Ok, at first I had my doubts about this movie, because when it first came out, I read a lot of negative interviews about it. SO I decided to go see for myself and I have to say, it was fucking incredible. One of the best movies I have seen in a long time. That being said, I have a lot of theories about this movie, since not much is explained. Theory 1: Origin of the monster. First off, it is NOT an alien, nor is it a mutated animal of any kind. It is a creature that lived in the very bottom of the ocean. It is so big due to deep-sea gigantism. It is a phenomenon where creatures that live deep in the ocean tend to be larger, like a giant squid. It was woken up from a combination of a Japanese drilling company digging into the bedrock near where the monster developed, and a satellite crashing into the ocean (see the VERY last scene of the movie, when Rob pans over the ocean near Coney Island, you can see it hit the water.) The deep sea living could also be the cause for it's indestructible nature. Being on the ocean floor, it would need skin stronger than normal to compensate for the water pressure that deep. Also, it appears to have a set of gills on the side of it's head that do puff out when it breathes, meaning it has lungs too. So in theory it could be amphibious. Theory 2: The Hammer-down of New York. I have 2 theories on this. Either the military evacuated everyone they could from the city and left it for the monster to get tired of, or, given that there was an air-raid siren at the end and massive explosions, they might have nuked the city, which I highly doubt due to the harmful after effects it would cause. Another sign they didn't nuke is that a nuclear weapon would have caused a blinding white flash which did not register on the camera, even though it was covered in rubble, there was still some light getting in. Plus, a nuclear explosion emits a wave of magnetism, which would have basically rendered the camera useless and destroyed the tape inside. Theory 3: The Parasites. The little spider-crab-like creatures that fall off of the monster could have been living on it, using it for transportation and possibly even feeding. Whales tend to have certain kinds of fish that will act in the same manor. The parasites could have become extra violent due to the fact that they were no longer attached to their host, and needed a way to feed. It appears that they feed off of blood, and when they bite they inject a semi-fast form of venom which causes it's prey to inflate with blood, until they explode (hence Marlena going POP behind the curtain.) Theory 4: The ending. Obviously for those who have seen the movie, they see the helicopter crash at the end when attacked by the monster. What they don't say though is what happens to Lily and the second helicopter. I think that when the monster attacked the copters, the other one did get hit and did crash, but no one survived. The fact that the first helicopter (holding Rob, Beth and Hud) fell so close to where it was attacked (it just tailspun down to the ground) could explain why the monster was so close to Hud for him to be eaten. Only half of Hud was ingested, while the top half of him, the half holding the camera, fell, and Hud's body acted as a cushion, protecting the camera. After all that, Rob and Beth under the bridge did get killed from the explosions. Theory 5. Sequel possibility. They could in fact make a sequel to this. Obviously not filmed by the same people, but think about it. In an event of an attack like that what are the odds that Rob and his friends were the ONLY ones filming, and the ONLY ones that stayed in the city? Pretty slim. For example, after the initial attack, when everyone is on the Brooklyn Bridge, Hud pans the camera by a man who is also filming. He pans over again to see the man filming still, and even pointing the camera at Hud. Also at the end of the credits is the backwards vocal track that says "It's still alive." This is voiced by Director Matt Reeves. So there you have it. My theories on this incredible movie. If you have any different theories, I'd love to hear them. The mystery surrounding this movie amazes me and I'd love to find out more input.
A lot of this has been discussed on unfiction.com. Most, if not all, have been confirmed. JJ Abrams confirmed that it was woken up by the satellite. There are a lot of things being discussed over there. For example, an issue I'm still trying to get over, is that the footage was apparently on an SD card. If you have a camera that records to SD, there's NO way to have footage taped over like it was portrayed in the film. So either the Government lied at the beginning, Rob has an amazingly strange camera, or it was a mistake.
