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6 of the people responsible for Cloverfield’s fall from grace / Credits to Netflix

With the 10 Cloverfield Lane ARG drawing in new fans to the franchise, things could only go up from there, right?

Sadly, The Cloverfield Paradox was released in 2018 on Netflix and met with overwhelmingly bad reviews. Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane hadn’t been originally a Cloverfield movie, this was originally intended to simply be a sci-fi flick called ‘The God Particle’.

The movie, with it’s Cloverfield references seemingly stitched on by the studio forcibly akin to Frankenstein’s monster, is considered easily the worst in the franchise. Reports even came out that the movie had already been filming before Cloverfield connections had even been written for it. This, of course, isn’t uncommon in Hollywood – films get rewritten and reshot all of the time – but when the entire movie revolves around the ‘Cloverfield’ concept and the original script (which is entirely lacking said concept) is already mid-filming, the cracks become very blatant.

THE ARG

Fans of the Cloverfield franchise (now dubbed the ‘Cloververse’) got excited when a Slusho! van was found at San Diego Comic Con in summer 2017, and was then spotted going around the country handing out free slushies. The tenth anniversary of the first film rolled around, and still radio silence of an ARG until the Tagruato website was updated with…

An error message.

It’s now stuck on the last error message update forever. This ARG was simply to tie in the Helios space station from the new film in with the Cloverfield universe, but it was done rather sloppily with no real depth. With the Tagruato.jp essentially gone and most of the old sites down aswell, Cloververse’s ARG has essentially become unplayable until the next film, whenever that rolls around. For a series with such a strong ARG marketing technique until the third film, it’s very disheartening as a fan to see it end in such a lacklustre state.

And with that, my blog series of chronicling my favourite ARG comes to a close, not with a bang – but a whimper.

Seconds before disaster in the 10 Cloverfield Lane bunker. // Paramount

Cloverfield wouldn’t receive a sequel until 8 years after the original’s release. Without hesitation, I booked tickets to see it on opening day.

10 Cloverfield Lane (dir. Dan Trachenberg, 2) is honestly a true marvel to behold. Some may argue it’s juggling of suspenseful thriller and sci-fi flick is flawed, especially when you realise that it wasn’t intended to be part of the franchise.

THE ARG

The sequel’s ARG focuses on one of the characters seen in the new film, Howard Stambler played by John Goodman. With MySpace now seen as culturally outdated, the Tagruato.jp website was updated with a new employee of the month section, which portrayed Howard – establishing to fans of the ARG that he worked at the company and thus was tied to the first film’s universe. After many finding websites (including the now defunct radioman70.com and FunAndPrettyThings.com), unlocked the access to see chat logs showing Howard’s attempts at communicating with his daughter and telling her to get to his bunker after she’d been taken to Chicago by his ex-wife. Howard, involved in a secret project by Tagruato in the past, is led to believe the events of the film are due to a nuclear attack carried out by the Soviets. We, the audience, know that’s not the case.

REALITY OR FICTION?

Without a doubt, this ARG was more in-depth and immersive than it’s predecessor. A text based survival game was made, after someone survived 1600 in-game days the real world location of a locker in Chicago was revealed, with a cell phone with voicemails from Howard found inside.

Credit to WalnutJSoap on Youtube

A ‘survival kit’ found in Louisiana which contained jigsaw pieces that were missing from the same puzzle seen in the film. Even an expired Craigslist ad was found of Howard’s ex-wife selling antique spoons, and allowed a correspondence to be set up with her.

10 Cloverfield Lane’s ARG is a masterclass in marketing with and will undoubtedly go down in the ARG history books, it’s such a shame that the franchise eventually took a tumble.

To conclude in part 3.

Credit to the channel ‘Younique by Crissy Terrio’ for their findings
Part 1

Part 2

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The Cloverfield Paradox: An ARG Analysis (Part 3)

Visiting 10 Cloverfield Lane: An ARG Analysis (Part 2)