is our our proud sponsor of this podcast.

And when you talk about concepts and monstrous ideas, you want to go big. You don't want a small idea to help your business go forward. You want to go big. Maybe not kaiju big, maybe not wrecking the city big, but you want to go big. You want to think about how your brand's website connects to its marketing, connects to its logos, connects to its even, connects to its branded merchandise. And that's what Matt Lore and his his partners at Little Bear do.

I need you to check out their work at Little Bear dot graphics and you will not have to watch a show, read a book, watch a movie. You just gotta work with them and everything's gonna work out A okay in the end.

matt (31:02)
That's amazing. And everybody that's listening right now I'll tell you later why that's amazing.

Let's

talk about the cast. I wanna kick it off by saying that JJ Abrams intentionally cast no name actors. So A, more money can go to the FX budget, because they didn't know how this was gonna you know, you don't know it's gonna make

Tug McTighe (31:18)
Yeah.

matt (31:19)
two hundred, you know, three hundred, five hundred million dollars. and B, he thought the fountain footage quality of it would be more effective if he didn't know who any of these people were, which I think makes sense.

Tug McTighe (31:29)
It i yeah, it it feels more real, right?

matt (31:31)
Yeah. That said, it did help the careers of T J. Miller. This was his debut movie. And

Tug McTighe (31:37)
Okay. He was

baby faced when you saw him, the few times you saw

matt (31:40)
For sure.

Tug McTighe (31:40)
him.

matt (31:41)
and Lizzie Kaplan, who both went on to bigger and better things and then for one of those people, worse things. So who was in it, Tug?

Tug McTighe (31:47)
Which we'll get to on a moment.

Michael Stahl David was Rob Hawkins. That's all the data I have.

matt (31:51)
Don't know him from anything else.

Tug McTighe (31:53)
Odette Yussman is Beth McIntyre, Rob's girlfriend. Very pretty. That's all

matt (31:56)
she's beauty, but I don't know what else she was in.

Tug McTighe (31:59)
the data we have. TJ Miller was HUD Hudson, Hud Platt. He was the cameraman capturing the events of Rob's best friend. I love his performance here. I really do. Lots of quippy TJ Miller dialogue, which he has done throughout his career.

matt (32:12)
I wonder how much of that was improvised. I bet at least some of it, like if they s because here's

Tug McTighe (32:15)
I'll bet some of it. Yeah. I'll bet.

matt (32:18)
and we'll talk about it later, but I mean part of this movie is

Saying something. They have to have, even if it's describing, even if it's like, my

Tug McTighe (32:25)
It yeah.

matt (32:26)
gosh, did you see that? They have to have somebody talking.

Tug McTighe (32:29)
Because all we're do is running. All we're doing is running. There's

matt (32:32)
Right.

Tug McTighe (32:33)
no sitting across a table talking about our plan to do the heist. It's my god, what is that? Holy shit, where are you? Where's Rob? And then

matt (32:39)
It's all reaction. Yeah, it's reactions.

Tug McTighe (32:41)
and then, you know, but he would do stuff like I remember laughing out loud at one thing where he goes, he goes, no, that was a that was a terrible thing that just happened. Equally as terrible as the monster that's attacking the city like, you know, he just like he's trying to make some sense of it.

I also liked how how the character of HUD and and pretty much everybody else just kept asking each other if they're okay. Are you okay? No man, I'm fucking not. My girlfriend called me and left a message her building collapsed on her, and I'm gonna find out later there's a piece of rebar stuck to her. My brother's dead. Sorry, spoiler alert for the plot.

No, but they c but but it's what you well you don't know what to say. So what do you Yeah

matt (33:19)
No, forty

forty-five percent of the dialogue is are you okay? And the other and another forty-five is Did you see that? I loved him in

Tug McTighe (33:26)
Did you see that? and I know

matt (33:29)
Silicon Valley. my family loved him in Big Hero Six is Fred. he's

Tug McTighe (33:32)
I love big hero sex.

matt (33:33)
just got such an unmistakable voice that if not for his other kind of personal woes, I think he could just do he could do voice acting for the rest of his life.

Tug McTighe (33:40)
Yeah, he's he's he's been

now we won't belabor the point, but yeah, we it would be remiss if we didn't say TJ Miller's been cancelled a bit here. We haven't seen him do much. A lot of problems dating way back to even college about bullying and being a dick and sexual harassment and being just kind of a douche. So we'll leave it there. Try to separate the artist from the art, I guess.

matt (34:01)
Fair enough.

Tug McTighe (34:03)
Jessica Lucas was Lily, Jason's fiance, another very pretty woman.

matt (34:08)
Yeah, she was on The Resident. She was on like three seasons of that show.

Tug McTighe (34:09)
she Yeah, yeah, a couple episodes.

The aforementioned Lizzie Kaplan is Marlena Diamond, a fellow party goer in HUD's crush. I love her. Again,

matt (34:17)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (34:18)
I won't belabor the point. and then you got Mike Vogel as Jason Hawkins, who I have no idea who he is, but I really liked him. you got Ben Feldman as Travis Morello, who's Beth's friend. yeah, Beth brought a boy to the to the a date to the party and that was like scuttle butt.

matt (34:31)
Yes, he was a bab baby face, handsome guy. he was in Superstore kind of office meets the Walmart kind of a show. he was in Mad Men. I just l literally last night saw him in an episode of Major Crime. So he he's been around.

Tug McTighe (34:45)
Yeah, so and then a a bunch of other people that again weren't super famous, but just were New Yorkers hanging around trying to escape the monster.

yeah. Alright. So our favorite part is the plot. I mean, I don't know if that's our favorite part, but

matt (34:59)
It's a big part.

