I like this concept, thus making it about as likely as this being a Lovecraftian horror from beyond Hell come to consume sanity.

Which is to say, very low.

2. This movie is CLEARLY going to be about giant Bender and giant Zoidberg duking it out!

While it seems that indeed a giant monster of some kind is attacking NYC, we don’t acctually have any evidence of this. There is a large jolt, referrred to as an earthquake, and the news mentions that an oil tanker has capsized near the Statue of Liberty. A bit later, a massive explosion occurs, launching debris into the city.
One could argue that the tanker, for whatever reason, exploded, and took out Liberty with it. Now granted, one could argue that a real blast wouldn’t be able to lob part of the real statue that far inland, but we are talking about a fictional movie here, one which has sound travelling at the speed of light.
(By the way, is the sound issue just to get the point across in the trailer? The movie itself may actually have the sound occur more realistically, and thus the crowds may react to it in the manner Tom Servo suggested a few posts ago. One can hope so, anyway…)
Anyhoo, there seem to be multiple explosions, and damage seems spread out. Oh, and Liberty’s head doesn’t fly into view til after the initial big blast; it occurs after the panicked crowd has had time to run down a few flights of stairs to the street, and looks like it’s been lobbed by something which has clawed it off of its body. (Another by the way: Libby’s head seems as wide as the streetlight it knocks over is tall… is that light about three meters tall, or even taller? A disembodied head not sitting upright will look oddly sized in such an out-of-context setting. But I digress. Again.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah…
Based only upon the evidence in the video, we don’t see secondary blasts, but we do see lots of roiling smoke coming from the direction of the intial blast zone, and hear lots of noises suggesting secondary explosions. The smoke even appears to look like a solid object (monster?) moving across the street several blocks away, just before a skyscraper collapses. “Did you see that?” shouts one of the onlookers, implying that he, at least thought he saw a soild thing moving toawrd the building; easy enough to assume that that ‘thing’ then tore the building down moments later.
In the panic that follows, everyone seeks shelter by trying to run away or dash inside the nearest building. Rob & company take shelter in what looks like a convenience store, and hunker down to wait out the debris cloud from the collapsed skyscraper. Loud, rhythmic noises pound away, sounding like giant footsteps, and one of the men tells Rob that he saw ‘it,’ and that it was ‘alive’ just before the windows shatter in and the video ends.
But what do we really know? Smoke that appeared solid, and obscured a view already dimmmed by nighttime. Explosions, or loud bangs, in sequence that sound like footsteps. Buildings collapsing, but from what? Bombs? Libby’s head looking like it had claw marks on it, but remember, it struck a building on the way inland.
Perhaps the whole thing is about a disaster (natural or man-made, and I’m leaning toward man-made) that has people justifiably panicked, and then follows how each person fills in their own blanks about what’s happening around them. A taut psychological thriller about the working of the mind in stressful situations, and how people react as individuals and in groups. Could be really cool, or really boring, if that sort of thing’s not your bag.
Or it is indeed a giant monster flick. Good thing I like kaiju eiga, if that’s the case.
Either way, I’ll be watching this film. (But like others, perhpas only in installments, as ‘shaky-cam’ gets to me after a while. too.)

Yes, I’m a bit of a geek to analyze this trailer in such detail, but that’s the way I am sometimes, and this is, after all, a science site.

BTW, if you knew how to use Google, you could have found out that Cxaxukluth lives in the Dakota on Central Park West, Hziulquoigmnzhah has an apartment in the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, and Zvilpogghua has a loft in Tribeca off Chambers Street.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=3739

Especially in the case of Cloverfield, it would have offered more actiony dramatism. I mean, an explosion cloud lights up in the horizont, the young people see it and start freaking out, then the sonic boom is heard and it results in panic. Instead it goes instant boom and everyone runs.

P.S. Come on, buy the book. It’s Christmas!

And if you compare it to most Hollywood movies, it feels like a documentary. Almost. =)

Back to the initial subject, I hope it’ll be aliens in gigantic robotic suits bringing destruction upon the hum… New York City.

Or 100 meters tall anime girls. With guns.

What else could make sense!?

Yes, but even Battlestar Galactica bends the truth just a little bit!

And even though it was relatively accurate historically, even “Apollo 13″ had my Dad throwing his hands in the air and saying, “that didn’t happen that way” several times — he was at the Cape as a ground support manager and saw all of the pre-launch/launch events surrounding the mission. As I recall, the bird was rolled out to the pad in December and launched in April, not only a few days beforehand and the film intimates. I remember going with him to his office near the VAB at Christmas and seeing it on the pad then, so I have no doubt of his version of the story. And oh, the film doesn’t even come close to recreating the sound of a Saturn V. Every single one broke a window somewhere in our house, which was I guess 8-10 nautical miles from the pad. They were LOUD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II

Near the end, there’s an atomic explosion. Big silent flash foloowed by the sound and shockwave a few minutes later.

There is hope for the human race!

Agreed.

> Yeah, I’m not a big fan of exploiting the very specific imagery of 9-11 in order to sell movie tickets.

Neither am I, but now that we know what extremely huge skyscrapers falling down look like…

Yeah, I’m not a big fan of exploiting the very specific imagery of 9-11 in order to sell movie tickets.

Do you have a similar objection to movies like Tora Tora Tora and The Final Countdown exploiting the very specific imagery of Pearl Harbor?