Never Go Through A Tunnel

It seems like a quick and easy way out, but dark and scary passageways usually house bad things that you don't want to bother with in the middle of fleeing for your life. It's simple: tunnels=death, for at least one person in the group. This is a tried and true fact of apocalyptic movies. Take for example the idiot drivers who decided to take the tunnel in Independence Day, toasted via fire ball (except for the ones who had that dog, but more on that later). Also who could forget the night vision moments in Cloverfield walking through New York's subway system. Avoid tunnels at all costs.

Do Not Join A Theme Gang

With the world ending, there will be many sad sacks who will try and recreate a Mad Max road warrior gang. Resist the urge to join anything theme-oriented. Basic rule of thumb: if you look like an idiot with a face tattoo or a fool running around in Medieval garb, you're going to get the sharp end of the death stick. Doomsday spelled this out pretty clearly: everyone who looked ridiculous got a ridiculous ending. Motorcycle gangs count too, don't forget even Romero's Dawn of the Dead leather riders got their just rewards for their hideous outfits and bad attitudes. Stick to the rag-tag refugee look, or lone wolf army motif. If you have to join a gang, stay in the back and never do anything you might later regret — like eat people.

Do Not Go Back For Loved Ones

If the world is ending, you may feel the need to find love ones that are in Princeton, a New York Library or a high rise apartment. This is a bad idea. Let go of your emotions and assume that everyone else in the world is dead, or trying to steal your food supplies. Going after loved ones almost always means your own death or the death of someone in the group. Look at it this way, it your loved one has survived and you meet up with them, bonus for you. But most likely they died from the plague, zombies, earthquake flood or whatever.

Never Be The First

I can't believe this even has to be said but no, do not go exploring in rooms, attic, caves, hallways or apartments where you are the first one in the door. My favorite character from Resident Evil Extinction, L.J., got bit by a zombie lady because he was checking out all the rooms to make sure it was safe. Let someone else do this, get a job as a medic or cook. There is no need for you to be first to go anywhere — let someone else do the exploring. If they find something really good, you can kill them and take it anyway.

Bring Your Pet

If you don't have a pet, I suggest you go to the pet store and steal one, looter style, or take care of your dead neighbors'. You may need this pet to help you keep your sanity or sacrifice its life for you, like in I Am Legend. Either way, animals are good luck when the chips are down for humans. You never know when a pair of love birds will come in handy to calm down a flock of murderous seagulls and crows. The same rule sometimes applies to children, but you will have to feed them considerably more.

Ditch The Biggest Guy In Your Group

They will turn into a zombie or rage machine, it's proven. Kill them before they kill you, or just ditch them at the next pass.

Don't Trust People In Uniform Unless They Have Defected From The System

Never trust the government, especially when the world is ending. It's a terrible idea, they would rather nuke the whole place than deal with people. If you see the military, run the other way or hide. Do not do what they say. The friendly people of Hollywood followed the advice of the government from Right At Your Door, and what happened to them? Same with the people of Raccoon City, from Resident Evil Apocalypse. Granted an ex-military person hell-bent on sticking it to the man can be a wonderful asset during the end of the world, just be sure to know the difference between the two.

Don't Barricade Yourself In

It always seems like a good idea, but 9 times out of 10 whatever you're trying to keep out gets in and now you're trapped. Think of the mess it caused for the cute little family in the beginning of28 Weeks Later and Shaun of the Dead. I say build a sky city in the trees.

Finally if all else fails, find the closest fridge, step in, and pray for a miracle.

So it turns out the new Trek movie has more ties to the other movies' continuity than we thought. The movie starts out after 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis, the last movie featuring Picard and crew. (I guess it's somehow made clear this is taking place later than that.) And the first character we meet in the film is Leonard Nimoy's Ambassador Spock, who's somehow back from Romulan space. And then we follow the older Spock back in time to the beginnings of the Kirk era, where we meet Zachary Quinto's young Spock. (As well as Baby Spock and Baby Kirk, by the sound of things.)

Meanwhile, Abrams told Rolling Stone the monster definitely died soon after the end of Cloverfield. "Yes, he's dead. Ultimately the bombs kill him." The monster's name? "We just called him Clover." Also, that object you saw drop into the water in the very last Coney Island flashback? Abrams says the Cloverfield crew have two theories about it. One of those theories may get followed up if they choose to take the story further. They've been kicking around ideas for a sequel, but nothing is definite yet. [Trek Movie, via TrekWeb]

The manga follows two story lines that later converge forming one giant question mark. First, readers meet a little Japanese boy named Kishin who is mercilessly bullied and beaten. The second story takes place off the coast of Japan where a Tagruato ship possibly awakens the Cloverfield monster and becomes its first victim.

Kishin's family history is a bit muddled, but we discover that his beloved mother and distant father are both closely connected to Tagruato and to the monster. So much so, his mother had Tagruato's prized secret, a pod discovered next to the monster on the sea floor, implanted inside Kishin. He is later kidnapped by a crazy group of masked cult members that want to slice him open and use the pod to become gods. Even Kishin's own father wants to take his life. Meanwhile the monster is ripping up Tokyo and shedding his nasty little parasites everywhere.