As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to point out the camera discrepancy was the only discrepancy I found in the entire film. People are complaining about how the camera's battery lasted so long, but there are obvious jumps in the filming, either when Hud felt it was unnecessary to be filming, or when he accidentally bumped the power button. Those are just two theories I have to go along with the jumps. Obviously, Hud's going to turn the camera back on when he feels there's something worth adding to the tape (or card, whatever). Naturally, if his fingers are fidgety, he's going to hit the "fast forward" button on accident, which would account for the random scenes with Rob and Liz. But to me, those were the only parts of the film I found hard to explain. For all we know, Hud grabbed another battery for the camera while he was in the electronics store with Rob, but we never see it occur, for whatever reasons. At the same token, people are also complaining Rob's new phone battery shouldn't have worked, because batteries aren't charged in the packaging (because they can explode). But from experience, there's always a tiny bit of charge in the battery, which makes sense, because Rob only used the phone for a few seconds. Either way, it doesn't matter. The camera discrepancy shouldn't play in to any part of the storyline of the film. From what I took from the movie, it wasn't about the monster. It was about the group of friends who were in New York City when it just so happened to get attacked by a giant monster hell-bent on doom. People complain there wasn't enough focus on the monster, which I find to be completely bullshit. You knew some tiny guy with a camera wasn't going to follow the monster around for the whole film, giving you awesome panoramic shots of the beast, so why would you even complain about it? It's stupid. I punched a 3-year-old because he complained. The "Hammerdown Protocol" has nothing to do with nuclear weaponry. The U.S. does have weapons which can destroy a lot of things without them being nuclear, so there'd be no reason to contaminate New York City on top of destroying it if it could be avoided. Those were air-raid sirens, not "nuclear power plant failure" sirens, which sound a hell of a lot different from the sirens you heard in the movie (and believe me, living 15 miles from a power plant, I hear them every time they test them). So my theory is they simply carpet-bombed the city with all the force they could muster, which obviously wasn't enough, given the monster's still alive. People are complaining, "Why would they go retrieve the camera if there's a monster attacking the city?!" WAKE THE FUCK UP, JACKASS. They're not looking for the camera. Let's assume it's several months after the attacks and they find the camera. Doesn't that make way more sense? It's not like they're specifically looking for the camera itself, but we're not told why they held onto it to begin with (why the hell would they watch the footage?). Either that, or the monster's moved on to other places (i.e. Boston, Toronto, back out to sea to go back to sleep, whatever), and they decided to look for survivors. The chances are slim, but the possibility's there. As for the parasites, I don't know why people are claiming the people are rapidly filling with blood. Where in the hell does it say that anywhere in the movie? For all we know, it's a rapidly-spreading form of cancer, one that spreads so fast that the people explode because their bodies can't handle the absolutely insane pressure of all the extra cells inside them. That makes a hell of a lot more sense to me, but that's just me. But yes, the parasites are parasites, they're not a "weapon" of the main monster, which is why the newscast commented on how the monster was "shaking" them off, and why the parasites attacked humans so quickly. The Lily situation: Pay attention when the helicopter with Rob, Liz and Hud takes off: A ball of something goes crashing to the ground. Both my friend and I came to the conclusion RIGHT AWAY that it was the main body of the helicopter being tossed to the ground by the monster, after perhaps grabbing it in the air and ripping it in half. That's what I got out of that, and it makes the most sense to me, but what do I know? For all I know, she made it out alive, and she's sipping martinis on a beach in Florida. The monster: I'm under the impression that the main ingredient for Slusho was being harvested near where the monster was, and over thousands of years was causing the monster to grow into what it has grown into, as in mutate. Call me crazy, but that's my sole opinion, and I'm sticking to it. Why the monster has lived for so long, I don't know. No one knows. But unless the Japanese company is harvesting this ingredient from just a mile off Coney Island, I doubt the satellite that crashed into the sea woke the monster up, because there's no way they WOULDN'T know it was down there if it were that close to New York City or the Jersey shoreline, for that matter. I never read anything anywhere about Abrams confirming the satellite woke the monster up, so that's what I'm sticking to. ...haha.
