Clover (creature)
Encyclopedia
Clover is the production name given to the giant, fictional monster that appears in the 2008
2008 in film
This is a list of all major films made in 2008.-Highest-grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2008...

 film
Monster movie
Monster movie is a name commonly given to movies, which centre on the struggle between human beings and one or more monsters...

 Cloverfield
Cloverfield
Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city...

. The creature was originally conceived by producer J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...

 and was designed by artist Neville Page. In the film, the monster is never named; the name "Cloverfield" is only given to the US Department of Defense case file of the incidents depicted in the movie. The Department of Defense names the creature "LSA" for Large-Scale Aggressor in the movie's Blu-ray special feature called "Cloverfield Special Investigation Mode". The name Clover was the nickname affectionately given to the monster among the production staff.

Appearances

"Clover" was first referred to in the viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...

 campaign for the 2008 film, including a recording of its roar, foreign news clips about a monster attack and sonar images.

A similar monster appears in a four-part manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series Cloverfield/Kishin
Cloverfield/Kishin
is a manga and cross-media tie-in to the 2008 film Cloverfield. It was published once a month on Kadokawa Shoten's website and consists of four chapters. There are English translations for the story, but only on fansites and only for the first three chapters...

by Yoshiki Togawa, which serves as a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...

 to the film. The monster made a first full appearance in Cloverfield, where it was seen rampaging through New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and being attacked by the United States military.

Concept and creation

J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...

 conceived of a new monster after he and his son visited a toy store in Japan while promoting Mission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible III is a 2006 spy film, the third based on the spy-themed television series Mission: Impossible starring Tom Cruise who reprises his role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt....

. He explained, "We saw all these Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...

 toys, and I thought, we need our own [American] monster, and not like King Kong
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films...

. But I wanted something that was just insane and intense".

The monster was designed by artist Neville Page. He sought a biological rationale for the creature, though many of his ideas would not show up on screen. Page designed the creature as immature and suffering from "separation anxiety
Separation anxiety disorder
Separation anxiety disorder is a psychological condition in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment...

". He compared the creature to a rampaging elephant, saying "there's nothing scarier than something huge that's spooked". Page said of the creature's backstory, "For me, one of the most key moments in our collective brainstorming was the choice to make the creature be something that we would empathize with. It is not out there just killing. It is confused, lost, scared. It's a newborn. Having this be a story point (one that the audience does not know), it allowed for some purposeful choices about its anatomy, movement and, yes, motivations". The creature was developed by visual effects supervisor Kevin Blank and Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett
Phil Tippett is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.-Early career:...

's company Tippett Studio. Blank described the intended goal of the creature, "Rather than the monster having a personality [like Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...

 or King Kong
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films...

], it's more of an entity or an event".

Goddard pointed out the lack of explanation in the film of the creature's origin was deliberate so as to make the film more realistic, as civilians would not know where it would come from. Despite this, in the final moments of the film, after the explosion and just before the credits, the characters Beth and Rob are talking while on an amusement ride. The camera is pointed out the window at a section of beach and ocean as a distant object can be seen coming in from the upper right of the picture. It splashes into the water just to the left of the yacht in that scene. The date, April 27, 6:17 p.m., is prior to the monster's attack on the city. As part of the viral marketing campaign, it is explained that the splash is made by a satellite crashing into the ocean. Reeves said the creature had "been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years".

Reeves described the creature's reaction to its surroundings thus: "It’s this new environment that it finds frightening". To indicate this, Reeves suggested the addition of white in the creature's eyes so it would look similar to a spooked horse. The filmmakers generated and used the idea of parasites because the film could not realistically have scenes between the human protagonists and the enormous creature.

Creature design

Although "just a baby", the creature is 25 stories tall. It is quite resilient, able to resist every attack the military throws at it. At the end of the movie, the military is willing to destroy Manhattan in an attempt to kill it.