With everyone clamoring for the death of little Kishin, there only seems to be one way out: ride the Cloverfield monster to safety, of course. Who knew that Kishin had the power to use Cloverfieldy as his personal steed? The final panel of part three, with Kishin standing on the monster's head, proves otherwise. But still leaves this question, if this is the prequel to Cloverfield, what's Kishin got against New York? The final installment is coming out sometime this month. [Dada Is Everyhere via IllusionTV]

More underwater black and whites, possibly from Sub-4767? Could Sub. be short for submarine? Perhaps this is where the unidentified object landed that audiences' saw crash into the ocean in the corner of the final Coney Island scene. What if the new Cloverfield 2 took a page from The Abyss? That would leave little room for handycam work.

Most of the conversation is blacked out but a nicely placed, "ATSUMI: It went after them," followed by a few "(screaming)" moments still gives the impression of a monster attack.[Filmofilia]

For Better Or Worse, SciFi's Most Adorable Sidekicks

Stitch: Lilo and Stitch

He burps and eats everything. A cross between a bug and a dog, he was sort of sweet... until he did the whole Elvis impersonation, and then I was out the door. I can't stand animals dressed as people (alien animals or otherwise).

R2-D2: Star Wars

An obvious choice, but possibly the cutest bucket of bolts in the history of robots. Despite being a giant trash can, he was surprisingly expressive — you could tell when he was mad by his fussing and futtering. If you took a vote on which robot you wanted to be stuck on a deserted Tatooine with, hands down it would be R2. While C-3PO is wonderful, if I had to chose it'd be R2 based on the fact that, "goodness gracious me," would get old after about five minutes. Sorry C, He's the droid I'm looking for.

Rebecca "Newt" Jorden: Aliens

Oh no, an adorable girl is left on an alien infested planet! Surely she won't be a massive hindrance at all. Too late, she's fallen into an air vent. Once I found out that the dirty blonde girl nickname was "Newt," I lost all my love for this character. You could make a case against Bishop as well, but he was OK in my book.

Hud: Cloverfield

He had me at, "I'm just saying how freaky would it be if a flaming homeless guy came out of no where." His innocence and one-liners completely humanized this story. I don't even remember any of the other characters' names really. Hud was a great mix of that 20-something guy that is part idiot and part child, which was most evident any time he tried to talk to Marlena.

Robin: Batman

He thinks everything Batman does is totally yay, which is valuable because one thing you don't want from a sidekick is questions. Especially when you say, "Robin go check out that scary cave with no light, I'll be right behind you." He makes a great victim when there aren't any ladies around for you to save. His boyish good looks play in his favor but, his naivete demeans him. Robin get a 50/50 split on annoying versus lovable.

Hurley: Lost

Not all people can pull off charming with that much going on, but Hurley manages to. His whole "cursed by the numbers" schtick and his ridiculous bad luck in his first flashback were borderline annoying, but once he went bananas his charm became more of a quirk. He's the heart of the island and a lot of people forget that as he follows orders from chiseled jawline Sawyer or smarty-pants face-stubble Jack.

Arthur: The Tick

The shy little moth to The Tick's massive ego. His nervous stammer and mutterings are the perfect compliment to The Tick. And let's not forget the fact that he's often mistaken for a bunny, that's cute laugh out loud.

Gizmo: Gremlins (2)

Another coin toss here, because don't we all like to get drunk and sing the mogwai song? And yet the need to dress him up as Rambo totally crosses the line from cute to crappy.

Short Round: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

One line, "YOU CALL HIM DOCTOR JONES." Everything about this character was harnessing the power of cute for good. From the boxes he tied on his shoes for driving to his open-eyed screams, all charming.

Wicket: Ewok Adventure, Star Wars

Who else could level out Mace's wild tantrums. Good cute, like the kind of teddy bear I would actually want to own.

Elliot: ET

After watching this movie who didn't dress up in an orange hoodie and bike around with a white alien bundle for Halloween, or Saturdays? Elliot is a spot on example of the right amount of child-like/charm wonder in a great sidekick.

It's your classic monster movie score with operatic voices, rolling military snares and super ominous booming brass. John Williams, eat your heart out. Giacchino is also slated as the composer for Abram's Star Trek and penned the music for Speed Racer.

Sources say some Cloverfield stars including Jessica Lucas (Lily Ford) and Mike Vogel (Jason Hawkins) have been approached. Talks started early in 2008 (at the height of Cloverfield fever.) True to the "just a taste" nature of Abrams' work, none of the original characters' fates were sealed on camera. The movie even hinted at their survival with a barely audible whisper to the audience after the credits rolled. So a number of the actors have their fingers crossed that they made it out of the monster madness unscathed, our source revealed.

But there is no guarantee the new movie has to pick up immediately after the first one left off. Unfortunately when Cloverfield 2 will get its wings, is anyones guess. Just recently director Matt Reeves told MTV that he was putting it on the back burner for his new pet project The Invisible Woman. Only time and randomly placed Easter Eggs in the Cloverfield DVD will reveal more. Please bring back Hud and his one-liners!

