The story of how The Cloverfield Paradox got to Netflix is more interesting than the final product. For most people, sitting in the comfort of their home as they watched the Eagles beat the Patriots (thank god), the trailer dropped in the first quarter of the Super Bowl was the first time they had heard of The Cloverfield Paradox. When they saw “Coming Very Soon”, all they needed to do was go to Netflix and find out that the movie would be airing right after the game.
This is an unprecedented and awesome move. It is great to see Netflix have the power to buy a studio movie and decided to release it with little to no fanfare right after the biggest sporting event in the United States. Netflix has always been cagey about their viewing numbers, but I would be interested to find out how well this movie did.
The Cloverfield Paradox was not always that. Originally it was The God Particle, slotted to be released in February 2017. It was pushed back to October 2017 and given more time for “post production”. This isn’t uncommon for heavy visual effect films, but when the movie was moved back to February 2018 and then again to April 2018, it was safe to assume there were some issues.
It wouldn’t be unfair to assume the delay from February 2017 to October 2017 may have stemmed from the release of the movie Life. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, the film was basically an Alien-like space movie that only grossed 30 million dollars in the US on a 58-million-dollar budget. Perhaps Paramount, producers of The Cloverfield Paradox, saw one space movie bomb with larger star power and decided they needed more time to fine tune the final product.
The Cloverfield Paradox had budgetary problems of its own. It was reported that Paramount initially budgeted the movie for 5 million dollars, but it ended up ballooning to 40 million. They were “concerned” that type of budget would make it difficult for the movie to be profitable in theaters.
In late January, Paramount made a deal with Netflix to pick up Annihilation, the upcoming Natalie Portman sci-fi epic based on the hit novels, for streaming outside of the US. This was quite a surprise, considering many of us thought the Alex Garland (Ex Machina, The Beach) film would be a tent-pole and potential franchise (the book series is a trilogy). This deal likely paved the way for Netflix to pick up The Cloverfield Paradox, except in this case it was for streaming across the globe.
I love the idea of a movie just coming out with little to no fanfare. In this case, the movie wasn’t made in secret, but a troubled production that a studio thought would bomb. After seeing the final product, I can’t blame them.
The Cloverfield Paradox currently sits at a 37% on Metacritic with a 6.0 user score. To put that in perspective, Life, a film with two massive movie stars, received a 54 Metascore and 6.3 user score. We could argue whether Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhall drive theater-goers more than the Cloverfield franchise, but either way, this doesn’t sound like a hit.
None of what I just put in the above paragraph matters to Netflix. They bought up this movie, they got one Super Bowl commercial spot, and before Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes or your friend from down the street told you it wasn’t very good, they released it. It completely bypassed critics, and anyone who was interested in the franchise probably watched the move in the last two days. This says nothing of those who just wanted to watch The Cloverfield Paradise to see what the hype of what the movie was about.
I’ve written a lot about the release and marketing of The Cloverfield Paradox, but what about the film itself? If you haven’t figured it out already, it’s nothing special. It’s quite clear that someone wrote The God Particle script, Bad Robot (JJ Abrams’ production company that produced Cloverfield) bought it up, and decided that it could be in the Cloverfield franchise with some tweaks. SPOILERS TO FOLLOW
Our main plot follows Hamilton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Black Mirror, Concussion), and the rest of her team in a space station. From the opening newscast, we know that Earth is falling apart. They’re out of resources, wars are near breaking out, and the only salvation is our crew and the space station. The station, the Cloverfield, has the potential to create limitless energy from space. Unsurprisingly, there are people on Earth who claims this may have consequences that we haven’t thought of.
The cast is quite impressive. David Oyelowo (Selma) plays the head of the team, Kiel. He’s joined by Daniel Bruhl, Chris O’Dowd, Ziyi Zhang and a group of other actors who you have seen over the years. Their performances give a weight to the material that is probably undeserved.
The B plot is Hamilton’s husband, Michael, Roger Davies, stuck on a Earth where things are starting go South. I could elaborate on this, but there’s nothing here really worth talking about. There’s a moment where Michael goes to a bunker and you think it might be a connection to 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it’s not. It could not be more clear that all of Michael’s scenes are included to make this a “Cloverfield” movie.
The Cloverfield Paradox asks some questions worth asking. If you could save your children in another universe from dying and not go back to your own universe, would you? Would you kill a handful of people from another universe to save your own? These are the types of questions we like to see in good science fiction, but the tone of the film is too uneven to give them weight. Chris O’Dowd loses his hand, the movie is a comedy. A guy goes crazy when he is filled with worms and explodes and the movie is horror. The Cloverfield Paradox doesn’t know what it wants to be.
There’s a movie here that may be very good, but it’s in desperate need of an editor and a cohesive narrative. Cutting Michael’s story on Earth doesn’t make it a Cloverfield movie, but it makes the film better. If you include a B plot like that, it needs some sort of narrative payoff.
The Cloverfield Paradox is worth a watch if you enjoy the franchise or sci-fi, but don’t expect anything out of the ordinary. Cloverfield fans have Overlord to look forward to, an entry into the franchise that will have American soldiers finding more than they bargained for behind enemy lines on D-Day. Nazi evil inter-dimensional space beings? Sign me up.
Selected Thoughts and Other Interesting Things 