Tug McTighe (35:00)
So, footage from a personal camcorder is recovered by the US Department of Defense in the area, quote unquote, formerly known as Central Park. So right there you're getting a little bit of knowledge. it has a disclaimer says about multiple sightings of a case designated Cloverfield.

matt (35:15)
So

the beginning

Tug McTighe (35:15)
So then we

matt (35:16)
you've gotta like watch what's going on 'cause you can

Tug McTighe (35:18)
You've got yeah, you

matt (35:20)
read it.

Tug McTighe (35:20)
I don't typically like visuals you have to read, but this is kind of typing on the screen and showing you some information that you that you need to capture. Correct. Right.

matt (35:25)
Yeah. They lay it out right there, this is what this is, and then it just goes.

Tug McTighe (35:30)
So then we see a a date, April twenty seventh, two thousand eight. Rob Hawkins wakes up with Beth McIntyre in her father's apartment. Beth's father apparently was doing quite well. before embark embarking on a date

like a day together across New York City and Coney Island and then cut to May twenty two, which is about a month later. Rob's brother Jason and Jason's girlfriend Lily are throwing a surprise farewell party for Rob at his lower Manhattan. It looked like Soho to me. lower Manhattan apartment before he moves to Japan for his new job. Jason asked Rob's best friend Hudson, Hud Platt, to film testimonials for Rob during the party, but only because Lily told Jason to do it. And Jason didn't want to do it.

matt (36:06)
And you

didn't want to do it.

Tug McTighe (36:08)
I've got stuck with it.

matt (36:09)
And and we've said this in case we haven't teeded up appropriately, this it's like you're watching a personal video. Like you're watching a V CR. Like you're watching a V CR tape. So I got a feeling that Lily had a thing for Rob. Did you think there was something there?

Tug McTighe (36:22)
There there

I th I'm not sure it was may maybe. Definitely they are they are close.

matt (36:28)
Yeah, there was something going on.

Tug McTighe (36:29)
Yeah, they're close. But I think she was pretty hurt when Jason got tailed. god, spoiler alert.

matt (36:35)
Ha ha.

Tug McTighe (36:36)
so Beth upset by Rob's lack of communication after their one night stand, we only find this out later that they had this date

because they're they're chitter chattering to each other, captured on this video. Because Hudson will not stop. And Hudson's a dick too. He's like, Hey man, will you stop recording? And he's Yeah, you bet. Puts the camera back up. Anyway, but she brings another dude to the party, which they're like, I thought they were together and this and that and the third thing. we find that out later. So he brings just Travis to the party, they have an argument, she leaves, he says something really mean, he says, Have fun, Travis.

Like boy.

matt (37:10)
well.

Tug McTighe (37:10)
and then a massive earthquake occurs, causing like a brief citywide power outage. And then they jump on T V look on TV and th says there's a capsized oil tanker near Liberty Island, right right on the other side of the Statue of Liberty. And then

matt (37:24)
That's at like

point that's at like twenty five minutes in. So you've watched

all Yeah.

Tug McTighe (37:30)
Great point. Yeah. Go.

matt (37:32)
This setup takes you twenty five to twenty eight minutes for you to meet these people to try and get a sense of who they are. before that earthquake, that that rumbling building, the lights go out, all that stuff. So that

Tug McTighe (37:44)
Yeah. Right before

this is the inciting incident. This is what throws their normal world into chaos, right?

matt (37:50)
Yeah, it it takes a while to get there.

Tug McTighe (37:51)
That's a great point. And you you really get to know them through this video footage and through this party. and there's a lot of a lot of story there, which is not the story that we're watching, but is is really well done in that in that first act. That's right, which is your favorite. so

matt (38:04)
And they show it. They don't tell you, they show you. So that's good. Yep, it is.

Tug McTighe (38:09)
Jason, Rob's brother

It's like, let's go to the roof and see what it is. We can see it from here. So they they go up to the roof and then boom, another giant explosion. Flaming debris flies in there, starts hitting their roof. And that the he's like, Let's leave the roof. Bad idea. So they start going back down. and and then they get all the way downstairs and they they they're f they've gotta get out of these buildings.

matt (38:28)
Everybody's fleeing the skyscrapers, you know, in these department buildings. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (38:32)
So they run out into the street.

And then they're looking down the street and you see this something flying. Right in front of twenty feet away is the severed head of the Statue of Liberty. we'll we'll we'll play a little bit of that here.

matt (38:43)
I

In the chaos, HUD records an enormous creature several blocks away, and you just see part of it, collapsing.

Tug McTighe (38:50)
Yeah, like a foot. You

see a foot, you see a tentacle, you see a tail.

matt (38:53)
Right. Might be a tail, might be a leg, you don't know, but you see something massive.

Tug McTighe (38:59)
And we're

not even talking seeing it. We're talking a half a second of a of a limb or a leg. Right.

matt (39:05)
Which was great. Like what did I just see, right?

Tug McTighe (39:08)
I and it's dark and it's everything's falling. So really beautiful work here.

matt (39:12)
Yeah, so collapse is the building. Rob, Jason, Lily, and Hud take cover in a convenience store, sheltering from the smoke and debris of the collapse, because there's this giant cloud that just rolls by of just dust, because

Tug McTighe (39:24)
Right.

matt (39:24)
an entire building has been demolished by this thing. when they emerge, they find their friend Marlena covered in dust, and she's in shock from seeing the creature quote unquote eating people.

Tug McTighe (39:35)
Right, she's it was he just eating people. so it's really traumatic and like you said, nothing was happening for thirty minutes, and now it's fucking chaos.

matt (39:44)
Yeah. Once it starts, it starts. And li Marlena is Leslie Kaplan, so she's really doing a great job at playing someone that's kind of shell shocked and traumatized. She does a great job.

Tug McTighe (39:53)
Right, right. So

Matt, I want to talk about mystery box again. So this introduction of Clover, the monster, is peak mystery box filmmaking. We only see the tail. We see a glimpse of the foot or the leg or whatever articulated esophagus it may be. We never see it full on, or even nearly full on. And we don't see the mouth, we don't see the head, we don't see the eyes.