Let's go through some of the insights this chart offers.

ATOMICS/DEADLY ATTACKS: As you can see, there is a very clear historical connection between atomic bombs and atomic testing and giant monster movies, so that truism turns out to be correct. After a long period of no giant monsters in pop culture at all, we get a sudden burst of giant monsters in the 50s, many of which are explicitly created by "atomic tests" (see: the ants in Them, the dinosaur in Behemoth, Godzilla, and more). What's interesting is that there appears to be about a 10-year lag between the disaster and the first movies dealing with it. A similar lag happens between disasters of the 1990s and early 2000s and the giant monster explosion of the 00s. Interestingly, the biggest explosion in giant monster movies since the 1950s is going on in the 00s, perhaps as a response to global terrorism and human-caused disasters (see below).

PLAGUES: "Call of Cthulhu," which is about a giant monster who haunts people's dreams and drives them mad, could probably be linked to the "sleepy sickness" plague that was sweeping the United States at the time Lovecraft first thought up his tentacly menace. The disease made people appear to sleep all the time, and did drive them insane. But generally, as we can see later in the timeline, plague doesn't appear to spawn giant monsters. In fact, the HIV/AIDS plague has probably resulted in more human-sized monster tales: witness the explosion in vampire and zombie stories during the 1990s and 00s. So, generally, plague disasters don't cause giant monster movies.

NATURAL DISASTERS: One of the biggest natural disasters of the 20th century, the Yellow River floods in China in the 1930s, gave us no giant monsters. King Kong, the most popular giant monster of the 1930s, was probably inspired by Westerners "discovering" gorillas in Africa in the early 20th century. But the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami seems to have had an effect: two of the biggest giant monster movies of the last year have both involved beasts from the ocean.

HUMAN-CAUSED DISASTERS: Yes, human toxic spills and pollution seem to trigger giant monster movies. Most of the giant monsters in the 1970s and 80s are related somehow to pollution, and come soon after several widely-publicized oil spill disasters. Note that the 70s and 80s were also a time of human-sized toxic creatures, like the Toxic Avenger, the bears in Prophesy, the whatevers in CHUD, and so on. So these disasters inspire both giant and regular-sized monsters. I think the explosion in 00s monster movies may also be a result of the same lag we saw between atomics in the 1940s, and giant monsters in the 1950s. A lot of toxic disasters happened in the 80s and 90s, and suddenly a bunch of giant monsters pop up in the 00s.

Chart by Stephanie Fox.

SOURCES:

Chemical Disaster in Bhopal [Greenpeace]

Oil tanker leaks [BBC]

AIDS number one cause of death for men in US in 1992 [Kaiser Foundation].

AIDS in Africa numbers [WorldStats]

Atomic Tests causing deaths [CNN]

As with the U.S. release, Cloverfield was subject to much pre-release marketing in Japan; in addition to the official manga, the cast and crew of the movie spent time in the country doing publicity, and Japan's own version of the internet - called "the internet" - was as full of viral marketing for the movie as the U.S.'s. Although it has to be seen whether Japanese audiences will get free party mixes with their DVD copies of the movie.

The only downside to the Japanese success of JJ Abrams' monster movie is for US critics who find themselves torn between wanting to make Beyonce versus Godzilla jokes and feeling the need for some semi-racist "those Japanese sure do like their monster movies walking around in highly-populated urban areas" reference.

Monster Japan bow for 'Cloverfield' [Variety]

Sadly, this attempt at building excitement seems to have backfired slightly; over at comics news hub Newsarama, Marvel's faithful fanbase seemed to have become slightly less faithful in the wake of the video:

Dear Lord, I might have to sue Marvel for that one.

I think that video permanently damaged my eyes...Cloverfield at least had decent video quality...*barf*

Oh! And I think I became 30% dumber from watching it.

Seriously, I'm really excited about [Secret Invasion] and that did absolutely nothing for me and cant imagine it making anyone actually want to read it.

That SUCKED. Someone thought they were being clever, when all they really were doing was being DULL and irritating by cribbing the hand held schitck for "Cloverfield".

Try again Marvel, you guys are capable of better...aren't you??

Once we've seen Abrams' Star Trek and his new X-Files revamp show Fringe, we'll have a much better idea of whether Abrams really is brilliant — or just a clever hack. But already, there's plenty of evidence for both sides of the argument. Here's our list of reasons to believe either point of view:

Genius:

- Cloverfield. Once you got past the hype, it really was a great ride, and the nihilistic ending was sort of awesome in a Blake's 7-y way. For once, the fact that everything's a mystery didn't seem to matter, because the mystery was just in the background. In the foreground, you had this you-are-there spectacle of the city falling into ruins and Rob struggling to find Beth despite the pointlessness of it all.

- Lost. It's another thing we won't really be able to evaluate yet, because a lot depends on how well it ends, and how much sense it actually makes in the end. But last week's time-travel episode recharged our faith in the versatility of the concept. When the show works, it's intense and Hobbesian. The whole flash-forward tapestry storyline thing has the makings of a compulsive DVD rewatch.