Beginning of the movie: It roughly says "Footage from an SD card recovered at site blablabla previously known as Central Park" EDIT: It's been confirmed that the helicopter was never seen destroyed. A Hummer was destroyed, but nothing else.
J.J. Abrams said that the monster is "still a baby" so it might not have been there for thousands of years.
I don't mean to be rude, but can you point me to this confirmation? I'd like to see it for myself. In the same sentence, he claimed it was there for thousands of years, so I'm pretty sure he either got confused, or the monster's mother is really why he's so pissed off. MGP is missing its mother, which is why it's wrecking the city, because it's scared. Makes sense.
The lack of the sound of a helicopter's crashing noise (such as when Hud/Rob/Beth's helicopter got hit) along with physical confirmation. It doesn't have the shape of a helicopter, it looks very much like a Hummer. Sorry I used the word confirmation when I shouldn't have, rather it is widely believed and many people observed the same things.
Oh, okay. I understand. I've only seen the movie once (you'd never believe it) but as soon as we saw it, we both cringed. But I think you might be right, given the fact no one ever yells, "Oh my God! Lily's chopper!" or anything like it.
Well what it looks like is that Clovie (my nickname for the monster) bit the tail of the helicopter, making it spin and fall, but not so hard that it smacked the ground like a rock, since the main propeller on the copter would make it fall slowly. So it is possible that the copter wasn't destroyed.
Are you talking about Lily's chopper or Rob's chopper? It looked like MGP just lunged at Rob's chopper, and the force of it knocked it into an uncontrollable spin. And as for the pilots not surviving, it seems to me as though the chopper crashed nose-first into the ground. Although it irks me how they woke up a while later and it was daylight and MGP was still stomping around by where the chopper went down.
Rob's copter. It was either bit or smacked, but the slow fall of it wouldn't have destroyed the copter.
I don't think the satellite crashing into the ocean has any significance to the monster or the plot of the movie, it's just an easter egg thrown in for people who followed the viral marketing. "Hey, that's probably the satellite that crashed into the ocean that the Tagruato website was talking about!" That seems a pretty realistic explanation for it. Supposedly there's a voice in the helicopter crash scene that says "All helicopters are down," but I didn't catch it. If it's there, I guess we can assume Lily's copter crashed and she's dead, but I personally think she made it out alive. Also, there's no way the U.S. is going to nuke one of their own cities. One of the soldiers even says at one point (paraphrasing) "Pretty soon they'll authorize orders to destroy Manhattan." I think if they were gonna nuke the place, he'd say "nuke Manhattan." I'm going along with the idea that they just carpet bombed the city in a last-ditch effort to kill the monster.
J.J. Abrams has said that the satellite falling has a significant place in the plot, so I don't think it was just an easter egg.
I agree. He specifically points it out in an interview. -edit- Actually, it was the director, Matt Reeves, who pointed it out.
I'm tired of the complaints people give about this movie, like "There's no answers" or "Why isn't there more monster?" J.J. Abrams made it for god's sake. How many times on Lost has he "answered questions" that people wanted to know?
Yeah. I heard someone leaving the theater claiming there wasn't enough of the monster in the movie. But as I pointed out, I think the movie is about a group of people who just so happened to be in the middle of New York City when MGP started attacking the city. If it were a movie like all the Godzilla movies, it would've been all about MGP and not the people it was attacking. I loved it.
Exactly! Part of the cast was filming. It's like, would you honestly expect a person, scared shitless, running for their lives, to sit down in the middle of the road with the camera going "OMG I NEED TO FILM THIS MONSTER MORE!" People just hate that it's different from the norm when it comes to movies. It's not the normal garbage that comes out of Hollywood anymore and to me, is absolutely brilliant.