It reminded me so much of Jaws, which is another one of my favorite movies, where where not seeing the shark is so much better than seeing the shark and it works so much so much better for suspense and horror. I just I couldn't help myself right there.

matt (40:30)
And as I watched it, I was channeling you because I knew you would think that and I felt the exact same thing. Like showing

Tug McTighe (40:36)
Yeah, you're like.

matt (40:36)
right, showing a glimpse or giving you just a fraction of a second and making your imagination try to fill in the rest was really important.

Tug McTighe (40:44)
It makes it so much worse.

matt (40:46)
Absolutely.

Tug McTighe (40:46)
So the group is attempting to evacuate Manhattan. Like there's cops trying to get people out, and they're like, go to the Brooklyn Bridge, go to the Brooklyn Bridge. So they're all getting across the Brooklyn Bridge, which Sarah goes, No fucking way am I getting on that bridge. She goes, We she goes, We tug, we walked across that bridge a couple times. It's really far.

Jason is leading again. Jason is shepherding people. He's trying to help everybody. and then Rob gets a call from Beth, who's trapped in her apartment at the Time Warner Center, which is way up in more closer to Midtown. They're down they're well, they're not downtown. They're in Soho. They're in the lower we'll call it Soho. They're in the Lower East Side-ish area.

matt (41:20)
Okay. I don't know where I don't know where anything is.

Tug McTighe (41:24)
And they're it's too far. It's far. How about that?

matt (41:26)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (41:28)
But he gets a call from Beth and says, My apartment collapsed on me, this and that, and the third thing. So then the creature appears and what happens? Jason's leading them out and and he just gets completely obliterated. The monster walks through the bridge, his tail breaks everything, and then Jason is lost. Remember, Lily is his girlfriend who earlier they're like, I hope to be in the family soon. Like she was given that kind of thing. But you get I noticed you get Jason gets

several save the cat moments. He was helping people, directing traffic, being a leader. Right? Let's do this. Let's go. Where's they're like, Where's Jason going? He's helping this guy across the street. And then he just got tailed by that spiky, spiny dinosaur problem tail.

matt (42:08)
I wonder why

they did that. Because he wasn't likable enough at the start or you had to give a

Tug McTighe (42:13)
I I no

matt (42:14)
reason to feel bad about it? I'm not sure.

Tug McTighe (42:16)
I don't know. I sort of think it had to do with I'd like to know if he and Rob were were fraternal twins. I which wanna know which one was the oldest a little bit. I think it it helps Rob's character. I think maybe part of the reason he's like I better get up there and save Beth. Spoiler guys, is that's maybe what Jason would have done.

matt (42:32)
He's got nothing else. Well, maybe, yeah. Okay.

so Rob's phone is dying. we've all been there. and so they beat it to an electronic store in Lower Manhattan nearby where the news reports so they've got TVs that are showing everybody's looting, but at a certain point

Tug McTighe (42:51)
So meanwhile everybody's looting the city, of course. We're we're t we're

not terrified of the kaiju that's demolishing New York. We better get a a T V.

matt (42:59)
Yeah. Well,

looters gotta loot. but at a certain point

Tug McTighe (43:02)
Looter's gotta lose.

matt (43:03)
I thought that was actually really effective. there's a certain point, so he goes in there to to get a battery for his phone. And you know that's what he's doing. but HUD is like, Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going? It's like, dude, he's going to the electronic store to get a battery. Like we all know it. Why don't we know?

Tug McTighe (43:18)
He said my battery's dying.

Beth is trying to call me.

matt (43:20)
Cheaming at Christmas. And Rob doesn't

answer him, which is insane too. It's like, Rob, just tell him so he'll stop repeating this, but I feel like they have to have Hud saying something. and he finally answers them when it's obvious what he's doing. But there's a point where all the looters have stopped and are watching the TV.

Tug McTighe (43:36)
Yeah,

I I noticed one great bit where dude's holding like a camcorder something and he reaches up and turns it up. So they can hear it.

matt (43:43)
All

right.

Tug McTighe (43:45)
And then now we

see the this is like classic Godzilla where the army and the planes and the helicopters are attacking Clover.

matt (43:51)
Right. So that was I will give credit too to the way they jumped between y you know,

Tug McTighe (43:56)
Hundred hundred percent.

matt (43:58)
I mean this was this was well thought out. because

Tug McTighe (44:00)
Yeah.

matt (44:01)
you could get bored just seeing what's on the handicam all the time, but then

Tug McTighe (44:05)
Correct.

matt (44:05)
you go to another screen and then you go back to the handy cam. So credit there.

Tug McTighe (44:09)
Did

you did you see Twenty fourteen's Godzilla, Gareth Edwards?

matt (44:14)
I'm sure I did.

Tug McTighe (44:14)
It's the

one it's the one that kicked off this Godzilla Kong, Skull Island. Okay. So he

matt (44:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great.

Tug McTighe (44:20)
did he did a great job there too, Gareth Edwards did, where the camera would be positioned where you could see that it's looking out like a kitchen window and you would see the leg of Godzilla walking by and you're like, Dear God, that's a giant versus just having it.

in the camera with no scale,

matt (44:38)
Right.

Tug McTighe (44:38)
it you just forget how big it is. It's a little bit like you and I go into a basketball game where you look

matt (44:40)
For sure.

Tug McTighe (44:43)
at them on TV and you're like, these guys aren't these guys are tall, but they're not that tall. And then we go to a game we're like, good lord, if I was on your shoulders, they could still dunk over us.

matt (44:52)
Yeah, I met David Robinson in person once and it was Yeah, Yeah.

Tug McTighe (44:55)
It's unbelievable.

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matt (45:45)
That's amazing. Okay, so l listeners, all twenty of you, the reason this is amazing is because Tug forgot to do these. So he's just doing these on the fly today, which is awesome. and also I have a feeling I had this idea I had this image flash in my mind that like ten years from now, this thing's gonna blow up and everybody's gonna listen to this and I'm gonna get thousands of people over like, Hey, do my website. Hey, are you still doing this?