- Mission Impossible III. Okay, so the make-your-own-defibrillator thing was sort of wack. And what the heck was the rabbit's foot that Tom Cruise has to find anyway? But considering this was a movie starring Tom Cruise, with "III" in the title, it was way better than we had any right to expect. It was sort of a goofy extended episode of Alias.

He hires geniuses. This is probably the best argument for J.J. Abrams being a genius — he recognizes genius in others and hires appropriately. Case in point: Drew Goddard, the Buffy scribe who now writes for Lost and also wrote Cloverfield. Another case in point: Brian K. Vaughn, another Lost writer who also created Y: The Last Man.

Hack:

- All the viral marketing. During the long Lost hiatus, we were bombarded with "clues" on viral sites, where you could track down a phone number that led to another web site that led to a riddle. Did any of it add up to anything in the end? Meanwhile, Cloverfield was two movies: the stark masterpiece you saw in the theater, and the over-complicated version all the online fans were privy to, with all the clues about Tagruato and Slusho! and news reports in Spanish.

- Armageddon. Abrams co-wrote the script of this Michael Bay splode-fest. I watched it recently, and it's just as nonsensical and bizarre as I'd remembered... but much slower moving.

- Alias. It was a fun show at first, but after a while all the daddy issues (and then mommy issues) and the endlessly spiraling "everything you know is wrong" plots started to give us a headache.

- Forever Young. I pretty much covered this one yesterday. But the treacly plot, with the nonsensical motivations — why would being in suspended animation make his girlfriend's supposedly impending death easier to handle? — is pretty hard to take. The film pretty much slides into the ick zone the moment two cute kids revive Mel in the present day. And then there's the fact that he starts to age rapidly, as a side effect of cryogenic suspension. Wha huh?

- Just the fact that he's so prolific. Besides Lost, Fringe and Trek, he's got a show about cancer patients, a show about a notary, and Cloverfield 2 on his plate.

So is he a genius or a hack? Decide for yourself, and then vote in our poll.

Here's a complete list of titles of the first ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica season four, which is probably all we'll see this year:

• "He That Believeth in Me" by David Weddle and Bradley Thompson
• "Six of One" by Michael Angeli
• "The Ties That Bind" by Michael Taylor
• "Escape Velocity" by Jane Espenson
• "The Road Less Travelled " by Mark Verheiden
• "Faith" by Seamus Kevin Fahey
• "Guess What's Coming to Dinner" by Michael Angeli
• "Sine Qua Non" by Michael Taylor
• "The Hub" by Jane Espenson
• "Revelations" by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle

Also, the "Boomer" version of Sharon Valerii is "back in a big way" this season. And besides Cally, at least one other longstanding character dies during season four. And we'll see much more of "a place that we're going to call Earth," says co-creator Ron Moore. And yes, Lucy Lawless' cylon D'Anna comes back, because other cylons "unbox" her to find out what she knows. It's a pivotal moment in the season. We won't find out who the final cylon is until late in the season (so maybe not until 2009), but meanwhile there will be tons of space battles. [Chicago Tribune]

But writer Mark Verheiden cautions that even if these spoilers were true before, they may no longer true because the writers had a chance to re-assess some stuff during the long writers' strike. Also, here's a roundup of some stuff that's already come out about the new BSG season.

More spoilers:

There's a pervasive rumor that Tom Cruise will have a cameo in the new Star Trek movie, especially since he spent hours on the set the other day. He'd come in handy if the Enterprise has to fight Xenu. [TrekToday]
• Hey, here are some blurry photos of a toy that sort of gives a clue about what Racer X's car looks like in Speed Racer! [Latino Review]
• X-Files 2 probably won't be about werewolves, given the fact that the production team leaked yet another fake werewolf pic. Or maybe it's a double fake-out, and the movie really is about werewolves? [CinemaBlend]
• Cloverfield 2 may not repeat the first movie's handheld camera trick, and may have a new and different monster, J.J. Abrams hinted. [Bloody Disgusting]
• We'll meet some new freighter people on this week's Lost, including George Minkowski (Fisher Stevens), who may just be pretending to experience what Desmond experiences. Plus a guy known only as the Doctor (yes, I know), and two heavies. [DocArzt]
• And episode seven of this Lost season features Jin and Sun getting off the island. And Juliet has to reveal some shocking news to Jin, when Sun threatens to defect to Locke's camp. (Probably the fact that the only way Sun will survive her pregnancy is to escape the island.) Also, Zoe Bell from Grindhouse does some stunts! And Sayid and Desmond meet the freighter's captain. [Wired]
• And the kid named Aaron that Kate is mothering in last week's flash-forwards? Yes, it is Claire's kid Aaron, actress Evangeline Lilly confirms. [Lost Spoilers]
• And here's a new trailer for the upcoming episodes of Smallville, which start in mid-March:

In The Burrowers, a group of men goes out to try and find a family of settlers that has gone missing. The posse suspects that natives have killed the settlers, but the actual culprit turns out to be something much more sinister. Something deadly is stalking the men from under the ground. The posse includes Clancy Brown (Pathfinder), William Mapother (Lost) and Doug Hutchinson (The Green Mile.)

