Whew! It's been a while since I released my last review. Not since Despicable Me 3, in fact - I've been focusing more on throwbacks and lists. But anyway. Here we go.
My review of 10 Cloverfield Lane was published not quite two years ago, in which I waxed poetic about how great it was. (Well, not really, but I quite enjoyed it.) 10 Cloverfield Lane was only announced two months before it was released, but nonetheless turned out to be a smash critical and commercial success. And in 2018, Netflix looked at that record and said, "Hold my beer." This third movie in the Cloverfield franchise, The Cloverfield Paradox, was announced the DAY it was released. This is a reveal that will go down in history with Beyoncé's self-titled album.
Formerly titled God Particle, and retooled not long before its release so that it included connections to the Cloverfield franchise, this movie went through a lot of turmoil before coming out. Filming on the movie wrapped in late 2016, and the release was first scheduled for February 2017... then October 2017... then February 2018... and, finally, to April 20th of this year.
Ultimately, the movie was picked up by Netflix after Paramount lost confidence in its ability to perform - a very bad sign. Soon after making the deal, Netflix dropped a shocking trailer during the Super Bowl which revealed that The Cloverfield Paradox, after absolutely no marketing and a floating release date, would be dropping immediately after the game.
And we were all super, duper excited. For, like, four seconds.
And then we realized that a mistake had been made.
Look, I have no idea why there's this huge attempt going on to create a Cloverfield anthology universe. Why? For what purpose? I don't know. 10 Cloverfield Lane would've been a great standalone film - what's the need to connect it to Cloverfield? And as for The Cloverfield Paradox... well. Frankly, this feels far more like a "meh" episode of Black Mirror, rife with nonsensicalities and weird tonal shifts, than it feels like a movie that belongs in the Cloverfield canon.
I just want someone to hurry up and RELEASE A FUCKING SEQUEL to the ORIGINAL MOVIE. I have been waiting for a sequel since 2008, not a half-assed attempt to connect one random movie to another random movie through the ever-present sci-fi MacGuffin known as "alternate dimensions." This is bullshit and I'm not having it. Period.
Let's look at The Cloverfield Paradox.
Apparently, when this movie was written years ago, it was decidedly not a Cloverfield film - at least, not until JJ Abrams got his evil hands on the script, and changed it to include the word "Cloverfield" a few times, and to have a billion lensflares. Because, of course, it has to have lensflares. That's the Abrams way.
Pictured: an actual fucking moment in Star Trek Into Darkness.
Compared to the above abomination, the flares are remarkably
restrained in Paradox.
...but not too restrained.
After the couple's conversation ends, we immediately cut to space, on day 16 of the mission, where something is going drastically wrong. This movie doesn't just throw us into the action - it shoves us like a kid shoving his brother off the diving board at the public pool. Only there's no water in the goddamn pool.
The movie suddenly transitions into a jarring sequence of credits, during which actors' names (and I noted with a laugh that there's somebody named Clover in this movie) are interspersed with random, soundless clips of people frantically doing stuff on the space station. We see random images of worms, of people doing stuff that we can't quite make out, of a timer reading "day 623" - yes, that's right, it's already day goddamn 623, six minutes into the movie, and we don't even know what in the hell is going on. This is the first hint that The Cloverfield Paradox is going to be a mess. The whole thing just feels messy, feels jarring, feels not-quite-thought-out.
Let me briefly explain the plot (and be warned, there will be spoilers). Energy on Earth is running out, so our characters have been sent into space to test a dangerous particle accelerator that will possibly generate more power. But instead, after many failed tests, the machine has an unintended side effect of mashing our dimension with other ones. Terror ensues.
The Cloverfield Paradox, ostensibly, is supposed to be a terrifying body horror movie - but aside from some gross moments, the "horror" part is very unsatisfying. This movie is barely scary whatsoever, guys. I was more scared when a bug flew in my house in the middle of February last week. And to add to the tonal weirdness, there are bizarre moments of not-quite-humor in the movie. Example: after one character horrifically seizes and explodes, vomiting up an enormous quantity of worms that had previously gone missing from a colony on the station, another character glibly quips, "Well, we found the worms!" Never mind all the bizarre comedy around the Irish astronaut's missing arm.
