SUPER 8 Alien Creature has No Connection to CLOVERFIELD
First of all, if you haven't seen Super 8 yet get out there and watch it already! The movie is fantastic. For those of you who have seen it, if you thought that maybe the alien in Super 8 had a connection to the monster in Cloverfield you would be wrong. We actually got into this discussion on a recent podcast where Ben P thought that there was a possibility of a connection, I didn't agree. The dispute has now been settled, because J.J. Abrams has said in a interview with MTV that there is no connection.
The only connection between the creature in Super 8 and the creature in Cloverfield is that they were both designed by the same guy, Neville Page. They actually look very different, but they both have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. So, in that regard, it also looks a lot like Laurence Olivier!"
He was then asked if there is any connection between Super 8 and Cloverfield as a shared universe, Abrams offered a definitive "no." So, there you have it.
Abrams goes on to talk about the alien creature in Super 8 saying,
The creature in Super 8 needed to be scary, and it also needed to have the ability to have a performance and be a little bit less scary too. We didn't want a creature that was just running around thumping his chest and screaming. It needed to be something that was able to have a plan, have an experience. Smart enough to create something, build something.
A lot of what the design was, was how do we do both? If there was a big, strong soldier who had been taken in, was a prisoner of war and had escaped, if this guy was Rambo. Basically this could be someone who for some would be very scary, could be full of rage and also could be emotional and nuanced. So it really was a question of, he wasn't King Kong and a lot of what we needed to do was find a way to have a design that would give us that latitude to do both — the big scares and also the more subtle stuff.
Well, the creative team did a great job with the creature, I liked what they ended up creating, and they accomplished their goals.