Tug McTighe (46:09)
Ten years now.

matt (46:10)
And I'm like, No, I'm retired.

Tug McTighe (46:11)
No, I'm

matt (46:11)
What?

Tug McTighe (46:12)
really old. All we do is podcast all day now.

matt (46:14)
No.

Not at all. Sorry, I refinished furniture in my part time in my spare time. liter little bear furniture refinishing.

Tug McTighe (46:18)
Right, exactly. All right, well we're we're we're moving

to the midpoint here, I think, Matt.

matt (46:24)
So Rob, Hud, Lily, and Marlena venture up to Midtown Manhattan to rescue Beth from her apartment.

Tug McTighe (46:29)
And I know

he loves her, Matt, but it's it's it's just a terrible idea. She literally said in the voicemail, My building fell on me. I know he loves her. Aye aye.

matt (46:37)
Yeah, but

he needs a reason to go. after being caught in a battle between the creature and the military, who are just firing, they're like in the middle of the street and they're just bullets flying past them.

Tug McTighe (46:46)
Intermittently, yeah.

matt (46:48)
But I'm not I don't blame the military. they hide in the subway station, decide that staying underground will be safer, which is is not true.

Tug McTighe (46:54)
I I just since it's awful. It's not not the right move, I don't believe.

matt (46:58)
while walking through the subway tunnels toward Midtown, they're attacked by a group of parasites, one of which

Bites Marlena.

Tug McTighe (47:05)
yeah. We forgot to mention that Clover, the kaiju, has been dropping insectoid parasites down on the city as well. They are like bug crab teeth monsters that are just biting and attacking b it's horrifying.

matt (47:20)
Yeah, I felt like they were kind of dog size, which isn't better.

Tug McTighe (47:25)
Which isn't better.

matt (47:25)
it's not great. earlier we heard the news announcer saying, It appears something is falling off the creature, and I knew that we were in trouble at that point. I thought a

Tug McTighe (47:33)
Yeah, that's your your your decades of sci fi where you're like, boy, that's not good.

matt (47:37)
I thought a lot of this from even from the creature's appearance and behavior to the these face hugger, quote unquote face hugger crab killers.

Tug McTighe (47:44)
Yeah. a hundred

percent. Yeah.

matt (47:47)
Heavily

inspired by Alien. I don't know if it's all the same visual style. what's the guy's name? Help me out.

Tug McTighe (47:53)
Giger. H. R Giger.

matt (47:55)
I don't know if it's all H.R. Giger, but it's it's that same vibe that it's this kind of it's it's doesn't have a human intelligence. It has an animal intelligence,

Tug McTighe (48:04)
Correct.

matt (48:05)
and it also has these little

things that it sends out that are terrifying. There's a great

Tug McTighe (48:09)
Yeah, yeah.

matt (48:10)
scene in the subway where I don't know if handy cams had like handheld cameras had a night vision mode. Maybe they do.

Tug McTighe (48:17)
So

can I put a pin in that? I've got thoughts on the camera later. Okay.

matt (48:20)
Okay. There's a great

scene where Rob

Tug McTighe (48:24)
He goes, Hey man, turn on the turn on the night vision.

matt (48:27)
Yeah, Rob helps Hud switch it to night vision mode and they all had that and then we get a

Tug McTighe (48:30)
Of your two thousand eight Panasonic. Yeah, okay. What is that? Is Nith?

What do you got the good one? Is that the good one? Yeah.

matt (48:38)
We got a really good jump scare at that point. I thought that was again really effective and I'll talk more about that in a bit.

Tug McTighe (48:43)
Hundred

percent. I would like to say something about these parasites that is a bit of a window into my consumption of pop culture and my consumption of this sort of thing. Sarah is laying there on the couch and I'm watching it with my laptop. And in a sort of smug aside, I answer her very earnest question. She goes, my god, what's falling off of it? I go, th that's r that that's its parasites, babe.

matt (49:11)
Of course that's what it is. What else could it be?

Tug McTighe (49:07)
Literally like I don't have to have any fucking knowledge.

Baby, those are its parasites. Just let's move on. They're gonna be by the way, they're gonna come back and kill some people later.

matt (49:19)
And also, kind of a chekhov's gun. If per if something's falling off of it, you're gonna find out about it later.

Tug McTighe (49:24)
That's

exactly right. So

matt (49:27)
That's so good.

Tug McTighe (49:28)
So after a horrifying jaunt through the tunnels, they escape and the soldiers they get to like a department store and then there's a big bright light and it turns out it's the army and they're taken to this field hospital and and man

Y what's that Marvel comic about the cleanup of everything?

matt (49:46)
like damage ink. Yep.

Tug McTighe (49:47)
Dammit Jank.

We p we watch these movies with such popcorn fueled brains. They're like, we're literally tearing a city apart. So you got to this field hospital and hundreds of people are catastrophically injured. Not by the kaiju, but by falling concrete and glass and bl being blown out windows. So there's this giant this giant field hospital and then

Marlena bless her goes man I don't feel so good and her eyes are bleeding and the

matt (50:18)
That's never good.

Tug McTighe (50:19)
and the army people go We gotta bite and they grab her and take her away and they go behind this curtain and does she explode?

matt (50:27)
I couldn't tell she exploded or if she like was attacking them or but it I think she exploded. I like to think that's what happened. but that was the end of her.

Tug McTighe (50:35)
yeah, and I I thought it may be a maybe that's the parasite like alien that's the face hugger coming out. But no. But no. Yeah. No. Anyway. so so now

matt (50:40)
yeah, I don't know. And we never saw it again, so you just have to use your imagination, I guess. That was not super well formed.

Tug McTighe (50:48)
Matt, of course Rob is gonna go with army guys and escape. False.

matt (50:53)
No, of course not.