The movie takes place two years after the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, Petty told Shocktillyoudrop. White people have pretty much wiped out the Indians, but are still terrified of them.

So you've got this giant influx of population and people are still terrified of the 2% of people who are out there, basically dirt poor and living in camps. There's a fair amount of human violence in the movie. And there are a lot of classic monster movie elements in there.

Concept art from DreadCentral. [FirstShowing]

Between the resin models of battle-damaged Vipers from Battlestar Galactica, and the recreations of Mego's awesome Star Trek line of action figures from 1974, there's a lot to love here. But the two things that really look ridiculously cool are the Poseable 12" Sleestak Coin Bank that would look awesome right next to our io9 supercomputer (and is on sale already), and this incredibly bizarre Mola Ram Munny from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Just check out the gleeful expression on his face and the flaming heart accessory he comes with. Pure plastic joy.

There's also a 12" Master Chief figure from Halo that comes with all sorts of goodies, and a complete set of 13" Green Lantern Corps figures that look pretty darn cool. There's also a slew of posed Cloverfield figure photos that look loads better than Hasbro's lame pictures. So, we might just keep that preorder, just in case.

For even more photos, be sure to check out Figures.com, where it seems like they have endless amounts of image galleries and coverage from the show floor. And thanks to our very own 92BuickLeSabre for snapping some the photos in our gallery as well, especially that Sleestak bank. Start asking them for kickbacks.

Can you let us know what other scifi projects you've worked on? How did you get started?

My education was at the Art Center College of Design in Product Design (Pasadena, California). Upon graduation I started a design Consultancy with Scott Robertson and we went down many different paths creatively. One of which was products for the disabled. Now, although this was a very satisfying experience, I still yearned for the world of entertainment. So, I will cut to the chase with some of the first experiences. I worked with Rhythm and Hues on many "pitch" projects and a number of films, X-Men and Chronicles of Narnia to name some. A fantastic break, however,was working for James Cameron on Avatar. Started off as a few months and went on forover 2 years. Amazing experience. That then rolled into Cloverfield and Watchmen and currently Star Trek.

How were you approached to work on Cloverfield?

It is kinda funny. While I was in the last few months of Avatar, I received an email from someone who has seen my educational DVDs with the Gnomon Workshop and they liked the way I worked. They said that they were working on a monster movie and would like to see if I could be involved. As mentioned, I was in the last moments of Avatar and overwhelmed with work. Sadly, I did not even respond to the email. Then I got another. Again, I was terrible at responding to them (think of how long it took me to get to answering these questions). Eventually, Gnomon called me up and said this guy is trying to get in touch with you, can you please deal with it. So, I thought, "who is this guy, and what does he want"?. I went online and googled J.J. Abrams and could not have kicked myself harder. Not just for being so bad at responding to the emails, but to be so clueless. Anyhow, it all worked out.

How many iterations did the monster go through? Were there different versions with it walking upright, etc? Were you told specifically to avoid any Godzilla-esque designs?

If an iteration was a sketch, then maybe 50 or so. I really did not have the time to invest in this as I had wanted to, because I was still wrapping up Avatar. So. weekends and evenings were all that was available. With that, I had to be very efficient with my time and the process of development I chose. There were many different versions that we explored as we were all looking for what it could be. There were tentacles, there were fewer limbs, more limbs, no limbs... big, broad strokes in search of Clover. I am not recalling being told to NOT do Godzilla like designs, it was more implicit. Since it was not a Godzilla movie, it would have been a huge mistake to do things like it. However, it still needed to be huge, have a head full of teeth, arms and legs, and, because of it coming out of the water, I felt it needed a tail to justify an aquatic potential origin or existence.

Did you also design the smaller parasite creatures?

Yes. But, not without major help from the talents of Tully Summers. A fantastic creature designer and sculptor. We worked together on Avatar and many a project in the past.

What inspired your design? What sources did you draw from?

Well, once we had a direction the inspirations were definitely aquatic. Especially with the head. There is a very complex skeletal structure in there for eating, but you don't see it at all in the movie or toy. Clover also has a complex breathing system and more than one way to eat. But, again, it is hardly obvious in the film nor toy. Honestly, the biggest inspiration is less about one or two other animals, but rather inspired by biological plausibility in general (ignoring the fact that something that big could never live on land). Sometime the cart has to lead the horse and you make it cool first then justify it later, but I always try to give the creatures I design a "good reason" to be. As for the parasite, I knew that I wanted something thin and vertical and light. Kinda like a flea.

What's a favorite of creature of yours, that you didn't design, in another film or tv show?

A favorite still is Alien. HR Giger is one of the few people out there that did something really new and fresh. Granted, it still had to be a man in a rubber suit for all sorts of other reasons, but Giger has such a unique style, that he even made those challenging parameters work. It would be incredible to one day achieve such a unique style that does become iconic. I can only try.

Was the scale of the creature always the same?

Not sure really. I know that often times the scale changes to suit the particular moment or narrative, but I think Clover was around 250 feet?