It is vaguely quadrupedal, though it is capable of standing upright over short distances. The limbs are comparatively long and thin compared with the body core, and according to creator Neville Page this coupled with its quadrupedal stance is meant to loosely imply that it is a newborn: he speculates that the adults may be bipedal. The forelimbs are large compared to the rest of the body. the hind legs are comparatively stubby. The creature's head at first glance appears to be a solid sphere, but it can open its jaw extremely wide, the head unfolding almost like an onion. Above the eyes on either side of the head are fleshy pouches which it puffs up when agitated.

The creature's design includes appendages on its underbelly, described by Neville Page as an "elongated, and articulated external esophagus
Esophagus
The esophagus is an organ in vertebrates which consists of a muscular tube through which food passes from the pharynx to the stomach. During swallowing, food passes from the mouth through the pharynx into the esophagus and travels via peristalsis to the stomach...

 with the business end terminating in teethlike fingers". They were designed as a body part to relate the scale of human prey to the huge scale of the creature. The scenes from the film where people were sucked into the feeding tubes were cut from the final edit, but the fourth and final chapter of Cloverfield/Kishin shows how the tubes work.

The creature is covered with parasites
Parasitism
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred to organisms with lifestages that needed more than one host . These are now called macroparasites...

, which it sheds as part of a "post-birth ritual". Abrams described the parasites as "horrifying, dog-sized creatures that just scatter around the city and add to the nightmare of the evening." Reeves added that "The parasites have a voracious, rabid, bounding nature, but they also have a crab-like crawl. They have the viciousness of a dog, but with the ability to climb walls and stick to objects." The parasites fall off and begin to attack people. The top half of the parasite's head is the mandible, moving up from the lower jaw to open. The top and lower jaws end in serrated edges and also have four pairs of eyes each. The rest of the parasite consists of a crustacean-like carapace, several pairs of claws, and arms. A deep blue-purple muscular membrane stretches between the top and lower jaws. When a human is bitten, the victim becomes ill and bleeds profusely, mainly from the eyes, and shortly after this, the torso expands and explodes. They are called HSPs (Human Scale Parasites) on the Blu-ray Special Investigation Mode.

Artist Neville Page, in response to claims that the design of the creature was similar to that of the 2006 South Korean film The Host
The Host (film)
The Host is a 2006 South Korean monster film, which also contains elements of comedy and drama films. The film was directed by Bong Joon-ho, who co-wrote the screenplay, along with Baek Chul-hyun....

, said, "They are [similar] in that they ravage and seem to originate from the water, but the end results are quite different. However, when I finally saw some of the concept art, there were some very obvious similarities. But then again, I think that we were both channeling similar biological possibilities."

Merchandise

Based on the success of Cloverfield
Cloverfield
Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city...

, which earned over $40 million over its opening weekend in the United States and Canadian box office, the toy company Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...

 began accepting orders for a 14-inch limited edition toy figure of the monster to be shipped to fans starting December 24, 2008. It also comes with several accessories, including the disembodied head of the Statue of Liberty, two changeable heads (one with an open mouth, one with a closed mouth), and 10 static figures of the monster's parasites.

Critical analysis

Reviewing the film Cloverfield, the San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Mercury News is a daily newspaper in San Jose, California. On its web site, however, it calls itself Silicon Valley Mercury News. The paper is owned by MediaNews Group...

described the creature as "a monster for the MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

 generation". Reviewer James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli is an American online film critic.-Personal life:Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey...

 noted, "The movie follows the Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...

rule that monsters are usually more intimidating when they are shown infrequently and only in brief glimpses". Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...

described the creature as retaining "an air of mystery—a monstrous je ne sais quoi that makes him all the freakier." Richard Corliss of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

complained of the recycled elements of the creature, such as its emergence mimicking the original Godzilla
Godzilla (1954 film)
is a 1954 Japanese science fiction film directed by Ishirō Honda and produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka. The film stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata and Takashi Shimura. The film tells the story of Godzilla, a giant monster mutated by nuclear radiation, who ravages Japan, bringing back the...

film and its parasites being similar to the "toy meanies" from the 1984 film Gremlins
Gremlins
Gremlins is a 1984 American horror comedy film directed by Joe Dante, released by Warner Bros. The film is about a young man who receives a strange creature—called a Mogwai—as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, evil monsters. It was followed by a sequel,...