Tug McTighe (50:54)
False. He's gonna still get to Beth. S for whatever reason this army guy go and he says it, man, I shouldn't do this.

matt (51:00)
I was amazed by that. He's like, Well, you know, I shouldn't I shouldn't disobey orders

Tug McTighe (51:04)
Should shouldn't let

matt (51:06)
and let you do this random thing you're not supposed to do. Because that's what military guys do, right? Hey, you know what? Do it, man. Follow your heart.

Tug McTighe (51:10)
'Cause that yeah, that he's a three star general. Yeah. But

but then he's like, if you cut out here and turn him right, you're gonna jump on the forty third jump right, he's like, Hey, but hey, you're on you're close to Broadway, kid.

matt (51:19)
That was ridiculous. That was ridiculous.

I was in Love Ones too. Right. That was ridiculous.

Tug McTighe (51:24)
Right. But but he does give us a key plot point,

Matt. He says, Hey, if you hear a air siren, air raid, we're instituting hammer down protocol and that means we're gonna literally bomb Manhattan off the face of the planet. So when you

matt (51:38)
Right.

Tug McTighe (51:39)
hear that siren, you're dead.

matt (51:40)
So right. Do what you're gonna do, right?

Tug McTighe (51:43)
and there's a great line where he says, It may kill the creature, it will destroy Manhattan. Okay. May and will. So this was but though Matt, in all seriousness, this was like my my truest like connection in the moment to Godzilla while watching the movie. So Godzilla, right, was created as a metaphor for the nuclear bombs that we dropped on Japan. Godzilla is radioactive.

The bombs were radioactive. Cities were destroyed by Godzilla, just like the bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a kaiju movie, which we've seen before, but I'm like, this is like a real moment. Like it's destroying our city. It's leveling everything. And we don't know what to do other than.

Make a bigger bomb. So

matt (52:26)
Okay, but that raises question for me, which is if Godzilla was a response to World War Two, then what is this kaiju a response to?

Tug McTighe (52:37)
no, I don't think the kaiju is a response. I think we don't have any other ideas than bombing stuff.

matt (52:44)
Well, that's probably true.

Rob, Hudd, and Lily travel to the Time Warner Center. They find Beth impaled on exposed rebar, and they have to do a thing where they jump across a gap from one collapsing.

Tug McTighe (52:55)
Yeah, the the buildings

have fallen a a building has fallen into her building or her building has fallen into a building and they're like, We better jump across here to And and by the way, they really they really shortchange

matt (53:05)
It just stepped across it really.

Tug McTighe (53:07)
how hard it is to walk up fifty nine flights not fifty nine flights of stairs, fifty nine floors. Yeah.

matt (53:13)
Oof. Yeah, that's

a lot. and but on the other hand, the jump across really wasn't that hard. They just kind of

Tug McTighe (53:19)
No, it just looked like they slid down a thing and walked across.

matt (53:22)
walked over. so they find Beth impaled unexposed rebar, which you'll have in damage apartment, and they rescue her by like pulling her body off the rebar, which they don't show, but you hear it.

Tug McTighe (53:33)
So I'm not

a medical professional. I already told you I wasn't a mechanical engineer. But Serious

matt (53:38)
learning a lot about you.

Tug McTighe (53:39)
family has a ton of medical professionals in it.

You you cannot pull her off of that rebar. That rebar is holding all her blood in. So what they would do is they would cut the pieces of rebar and leave it in her until they got her to a hospital. Now I realize a kaiju's attack in the city. But they pull

matt (53:53)
Yeah, I couldn't really do.

Tug McTighe (53:54)
they pull her off, and she has a massive puncture wound in her shoulder, from which she would bleed out in several moments.

matt (54:01)
Yeah, you'd need

to fill that with I've watched a lot of medical stuff on T V. So I'm kind of an expert. So I feel like if you stuff it

Tug McTighe (54:05)
Yeah, very good. That that's it. Yeah. A lot of yeah. Listen, I've watched a lot of ER.

matt (54:09)
Yeah, exactly. yeah, I watched in the pit, so I I think you would s like stuff that with a dish rag or something. not to mention this was pretty great. They encounter one of those crab monsters in

Tug McTighe (54:18)
Yeah, this is a good one.

matt (54:20)
the stairwell. So they're like, Hey, it's all good, we'll just get out of here and there's one of these

Tug McTighe (54:24)
Right, you're like fuck me and he GMP acts

matt (54:26)
Yeah, but Rob kills

Tug McTighe (54:27)
into it.

matt (54:28)
Yeah, he kills it with an axe. so that was a good jump scare. That was good. the

Tug McTighe (54:33)
Alright, so they get

to Grand Grand Central. Again, they're doing a lot of walking or running here. and I noticed, Matt, something that usually frustrates you, that quite frustrated me. Beth sure is running well. She's not woozy and seems to be in no pain. Recall she was just impaled by a piece of rebar. I also noticed that poor Lily has been wearing heels the whole time. And Beth has slippers on or something.

I know they weren't prepared for a kaiju attack, but man, that sucks.

matt (54:58)
No, I would ditch my shoes and do like a Zola Bud thing. Remember Zola Bud? A lot of things

Tug McTighe (55:01)
Holy cow, man. Yeah. Ran through it.

matt (55:05)
a lot of things lately are gonna be really humorous to people that are like fifty. Right.

Tug McTighe (55:10)
That's right. This is great.

matt (55:12)
Young people, you're not gonna get any of this. so Lily's rushed into they have the helicopters, right? The military comes.

Tug McTighe (55:18)
Yep. They've got

to the they've got to the evacue zone.

matt (55:20)
Lily gets rushed into one. Rob, Beth, and Hud are in the second one. And so they still filming. Hud still has the handicam. And

Tug McTighe (55:28)
Huds, yeah. Yeah.

matt (55:30)
God bless that guy. they witness the creature, so they get a pretty good view of it now. it's getting attacked by a B-2 bomber.