The monster looks ungainly and J.J. Abrams has said in the press notes that it's a "baby". Was that also part of the design? For it to look a bit clumsy?

I would have preferred that it be even clumsier. But then it can get comical. Yes, it was the intention that it is a baby and it is not only developing its strength, but also its land legs. The proportions are intended to feel a little like a new born deer or horse. Long, thin and slightly awkward.

How involved were you with the final, CGI version of the creature?

Very and not at all. Phil Tippett's group has way more knowledge in the realm of bringing this stuff to life that I ever will, so they would have no use for me. The "very" part is that the sculpture that I did in "Z-Brush" is essentially what they used. There is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done when you hand over a digital model, but the sculpture part of it usually remains intact.

Have you seen the finished film? If so, what did you think about it?

I have. A couple of times at Paramount and once at the Mann's Chinese Theater with friends. I was real impressed actually. I had no idea how they were going to pull the whole thing off and it was defiantly risky. But, I was engaged from start to finish. Sure it is a little difficult to be completely objective as I was aware of how it was made, what was to happen next, etc. But what was telling for me was that my palms were sweaty from the experience. And I did not throw up from it.

Do you think there will be a sequel for sure? We know they've said that they are working on one.

I am only speculating here, but I do think so. There are so many other movies that have sequels that make you wonder why. So, if a motivation to make a movie is based on the box office success, then it seems very probable. I have asked, and I still don't know yet. Regardless, I am designing Clover 2 in my head.

You can check out Neville's impressive portfolio of work at his website.

Did he go albino somewhere along the way, or the did movie just feature his botoxed and tanned Hollywood cousin? Somehow, rendered in plastic, the thing just doesn't terrify like it did in the film. Maybe if it had a little Hud action figure (complete with camera) that it could terrorize, that might amp up the believability. But after seeing these images, we're going to hit the reset button. Maybe next time, Cloverfield... although we still want the Statue of Liberty head accessory. [Thanks David!]

Of course, height isn't everything. But it counts for a lot in monsterland. As Robert B. Parker writes in one of his Spenser novels, a tough tall person will always beat a tough short person in a fight. (He never learned Judo?) So here's our round-up of which giant monster is the tallest:

Ymir. The monster from Venus in 20 Million Miles To Earth, the Ray Harryhausen classic.
Height: Only about 4 meters. Bah.

The Blob. An extraterrestrial lump of flesh-eating goo that stalks Steve McQueen.
Height: It keeps getting bigger and bigger, so it's hard to say how tall it could have gotten. It gets big enough to engulf the Downington Diner, which is probably at least 10 meters tall.

King Kong. America's giant ape, whose only weakness is beauty.
Height: In the 1933 original, he's 50 feet (15 meters) tall. In the Peter Jackson version, he's shrunk to about 8 meters. In Godzilla vs. King Kong, he's suddenly upgraded to 46 meters, so the movie doesn't just consist of Godzilla wiping splatted ape off his foot.

Yongary. The South Korean version of Godzilla.
Height: 50 meters, according to a few sites.
Cloverfield monster. He's sort of a big ugly thingy with a weird head and evil parasites. Here's an animated gif of him dancing.
Height: These people claim he's about 60 meters. That might be a bit on the short side. He's able to whack some tall buildings. But he does take a swing at the Statue of Liberty, which is only 40 meters tall. So he can't be too much taller than it is, or it wouldn't even have been in his line of vision. Here's one fan's handy chart of how the Statue of Liberty, 1954-vintage Godzilla, and the world's tallest Buddha statue all measure up:
Gamera. Evil giant armored turtle guy with fireballs and the power to fly at Mach 3.5.
Height: 80 meters.
Godzilla. Japan's uber-monster and star of a zillion movies.
Height: 100 meters, but it used to be 50.

King Ghidorah. Maybe Godzilla's biggest rival, an awesome three-headed space dragon with bat wings... often mind-controlled into fighting Godzilla and other daikaiju monsters.
Height: 150 meters, but he used to be just 100. Here he is towering over Godzilla.
Kroll. Big octopus guy. Pretty much Doctor Who's only entry in the giant monster genre, from "The Power of Kroll." (Okay, there was that Loch Ness Monster, but he was puny.)
Height: His head alone is 250 meters high, according to this site. Here's a clip of him celebrating being the biggest giant monster:

He crushed the dreams of the Island Def Jam Music Group's marketing department by saying, "Uh, no. I just listened to it while I wrote the thing." Still, maybe the songs worked their way into his subconscious. Here's a list of top five things Fall Out Boy may have given to Cloverfield, and as you'd expect it's chock full of emo spoilers.

• "The Take Over, The Breaks Over":

  Baby, seasons change but people don't. And I'll always be waiting in the back room. I'm boring but overcompensate with Headlines and flash, flash, flash photography.

