The continuing Cloverfield story

Because I might reveal spoilers I’m going to do something I don’t usually do – Continue after the jump.

OK, so you’re here.

I’ve heard a couple reactions to Cloverfield that express no end of dismay that the entire Slusho angle of the marketing campaign had almost nothing to do with the movie, at least not in a tangible manner. That’s completely true, at no point is Slusho, Tagurato or anything else referenced in the film.

But that’s not even the point.

For those of you who saw the movie, how much did that whole aspect of the campaign add to your enjoyment? How much did you sit there and think, “Oh, that’s the thing that destroyed drilling station?” or something like that. I’m willing to bet you all did at some point and I sure as heck was.

The point is that the alternate reality aspect of the campaign provided depth and shading to the world that we were going to be shown in the movie, either directly or indirectly. Tell me you weren’t thinking that this thing must be really honked off about the disturbance of its nest in the harvesting of seabed’s nectar or whatever it is that caused the beastie to become honked off and I’ll call say you just aren’t being honest with me.

There’s already speculation about a sequel and that might be interesting if the filmmakers can find a way to be as innovative and creative with it as they were with this one.

But that’s almost secondary.

What really matters to me is that the studio has a movie platform they can use to extend, sequel or not, the storyline that’s been started almost indefinitely.

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.

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.

And if they do it in the way that they did the initial marketing campaign – just tell an an interesting story in a way that allows the fans to take it and run with it, offering their own speculation on what everything means – than they just might have a real cultural phenomenon on their hands.