Tug McTighe (55:37)
Yeah, it pum comes and it's real it's like a good it really hits it, boom, boom, boom, and it

matt (55:42)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (55:43)
goes down.

matt (55:43)
Well I think we saw like a stealth bomber. Is that the same one that

Tug McTighe (55:47)
No,

that's not a stealth bomber. Well, this is a stealth bomber. Either way. Yes,

matt (55:50)
I don't know. The one looks like a boomerang.

Tug McTighe (55:52)
it's the it's the B it's the B two. It's a big bomber.

matt (55:54)
Okay.

So they're like, great, right? This is what moment is

this in the movie?

Tug McTighe (55:57)
Nailed it.

matt (55:58)
We're like, we're done. We're free. We're we we solved our problem. We're we've escaped harm. There's no other problem. And then the creature collapses, rises from the smoke, and Yeah. And that's

Tug McTighe (56:06)
Problem. Yeah. It's all is it's all is lost. We thought we won and then

we no now it's fun. And then it jumps and kills now it what what about Lily? She was in a different helicopter. That was their helicopter. She is she alive? All right.

matt (56:21)
I don't know. We never find out.

Tug McTighe (56:23)
Well we may never know. All right, so it jumps up and strikes a helicopter, causing it to crash in Central Park.

matt (56:29)
So I was trying to figure out if this was a standard three act setup. And you can tell me because you understand these things better than I do. We've got act one setup inciting action, right?

Tug McTighe (56:39)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

matt (56:42)
act two, rising action, all the stuff they did to escape, and

then

Tug McTighe (56:45)
Yep.

matt (56:45)
go back for Beth, and then try and escape again. And then is this is act three when they get into the helicopter or when they get smacked down?

Tug McTighe (56:56)
I actually think it's when

matt (56:57)
No bad.

Tug McTighe (56:57)
they get in. This is a really good it's 'cause it's not it's not linear like a save the cat construct would be, or there's just a lot of

matt (57:04)
Right. It is a little different.

Tug McTighe (57:07)
I think if we had to break it down, we could sit sit around over a couple beers and break it down. But I think yeah, I think when they think they've won, when they think they've escaped, is when Act Three starts. And Act Three usually starts we had this plan

We're gonna attack the Death Star.

It's a great plan. And then Darth Vader comes and shoots everybody down. And then Luke has to create a new plan, which is use the force, turn off your your targeting, and shoot the

Proton torpedo.

Luke

had to come up with a new plan, and then that's the plan that wins. So this is a little bit not a classic, obviously a classic three act construct.

matt (57:40)
Yeah, and if it is even if it is, that third act is really short. There's not a lot that

Tug McTighe (57:45)
Yeah, and there's no resolu

Matt, there's no resolution, right? They die. Yeah. Yeah. Not a fun one.

matt (57:48)
Well they die, that's a resolution. So the tr the trio survives

the crash of the helicopter.

Tug McTighe (57:56)
I'm just letting you know there's almost no survivors in helicopter crashes.

matt (57:59)
No, but in this one they did. they escape from the wreckage, but for whatever reason the creature approaches the crash site. And then we see HUD.

Tug McTighe (58:10)
sorry, for whatever

reason HUD is still filming.

matt (58:12)
And he's still filming. we'll get to that in a bit. but yes, he gets picked up and he's up in the air and he is chomped, right?

Tug McTighe (58:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

matt (58:23)
he looks in the camera.

Tug McTighe (58:25)
clover does, finally.

matt (58:26)
Yes.

We finally get a full actual view of the creature and then Hud gets shot we think in half. But

Tug McTighe (58:31)
Yep, four or f four or five seconds, yep. Yep.

matt (58:34)
he still held on to it, so he took his job seriously and God bless him for that.

Tug McTighe (58:37)
Yep.

So, when we're trying to after your best friend has been chomped by a kaiju.

The first instinct you have is pick up that running camera.

matt (58:46)
For sure.

Tug McTighe (58:47)
So Ra and Rob, I think he goes, Did you get the I got the camera? Like he says. Like I got the camera. and just PS, the camera's still with them. It stayed on the whole time. It still has a battery. It also possesses infrared night vision, as we mentioned, a really great microphone that captured everybody without lavaliers, and also a

matt (59:05)
Sure.

Tug McTighe (59:06)
a really bright light that they used in the

in the subway. So I think it's gotta be a story. I'll tell you it's not a zenith.

matt (59:09)
Is that a Sony? Like what c how can I get that camera?

Tug McTighe (59:13)
so they take shelter under Grayshot arch in Central Park and Grayshot, right?

matt (59:18)
And that was one of the alternate titles also, right?

Tug McTighe (59:21)
the raid the aforementioned raid sirens Blair. They tell each other they love each other. They talk to the camera. I'm sorry mom, I wish I could blah blah blah blah blah. Dad I love you.

the arch begins to crumble as the bombing commences and the camera's knocked out of Rob's hand and buried beneath the rubble. You hear them, you don't see them, you hear them say, my god, I love you, I love you too, and then it cuts out. And then it cuts back to it, does a little scrabble and shows them on their trip to Coney Island a month earlier, because HUD accidentally taped over the footage Rob was shooting of their date.

the month before. Rob mentions this way back at he way back in the party, he says, Here, did you get a new tape? And he goes, I don't know, Jason gave it to me. So that was a neat

matt (1:00:01)
That was actually kind of funny. He's like, You didn't

tape over that, did you? And he was like, no, I don't know.

Tug McTighe (1:00:05)
But I don't know. Right.

matt (1:00:07)
but it was h it was useful in the way that was this was

Tug McTighe (1:00:10)
And they

'cause they would it would it would show up a few times during the film. This little minute of their day.

matt (1:00:15)
Yeah, they've interspersed

Tug McTighe (1:00:16)
Yeah.

matt (1:00:16)
older old older footage with the new stuff for the purposes of telling the story, which

I

Tug McTighe (1:00:20)
All right,

now we're gonna have a big chat here.

