[yasr_overall_rating]
Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality.
We live in a world of franchises. Often, the biggest complaint I hear from my friends is the ungodly amount of movies distributed today that feature pre-existing characters. The odds of a great original movie in theaters are slim these days. That’s why this Clover-verse movie idea intrigues me. From what I understand, the “Cloverfield” movies are really original movie scripts that would normally never get made these days, but get the support of the studios because they have (relatively minimal) tie-ins to the Clover-verse. It’s a slightly subversive exercise in manipulating franchise filmmaking to highlight original scripts. It worked extremely well with “10 Cloverfield Lane” (aka The Cellar) and arguably “Cloverfield.” Simultaneously, the films themselves are products to test new marketing strategies: trailers with no movie titles or release dates, surprise releases, title changes, and minimal buzz. By the time “The Cloverfield Paradox” came around, most of us knew what this was. Unfortunately, the film fails on several counts to deliver a further validation of this exercise making us wonder: was this just another franchise money grab?
Look, let’s ignore the “Cloverfield” tie-in for a moment here. It’s only distracting us from the original script previously titled “The God Particle.” A synopsis in brief: An international group of scientists survive the rigors of space as their attempts to smash the Higgs-Boson particle creates a tear in dimensions and endangers them all. What’s the Higgs-Boson? What’s “The Cloverfield Paradox?” Don’t worry. You’ll learn. As a film, it leans too much on the sci-fi and not enough on the people. Hastily sketched characters walk through a series of sci-fi thriller traps we’ve seen before. Yes, there are motivations. Yes, we have genuine emotional cruxes, but rarely do they ever play as anything but cheap bids for audience investment. Why is that?
The pacing of this movie feels off. Spending two-thirds of its runtime explaining the sci-fi concepts wastes the moments where true drama hits. It distracts us from the human drama at stake. In fact, the longer the movie went on the more I questioned all the little details of the scene. I don’t stomach nitpicky moviegoers well. I’m a true follower of the Suspension of Disbelief. So, if a movie gets me to ask questions like: Why don’t they just have a switch? Wouldn’t an oxygen-rich environment make you sick? Or how does a disembodied hand write without an elbow? I focused on this precisely because the film explained it’s concept to me so many times. “10 Cloverfield Lane” did the opposite – eschewing answers to its larger narrative questions to focus on the actual characters (and John Goodman’s ominous performance.) The mystery of the outside world isn’t something fully addressed until the very end – letting the audience savor the mystery.
“The Cloverfield Paradox” carries narrative impetus and clever machinations but sacrifices our intrigue at the behest of overexplaining. The audience guesses the whole ‘they entered a parallel dimension’ concept well before the crew does and we’re left waiting for the rest of the movie to catch up. Sure, there’s a logic to every scene in the movie, but there’s no compelling force. Which brings me to my most important point: there’s no clear antagonist.
We’ve seen antagonist bait-and-switches before in “Wonder Woman,” “Sunshine,” “Prometheus,” etc. Some work, some don’t. In “The Cloverfield Paradox,” our antagonist (from what I understand) is The Dimension They Accidentally Entered. Which sounds confusing but if you think about it makes sense: their intrusion on an alternate plane is a violation so the plane of reality fights back to eliminate this virus. It (re The Dimension) murders the crew by manipulating laws of physics: magnetism, molecular properties, space, and electricity. While we watch the film we wonder what kind of thing is hunting down and murdering these people, cutting off their arms, etc. In “Alien” we know it’s the Alien. We have a clear sense it’s hunting the crew of the Nostromo. Here, we have no idea. I genuinely hoped there was some clever monster involved. We never get that. The previous “Cloverfield” movies worked really well with a clear antagonist: the monster (aka Clover) or John Goodman. “Paradox” pulls no such punches. A monster with no face is practically no monster at all.
“The Cloverfield Paradox” feels like a sci-fi movie we’ve all seen before. With a notorious cast and an interesting concept, it’s enough to draw us to the TV. Paired with its mysterious origin, constantly pushed release date, and subsequent Netflix release, our curiosity is piqued. Not to mention tie-ins always provoke curiosity. Come for the “Cloverfield,” stay for the God Particle. I don’t mind “Paradox” feeling like another sci-fi horror movie. What I mind is getting none of the gratification. So much of our time hones in on the setup of these death traps and the suspense in watching them spring. Instead of taking time to watch these death traps work, we get one short shot of people dying. You took all this time to set up a death trap, let’s watch it play out.
It’s fair to say “The Cloverfield Paradox” did not live up to the mystery hype. I will grant it’s still entertaining to watch. Whoever designed the spaceship and space suits and plenty of the physical elements of that space station did an excellent job. I loved the back-paneled lighting and ominous light flickers. When “Paradox” works it works, but when it doesn’t, it weighs down the rest of the film, making it a hard-to-forgive whole.
Was “Paradox” a poorly-conceived “Cloverfield” tie-in cash grab? If it were, would we have seen it on Netflix? The budget was reported to be $40 million and the script, coming from an established director, tells us the studio originally planned to screen it in theaters with some guerrilla marketing strategy. More rumors arose that J.J. Abrams, too busy with “Star Wars Episode IX,” could not step in on the film and correct some errors. After a constantly pushed release date, the rumors proved true: Netflix bought the film. Based on the last twenty seconds of “Paradox,” the tie-in efforts to “Cloverfield” are lip service at best. Instead, what we’re left with is an original script that isn’t that good. It’s got all the beats and notes of a good movie, but the execution leaves much to be desired. That’s how we got here. Now that the Clover-cat is out of the Clover-bag, the next movie we see we can expect to relate to this Clover-verse peripherally and pray it’s the original sci-fi movie we miss having in our lives. Apparently, they’ve already shot the fourth one: a World War Two-era film. Not many details remain but given that it’s a Clover-verse movie perhaps we can hope for more sci-fi goodness and hope it surpasses its predecessor to join the pedestal among “10 Cloverfield Lane” and the original “Cloverfield” (arguably.) Until then, go watch “Sunshine” or “Alien.”
Now streaming on Netflix