  Clearly this is all about the monster, who has apparently been around for years, waiting underwater in a deep slumber. When he arises, it's all flash, flash, flash... and shakycam photography.
• "Hum Hallelujah":

  We mix up your guts Your insides x-rayed And one day we'll get nostalgic for disaster

  J.J. Abrams and crew were nostalgic for a disaster when this thing was born from Godzilla toys. Plus, the monster clearly does some gut-mixing, and Marlena really could have done with an x-ray.
• "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs"

  Thanks for the memories Even though they weren't so great He tastes like you only sweeter

  Hey, even a monster can wax poetic about the folks he's eating. Plus the only real memories he's going to have from this whole ordeal are a rude awakening, lots of people screaming, and bombs bursting on his back. Not so great.
• "The Carpal Tunnel Of Love":

  Stomp out this disaster town You'll put your eyes to the sun and say, "I know you're only blinding to keep back What the clouds are hiding."

  Come on, anyone knows this is clearly a reference to the Tagruato Corporation's lost satellite that falls into the ocean near Coney Island in the film's final scene. Duh.
• "Bang The Doldrums":

  Best friends Ex-friends till the end Better off as lovers And not other way around Racing through the city

  OMG! It's like Rob and Lilly's anthem. So touching, so emotional, so vapid. Clearly this is the kind of song Abercrombie & Fitch models want to be hearing on their iPods while giant monsters chase them through urban catacombs.
• "I've Got All This Ringing In My Ears and None On My Fingers"

  And I'm so sorry But not really Tell the boys where to find my body New York eyes

  The monster laments about the destruction he's caused, although not really. Don't be fooled by those crocodile tears. He really just want you to point him towards the next city he can smash up, which according to the song seems to be Chicago. So, watch out Windy City. The music has spoken.

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Think about it - they could keep the Cloverfield story going, with new reports of the monster's path, new tie-ins to Slusho and things like investigations into Tagurato, reports from the area formerly known as Central Park and so much more, all at a fraction of the cost of a former sequel and all in much more engaging fashion than a sequel could.

Thilik continues to plan ahead on behalf of Abrams:

We're not just talking about a marketing campaign here. We're talking about something akin to what Joss Whedon is doing with Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. With the TV show long gone he's extending the story through comics, something that does not require the participation of the cast, something that allows for infinite story direction and which - more importantly - serves the fan base exactly what they want.

At this point in the Cloverfield universe there's nothing, really, that can be done with the characters we followed in the movie. But since they were incidental anyway - we just happened to be seeing their story because they had a video camera that survived - it's no problem to introduce more angles to the story. Abrams and his team can do almost anything.

The continuing Cloverfield story [Movie Marketing Madness.com]

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Remember this last shot in the film of our intrepid heroes at Coney Island, enjoying a post-coital day of amusement? Apparently something huge splashes down into the ocean in the background. We missed it, but if you couple it with the translation from the graphic novel that says the Japanese Tagruato corporation's satellite fell from orbit, then bingo. You've got the alarm clock that woke up the monster from its deep-sea slumber. We have no idea if it's true or not, but there you have it. We now promise you a Cloverfield free week from here on out. Well, maybe.

We know about J.J. Abrams going into the toy store in Japan and seeing all these Godzilla figures and being inspired to make this film, but at what point were you contacted and asked to come onboard to direct?

Basically, J.J. and Drew were talking about the story, and they went in and pitched it to Paramount and they immediately said "Okay, we'll make it." It wasn't like, okay write a script and then we'll put it into development. They were like, We love the idea, we'll make it, we know where it goes, we know when to open it. Apparently Drew walked out of that meeting and turned to J.J., because they'd pitched it as if they had everything, and he said "J.J., that's all we have!" J.J. said, "No no, we're gonna do it."

It all happened very, very quickly, so Drew went off and wrote a 60 page outline which we called a "scriptment" because it was a weird hybrid between a script and a treatment. That was what they showed me. J.J. and Bryan Burk, who has been his producing partner for years, came to me and showed me the treatment. I read it and they said I should meet Drew. The thing is... it was clearly filled with a huge amount of special effects. I was thinking, "We can't just go out on the streets of New York and film this as is. There's going to be a lot of effects work." I'd never done effects work before, and I was also in the middle of of putting this film together that I'm hoping to do now called The Invisible Woman, and we were in the middle of a casting snafu and J.J. was like "I want you to do this! Do this first and you can do that film right after." So I said to him, "Why do you want me? It's such a heavy visual effects thing." And he said, "Because I know that you love character, and that's what we want. We want a sense of realism."

Then I got very excited, because I was reading it and I was seeing all of the crazy detail, I thought if we could really do this, against this epic scale... on the page it read like a Roland Emmerich-sized Independence Day kind of movie. But I thought, if do it in this kind of intimate, naturalistic style... And I wanted to do some improvisation and other things to make it feel real. That was very exciting to me, and they said great, so J.J. and Drew and I got together and started talking about the direction to take the outline and we fleshed it out further.

That's basically how I got involved. I'm going to guess they had their pitch around January or February, and then Drew wrote up that very extensive treatment very quickly. By the end of February I'd already read it and was on board, and we started developing the treatment further and going into production on the teaser trailer. There was no script when I got on-board, so from when I got on to the release date, is still under a year, which is crazy. In fact, we didn't even have a script until four weeks before we started shooting. Drew was still working on Lost, and we were working on weekends and talking about how to rework the story, coming up with the structure of the flashbacks and all that stuff. It was all madly coming together because we knew that we had this release date, and we also knew we wanted to finish this teaser trailer and get it onto the front of Transformers.