Unseen by them as they're filming each other, a barely discernible object falls from the sky into the ocean.

What is it, Matt?

matt (1:00:29)
okay.

If it's falling from the sky, it's alien, right? So here's

Tug McTighe (1:00:33)
Yep.

matt (1:00:34)
what I can tell you. And actually, since I've seen all three, I know this. it is alien nature. It's not indigenous. I wish I kind of wish it were. in the way that if JJ Abram says, I want to make a I want an American kaiju, it's not an alien creature, right? Godzilla,

Tug McTighe (1:00:49)
Yeah. Yep.

matt (1:00:50)
King Kong.

Ghidra, Mothra, blah blah blah, all the others were dormant, right?

Tug McTighe (1:00:56)
They came from the earth.

matt (1:00:57)
They came from the earth. It's a hollow earth, it's dumb BS, but whatever. But they were here. They are

Tug McTighe (1:01:02)
It doesn't matter. And the nuclear

explosion in the World War II woke them up or awakened them or even just put some energy into them and then they

matt (1:01:10)
Created them or made them stronger, but

it they were always here. even if it were like a love cra HP, a Lovecraftian inner dimensional creature that

Tug McTighe (1:01:18)
Yep. Correct? Yep.

matt (1:01:21)
was from another dimension but found its way to Earth, that would be better. But no. what this is for me anyway. I don't other people might not care. this was an alien thing. So I was able to

Because I didn't see it the first time. I had to go back and re-watch it. But you can see something flying very subtle, right? Flying

Tug McTighe (1:01:38)
It's tough though. It's not yeah, very faint. Yeah.

matt (1:01:42)
into the ocean. You see that at the end. so somebody sent it. if you watch the other movies, it is the first wave of an invasion. And by the way, the clover field monster, clover in this movie is the size of what, the Empire State Building or something?

Tug McTighe (1:01:57)
Yep. It's the baby.

matt (1:01:58)
It's a baby. So

Tug McTighe (1:01:59)
Right.

matt (1:02:00)
if you watch Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix, you will see a full size one that is thousands of feet tall. Which is kind of cool.

Tug McTighe (1:02:10)
Very cool. Yeah, I I I like all that shit.

matt (1:02:12)
something I thought about with this was The Mist, which I didn't see the movie because it's too depressing an ending for me, but I did read the book, the story, the Stephen King.

Tug McTighe (1:02:20)
Yep. Stevie King's the Nest.

matt (1:02:23)
the idea of those giant creatures that are just incredibly big and interdimensional and come to Earth from another dimension and are indescribably large. That

was

Tug McTighe (1:02:35)
Yeah.

matt (1:02:36)
feeling I got, which was really awesome. Which was

Tug McTighe (1:02:37)
And they're just walking around. Yeah. Yeah.

matt (1:02:39)
awesome. Something that you look up and you can't even see the top of it 'cause it's that big.

Tug McTighe (1:02:44)
Correct. And you can't even

understand you can't even fathom what it is.

matt (1:02:48)
So I love that. Like I thought that was really awe inspiring, but you didn't you didn't necessarily get that here. But th anyway, that's a little bit of what that is.

Tug McTighe (1:02:56)
So after the credits, a voice can be heard saying what, Matt?

matt (1:03:00)
Help us. When played in reverse, because we all back mass this, because it's the Beatles in 1968, it says it's still alive. Nobody's doing that. Again, I'm mad at him again. I feel like JJ Abrams is thinking he's super smart, and people are gonna just be like, what if I played this backward because they're at home on a Friday because they're idiots? Nobody's gonna do that. It's

Tug McTighe (1:03:21)
Right. No.

matt (1:03:23)
You get to a point where it's just stupid. I'm sorry.

Tug McTighe (1:03:25)
Yeah, it's enough already.

matt (1:03:26)
Right enough. You did enough, J J. Abrams.

All right. closing thoughts. What do you think, Tug?

Tug McTighe (1:03:33)
Alright, obviously I liked it. and I liked it for this reason. I thought it was an amazing time at the movies. As I said, Sarah loved it. She thought it was great. She's like, I never want to watch a movie like this. I'm so glad I'll I did it. Maybe I'll watch every cinemas is with you. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

matt (1:03:47)
wow.

Tug McTighe (1:03:49)
it was fun, scary, suspenseful, funny, heartfelt. The monster was cool, the way they shot it was cool, a really neat construct. It led

Like we talked about it, let let Hudson narrate the whole thing. and pretty good jokes from him. but there were too many bad decisions, coincidences, some easy outs. Beth being impaled one minute and sprinting from lower Manhattan to Central Park was a bit of a tone break for me. but

matt (1:04:12)
Right.

Tug McTighe (1:04:13)
like I said, all in all, super fun. And it came in at came in at a tidy eighty five minutes, which I think is just enough. Had it been even ninety five or a hundred a hundred, you're like, boy, can we

How much more carnage can we see, right? so I thought I thought that was I thought that I thought all in all, like I said, really fun time with the movies.

matt (1:04:29)
That's cool. so credit where credit's due, pacing was really pretty good. it it wasn't my favorite movie, but s since you mentioned that, I maybe will try and enlist Robin to watch movies with me more 'cause I would love that if she and I would be able to watch movies the way you and Sarah McKay are watching them.

Tug McTighe (1:04:47)
Well, I

wouldn't say R watching them, this is one. One of thirty. Yeah. Sorry, it's better than zero of thirty.

matt (1:04:50)
Well yeah, but it might be more. One of thirty. I don't know. it does bounce all over

I had a couple issues. it

Tug McTighe (1:04:58)
Yeah.

matt (1:04:59)
it does bounce all over the place. so I felt like I was having a

Tug McTighe (1:05:01)
It it is at first it's tough.

matt (1:05:05)
so for some people that might not be an issue, and for me I just kinda was. I was just gonna like there's a lot of screaming.