.

Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

expressed acceptance of the lack of explanation for the creature's origin, explaining that it "is all right with me after the tiresome opening speeches in so many of the 30 or more Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...

films". Peter Howell of the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...

thought that the "main" creature was disappointing, while he considered the "mutant spider crabs" that came from it as "way scarier". Lawrence Person of Locus Online describes it as "like a cross between a truly giant mantis and Johnny the Skeletal Torso." Todd McCarthy of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

found that the creature was more reassuring as it appeared more in the film, explaining, "Its very nature as a walking, stalking being suggests it can somehow be killed by conventional means". Chris Vognar of The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...

applauded the creature's appearance as cinematic: "The thrill here isn't in the critter but in how it's revealed. First we see what it's capable of. Then we catch a tail here, a limb there. The spider-crabs announce their presence with authority. Then, once the opening acts are done, and Manhattan is in shambles, the big guy is ready for his close-up".
On Cracked's list of '6 Movie Monsters That Just Wouldn't Work', the Cloverfield monster is marked at number 3. The writer said that, "this creature had literally never lived anywhere else up to the events of the movie, so suddenly emerging from the sea and tromping around Times Square would be the equivalent of a newborn human baby surviving on the surface of Mars without a space suit.

Popular culture

  • Clover appears in the Robot Chicken
    Robot Chicken
    Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...

    episode "Especially The Animal Keith Crofford." It rampages through New York until it reaches the future site of the Freedom Tower
    Freedom Tower
    One World Trade Center , more simply known as 1 WTC and formerly known as the Freedom Tower, is the lead building of the new World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan in New York City...

    , where it builds it in its own vision.

  • Clover is parodied in the South Park
    South Park
    South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...

    season 12 episodes "Pandemic
    Pandemic (South Park)
    "Pandemic" is the tenth episode of the twelfth season of the American animated television series South Park, and the 177th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on October 22, 2008....

    " and "Pandemic 2: The Startling." The latter episode is a parody of Cloverfield, with Clover replaced by giant guinea pig
    Guinea pig
    The guinea pig , also called the cavy, is a species of rodent belonging to the family Caviidae and the genus Cavia. Despite their common name, these animals are not in the pig family, nor are they from Guinea...

    s.

  • In Sam & Max
    Sam & Max
    Sam & Max is a media franchise focusing on the fictional characters of Sam and Max, the Freelance Police. The characters, who occupy a universe that parodies American popular culture, were created by Steve Purcell in his youth, and later debuted in a 1987 comic book series...

     Season 3, at the end of "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", Max is transformed into a creature similar to Clover (or more rather Cthulhu
    Cthulhu
    Cthulhu is a fictional character that first appeared in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. The character was created by writer H. P...

    ), and smashes off the Statue of Liberty's head, and goes on to rampage through New York.

  • On September 12, 2010, the strip Lio by Mark Tatulli featured Lio trying to lure the Cloverfield
    Cloverfield
    Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city...

     monster into a giant hamster cage as a pet.

  • In one of its episodes, the Cartoon Network
    Cartoon Network
    Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....

     series Mad (TV series)
    Mad (TV series)
    MAD is an American animated sketch comedy series created by Kevin Shinick and produced by Warner Bros. Animation. Based upon the magazine of the same name, each episode is a collection of short animated parodies of television shows, movies, games, celebrities and other media using various types of...

     parodies the movie with Disney and Nickelodeon
    Nickelodeon (TV channel)
    Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...

     stars in New York being attacked by Clifford the Big Red Dog
    Clifford the Big Red Dog
    Clifford the Big Red Dog is an American children's book series first published in 1963. Written by Norman Bridwell, the series helped establish Scholastic Books as a premier publishing company....

    .

External links

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