Putting The Pieces Together
In 2008 the first Cloverfield film came out and was a surprise hit as the found footage film was something new a different that people hadn’t necessarily seen before. Eight years later 10 Cloverfield Lane was released and it was a surprise release as no one knew it would be a Cloverfield film. The creatives at Bad Robot started their own Twilight Zone-style franchise where the episodes mixed with each other but they also didn’t. In 10 Cloverfield Lane, the question was whether or not the film would be related to the original Cloverfield and it turned out to kind of be but also not really. Now, as another surprise release, we have The Cloverfield Paradox which is a sci-fi film that does the job of slowly connecting the pieces together but unfortunately also becomes slow torn apart for the two purposes the film was made for.
The Cloverfield Paradox follows the story of a world which is quickly running out of resources, Interstellar? The human race is about to be at war and the governments send up a space station to figure out a new power source that will end up saving the human race from destroying each other. The station is equipped with a particle accelerator and a crew of people from different nations who will remain on the ship until the accelerator works or they run out of power. When the accelerator works the ship is transported and events straight out of the twilight zone start to occur.
Look it is obvious that the film isn’t the best film ever and it is obvious why Paramount was so cautious about releasing it. The film is essentially very close to a mix of Interstellar and Life but with the Cloverfield stuff pushed into it. Most of the elements and events that are in the film are all typical sci-fi elements which you can kind of see coming but some are still a bit of a surprise. This will probably be the main thing about the Cloverfield franchise that people will complain about for this film and for all of the films, that it’s a good film with Cloverfield added to it. In the case of 10 Cloverfield Lane it works well but in this case, it doesn’t work as well as the film ends up being focused on two stories that it has to tell at once.
The film does answer some questions, at least I think it does. The Cloverfield Paradox is at this point the bridging film for all of the Cloverfield films and it’s one that you can either watch or not watch at this stage, as in it might not make a difference yet. You can watch The Cloverfield Paradox and you’ll get a reason why the events of the other films can happen or you can not watch it and then each film just happens and you’re the type of person who doesn’t need said explanation. In terms of how it connects to the other films I’ll simply say that by messing with dimensions and time travel this film allows the Bad Robot team to have Cloverfield films that are set on alternate Earths at different times because the events of this Cloverfield movie has had an effect on every other Cloverfield film, previous films, and future films.
The Cloverfield Paradox is at its core a sci-fi film that scraps by like a crew slowly running out of oxygen. It isn’t a fantastic sci-fi film, in fact, it’s just an alright sci-fi film, but the Cloverfield franchise is slowly becoming something of an event film that gets released by surprise each time and leaves you talking about it with others afterward. I like that, it’s refreshing to have something like that in any form of entertainment these days. Nowadays we get trailers for trailers or new game announcements years before they come out and it’s just become annoying. I woke up this morning to see that one of my favorite franchises was releasing their film today and I was excited, I mean good work by Netflix as they clearly recently bought the film. It’ll be interesting to see if Netflix will continue releasing the Cloverfield films, the series is essentially the alien film version of Black Mirror…right? All questions aside The Cloverfield Paradox is, like the other Cloverfield films, made really well, it’s shot beautifully, does a lot of good with it’s budget and the score is solid and intense. It might be the worst out of the three Cloverfield films but I still like it because of the event it has become and I hope that the Cloverfield events keep happening…as in the films not the world destroying aliens and so on, hope that doesn’t happen to us.