Unfortunately, after all the slightly-entertaining body horror has ended, the movie falls into "we're in space and there's another new mechanical failure with every second" drudgery. When characters start getting routinely killed off one by one, although the movie tries hard to make the deaths emotional, it's pretty emotionless - we don't know these people, so how can we be expected to care? And, like I said, after the body horror has stopped happening, the movie loses what momentum it had, and becomes boring, lifeless and limp. It's barely distinguishable from its peers, like Life, Passengers, Gravity, Sunshine, and all 10 billion others. Only, the ones I just mentioned are actually kind of decent. (Yes, even Passengers. I liked Passengers. I'm sorry.)
Here's a little part of the movie that made me say, "Hmm."
He says this ludicrous line with such enthusiasm that I'm almost tempted to root for him. Let's be clear: The Cloverfield Paradox is NOT a comedy.
Also, two seconds later:
I'm almost feeling like I could ironically like this movie. It's horrible, ludicrous, nonsensical, doesn't even try to make you give a shit about any but one of its characters, and as an entry in the previously-good Cloverfield franchise it just plain sucks... but by god, if it doesn't just scream "cult hit to watch with your friends on a Friday night." And the Irish guy's lost arm's bizarre comedic elements... they're just... well, I'm not sure whether to hate them or to love them. "I'd clap if I could." What a line.
The Cloverfield Paradox has many logical and script improbabilities that kind of ruin it. (Okay, not kind of. They do ruin it.) For example, the Chinese character speaks Chinese throughout the movie (half the time without subtitles - this is like the fucking Dothraki situation in Game of Thrones), while the other characters speak English in response to her. It's clear she can understand their English and they can understand her Chinese, so why don't they just... PICK ONE?
Also, the stock paranoid-Russian character Volkov somehow manages to survive for like half an hour with a billion worms and a gigantic-ass gyroscope inside of him. Yeah, no.
I mean, I feel like this would have killed him immediately.
But maybe that's just me.
Did I mention that the, er, person who tipped the crew off that their valuable gyroscope was inside Volkov... was a severed arm? I'm pretty sure the collision of alternate dimensions cannot explain how a severed fucking arm A) Has the ability to move around. B) Has the ability to think and write. C) How the astronaut with the severed arm is in absolutely no pain, despite the fact that his wound isn't closed and muscle and bone are showing. I have to admit I don't know a ton about anatomy, but wouldn't he be, like... bleeding? Screaming in pain? Anyone know?
I'm going to list some of the nonsensicalities I found in the movie. Be warned, it's quite the list, and contains many spoilers.
1) Sometimes, when something on the station goes wrong, the alarms are loud and annoying. And other times, they're too dim to be heard.
2) Why... in the hell... is there enough water on the space station to burst into a room and fill it completely, killing someone? And why did this happen? The movie never satisfactorily explains. Where did this water come from? Only Jesus knows.
3) And I recognize that as a human being, you'd want to save your comrade, but maybe this is the right time to think with your head, not your heart. Maybe... don't open the door to allow thousands of gallons of water to come rushing into every other part of the station, potentially killing everyone else as well?
4) You know what the definition of a paradox is? "A seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true." You know what happens in this movie? Not a paradox. Nobody travels back in time or anything. The only "paradoxical" thing that happens is that the space station disappears into another dimension, which is not a paradox, despite being referred to as such. Who named this dumbass thing??
5) Despite having been sitting in an infirmary for the whole movie, after being violently and bloodily ripped from another dimension, Jensen's hair is perfectly, immaculately styled and her makeup is on point. Yay for the power of women?
6) I love how this movie is a prequel to Cloverfield (apparently - with all this dimension shit going on, who knows?), but the characters in Cloverfield Paradox use futuristic technology, while in the original Cloverfield, Rob has to break into an electronics store to recharge his flip phone. Yup, I guess Cloverfield hasn't aged well, but this prequel isn't helping matters any.
7) With the weird, vaguely-slasher ending where a villain is introduced for no reason, and the whole "trapped on a falling-apart space station" thing, this movie feels so much like Gravity-meets-Sunshine that it isn't funny.
8) When fighting with the movie's sudden villain (I mean... sigh), our heroine Ava manages to puncture the presumably-military grade space station window glass... with a 3D-printed gun. Okay. Whoever built this thing needs to be fired, then rehired, reprimanded, suspended, then fired again.
9) The first time the crew travels between dimensions, they're violently thrown around and subjected to a small explosion. The second time, pretty much nothing happens. Cool?