And what isn't screaming is TJ Miller asking questions or people telling you what you're seeing. my gosh, look at that. Or are you all coming? Are you coming? Where are you going? Where are you going?

Tug McTighe (1:05:22)
Where are you going? What are we doing?

matt (1:05:25)
and also it was hard for me to believe that someone running from his life. Like when I'm running, I'm pumping my arms, not pumping one arm and holding the camera in front of me to make sure I get a pretty good view.

To run from giant monsters and alien spider crafts, dodging falling statue of liberty heads. and keep filming. At a certain point, I would just throw the camera to the side and be like, screw it.

Tug McTighe (1:05:48)
Right.

matt (1:05:49)
That said, there were some really good scares. And JJ Abrams has a knack for capturing iconic scenes. I was gonna mention that earlier. So the Statue of Liberty Head, the scene where the night vision comes on,

Tug McTighe (1:06:01)
Yep.

matt (1:06:02)
he does a really good job of

having that moment where you're like, I r that's a memorable scene. So I credit him for that. So, Tug, sin a hit, sin a miss.

Tug McTighe (1:06:12)
Yeah,

say hit. I I now I want to like you already have, I want to watch the others. like I said, it's got its problems, but it was fun. And and isn't that what a monster movie's supposed to be? It's fun. there's not a ton of thinking that needed here. we've done way more thinking than anybody else should have to do about this. But you watch it you're ninety minutes in, it it really reminds me of like when we were kids and you'd ride your bike up to the mall.

And you'd r literally see what you'd go see for two dollars what was showing. And sometimes it would be a karate movie and sometimes it would be a a you know, cannonball run two. But you

matt (1:06:42)
Yeah, you just know it.

Tug McTighe (1:06:44)
and you and it's eighty five minutes or eighty nine minutes and you'd walk out of there into the sun and go to the pool. And

matt (1:06:49)
For sure.

Tug McTighe (1:06:49)
that's why we love movies.

matt (1:06:50)
Very good. I'd I'd say it's a cine hit. I thought Cl ten Cloverfield Lane was better and you don't have to watch one to enjoy the other. And it's just a movie. I mean you can just watch it. JJ Abrams to me is kind of like a reverse Stephen King, where Stephen King's great with setup and lives with the endings. JJ Abrams gives you that movie and then at the end it's like, here's what's coming next. You're like, holy cow, that'll be amazing.

I can't wait to see that.

Tug McTighe (1:07:16)
It's a terrific point.

matt (1:07:18)
and then the next thing comes. Like if you watch the end of if you watch just the end of Cloverfield Paradox, you'll be like, I want to see what's next. If you're

Tug McTighe (1:07:28)
Right, exactly.

matt (1:07:30)
honestly, s go to Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix, go to the the last

Tug McTighe (1:07:33)
Scroll for

matt (1:07:34)
three minutes and just watch that and be like, I'm super excited. I want to see the next

Tug McTighe (1:07:38)
You're like, damn, I'm in.

matt (1:07:40)
a hundred percent. So

He's he's definitely got a knack for making some great stuff. it doesn't always hit, but you know, there there's a lot to like.

Tug McTighe (1:07:49)
All right, my friend. Thank you again for listening to Cinemisses. If you like what we're doing here, please help us grow the show. By subscribing, sharing some episodes, or writing a review, it really does help. And even better, tell someone you think might like it to give us a try. that's really the best way to to spread the word. If and and if you want to talk to us, we want to hear from you. Follow and comment on socials and please drop us a line at cinemissus at gmail dot com.

With ideas to make the show better and recommendations for movies we may want to cover, and please visit our website at cinemasis dot com.

right,

matt (1:08:22)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (1:08:23)
That was awesome, by the way. Who knew? Cloverfield.

matt (1:08:24)
I'm glad I thought so too. I had a good time.

Tug McTighe (1:08:27)
So Matt, what is our next cinemas and what does our cinemaser who is you

Think he knows.

matt (1:08:32)
All right, the next cinemas is Night Shift, starring Henry Winkler and I don't know who else. And

Tug McTighe (1:08:38)
Michael Coon?

matt (1:08:40)
okay, well I didn't know that, but now I know.

Tug McTighe (1:08:42)
There you go.

matt (1:08:42)
And Michael Keaton. And I feel like they have I almost I know almost nothing about this. I feel like they have a job that they create because they're doing something at night.

That's that's all I know. They were in their night shift. But they have another

Tug McTighe (1:08:56)
Are they working the night shift? Would you would you All right

matt (1:09:00)
job that's not their regular job, but they do it because they're up at night. Is that accurate?

Tug McTighe (1:09:04)
I'll tell you what, you've you've nailed it.

matt (1:09:06)
Yeah. All right. This is we're going back in time a ways. What year was this roughly?

Tug McTighe (1:09:09)
Yeah, like a nine th

I I would have to look. I think it's eighty one, eighty two, eighty three, somewhere in that in that zone. my god, you're gonna

matt (1:09:16)
Okay, but I will say

Tug McTighe (1:09:17)
be so happy.

matt (1:09:17)
I know I hated happy days and I love Henry Henry Winkler. He's been in so many great things and things that I loved

Tug McTighe (1:09:24)
You know what? Full I'm gonna leave it there.

matt (1:09:26)
that I didn't think I'd love and he's always in

Tug McTighe (1:09:28)
I'm gonna leave it right

there. Say it again. You didn't like happy days, who do you love?

matt (1:09:32)
I didn't like Happy Days, but I love Henry Winkler.

Tug McTighe (1:09:35)
Alright. Thank you for joining us on Cinemissa. I'm Todd.

matt (1:09:38)
I'm Matt.

that's a wrap. See ya.

Tug McTighe (1:09:40)
Aaaaaaaaaaayyyy!