We thought for a movie that didn't have any recognizable people in it, we thought it would be great to tease people with that trailer on the front of a huge movie like Transformers, and we had no idea what kind of a reaction we'd get. All of that, working on the script, readying the trailer, was all happening at once.

How different was this experience vs. your other feature film, The Pallbearer?

It was very different, although it's funny because the casting process was very similar in that... it's funny, because when we did that film I wanted the main character to be someone you didn't recognize, and who you'd meet as that new character. When we cast David Schwimmer at the time he was on the first season of Friends. We thought it was this show that had just begun, and he was part of a huge ensemble, and in it's first season it wasn't a hit, it was only sort of a middling success. However, right when it began filming it became this monster smash, and we knew this because we'd be out on location filming and kids, little kids, would come out and surround where we were shooting, and then we realized, "Oh, we don't have an unknown cast."

In this case, we thought it was critical to cast people you didn't realize, because in trying to create this "reality," and create this illusion that you're watching found footage. If you're supposed to be looking at someone's camcorder, you don't want to end up seeing Will Smith, because as great as he is, that immediately tells you that you're watching a movie.

The actual process itself was different, and not just for me, because I'd never done effects before, but also for the visual effects people as well. I went to them and I said "Okay, I don't know how this is done, but this is what I want to do. I want it to look handheld, and I want it to be continuous takes." I thought it was critical that this needed to look like a handheld film. Our escape route has always been that we could put in a jump cut, but I felt if we used that in this, people would feel cheated. So when we met with the vfs people, they suggested shooting on steadicam and then adding shake later, but the problem with that is that anyone who is doing these kind of videos that you see on YouTube every day, which is really our audience, will say "Hey, that's not authentic." So they had to figure out a way that it could all be done handheld.

Also, in most films you have all these shots that are like a small shot here, a few seconds there, and it would all be very containable and the visual effects people would know exactly how many shots they'd be working on. But, with this film since we were doing everything in continuous takes, we'd shoot a scene and I'd ask them "How many effects shots is that?" and they'd say, "Well, we don't know." Instead of doing many shots, we did one long shot that would basically take in all the effects of many shots.

It was also really different for the crew, because I was having the camera operators run the cameras as unprofessionally as possible. And the focus pullers as well... focus pullers lose their job if they're not dead on when someone walks into a room and hits their mark. I'd be saying "No! You're too dead on! This is autofocus on a handheld consumer camera, it has to go past them, and come back." They'd say, "Well, this is the kind of thing that gets me fired." I told them, "Not on this movie!"

I also wanted to be able to use the handheld camera as a basis for improvisation as well. Instead of shooting the scene a normal way where you'd have several angles, I'd only have one angle. I would also shoot the rehearsals, because you never know if something great was going to happen. Then after we'd done the scenes a bunch of times, I'd say "Okay, forget the words and lets just try something else. You know what the scene is about." I'd let them go and improv the scene, and a lot of times those ended up in the movie, because they felt more understated and natural.

Were you inspired at all by the original 1954 Gojira film?

Yeah, absolutely! That's actually an incredible film, and we've seen the bastardized version here in the United States. Most people are familiar with the film and have seen the Raymond Burr intercut scenes, but that movie is far inferior to the original. It came out the same year as Seven Samurai, and is considered to be a masterpiece in that country. It is a great movie, and it's very haunting.

There's no question that we were aware of the fact that the monster in that film was really a metaphor for the anxiety of that time. That was definitely the idea here that we wanted to create our own national monster the same way Godzilla did to create a monster of our time.

When you worked with artist Neville Page who designed the monster, what inspirations did both of you draw from? What was that like?

We wanted it to be totally original. He is really amazing, he has this thing I affectionately call his "Wall of Terror." You walk into this office and there's this very colorful wall of pictures, and immediately you want to walk over to it and check it out. However, the closer you get to it, the more quickly you want to look away. They're images of intestines and body parts and all these different things because there's a very biological, evolutionary logic to his work. He was coming up with all of these different features for the monster, and drawing from nature for this.

In working with him I was very interested in what the creature was going through, and we came up with the secret that the creature was a baby. It was this enormous baby that was going through terrible separation anxiety, it didn't know what was going on, and it was pissed. I wanted a creature that would be ferocious and angry, but also that there would be fear in the eyes. He showed all these sorts of fearful eyes, like how horses have a lot of white showing under their eyes when they're scared. He would always come up with these diabolical features that the creature would have. He has a singular talent, and he's really amazing.

So, at the end of the film, after the credits, a walkie-talkie crackles to life and you hear... something. What is it?

Yes, you do hear something! That's another sort of radio chatter moment. I don't actually want to give that away at this point, because it is decipherable. That's the very last thing we did on the mix, I sort of jumped up to the microphone and did this thing. I know someone will figure it out, but I don't want to give it away yet.