10) So, the whole idea of the movie is that Earth needs energy, so the main characters are testing a dangerous particle accelerator in space, to see if it can provide the energy needed. After being tossed between dimensions, with most of them being brutally killed in the process, the surviving crew members manage to return to their own world... and decide to keep using the device??? Huh?? Have we not already established that no one should use this device ever???
11) Here's a big hole. Cloverfield Paradox is very, very clearly a disconnected script which was shoehorned into fitting into Cloverfield canon, but it wasn't shoehorned with any kind of delicacy whatsoever. And also, I feel like it wasn't shoehorned by anyone who has actually seen Cloverfield.
At the end of the movie, the two space station survivors come back to Earth. We haven't been given too many details about the situation on Earth, because the whole Ava's-husband-Michael subplot is utterly slipshod and vague, but we get an idea of how bad things are, because Michael starts screaming into his phone, "Tell them not to come back!" But if things are that bad... it makes no sense.
The pod carrying the survivors is seen falling back to Earth in another connection to Cloverfield: at the end of the original movie, we see, in the background of video taken by Rob and Beth during their trip to Coney Island, a space shuttle (or something) falling into the ocean. It's a nice little Easter egg that has now been offically, canonically ruined by this piece of garbage known as Paradox.
If things are so bad on Earth that Michael is screaming at the NASA bigwigs or whatever to not allow his wife to come back... then how come Rob and Beth are so happy and casual in the original movie when the satellite comes down? We know that that video was taken at least a month before the rest of the movie takes place, too! And the world is decidedly not in shambles until the Clover monster starts attacking New York. If monsters were already ravaging Earth, you'd think the characters in Cloverfield would have some notion of what was going on, and wouldn't be entirely shocked by the monster's attack. But that is assuredly not the case.
And yet another thing: according to Paradox, a huge energy crisis is destroying Earth, to the point where gas is $30/gallon, countries threaten war against each other, blackouts are common, and power is rationed. But in Cloverfield, there's no hint of this happening; Cloverfield seems to take place on a normal, present-day Earth that isn't facing any sort of energy crisis or monster attack. Cloverfield Paradox takes the first movie's canon and pisses all over it. But... alternate dimensions, I guess.
The Cloverfield Paradox occasionally, randomly flashes back to Earth, where Hamilton's husband, Michael, tries to make his way through a bunch of explosions or something, and picks up some random child along the way. These returns to Earth seem to be a way to connect Paradox with the first Cloverfield (with the hints of monsters), but they just seem jarring and like a piece of the puzzle that just doesn't fit. The husband should've been cut out of the movie entirely. This actually feels like another film entirely, spliced into this one. The Adventures of Molly and Michael. Probably would make a better movie than Paradox, too.
The connection to Cloverfield is laughable - a tenuous afterthought. After one brief mention of monsters at the beginning of the movie, the literal only other connection to Cloverfield is the fact that the monster's head rears up at the very end (and a few Easter eggs, such as one minor character having the same last name as John Goodman's character in 10 Cloverfield Lane). And yet, for the reasons I have already mentioned...
1) The technology disparity between the two films, despite the fact that Paradox is supposed to be a prequel.
2) The fact that, according to Michael's subplot, a huge horrifying monster invasion and a huge energy crisis are both ravaging Earth... and yet, in the original Cloverfield, there's no hint that this has happened.
...Cloverfield and Cloverfield Paradox's weird shoehorned connection makes absolutely no sense from a canonical perspective. It's painfully clear that Paradox was some random script, into which elements of Cloverfield were indiscriminately shoved, without regard for whether they made sense.
As someone who has been a fan of Cloverfield (which remains America's only half-decent kaiju movie - I mean, no offense to Pacific Rim, but it takes place in Hong Kong and doesn't count) for a very long time, this new film is little more than a disappointment. And as someone who can put aside my enjoyment of the previous Cloverfield movies and just attempt to enjoy Paradox for what it is, by itself... let me tell you, that doesn't work either.
Paradox is maybe, slightly, mildly enjoyable for about five minutes of its total runtime. The visuals are decent, if not anything mindblowing (I mean, Gravity came out in 2013; we've seen all this before). Besides that, the only other entertaining part of the movie is the weird humor of the Irish astronaut, who, unfortunately, is killed off with little fanfare. Altogether, this movie is a cobbled-together heap of rubbish, a movie which doesn't even try to make you care about its characters, a movie with dozens of nonsensicalities and dumb moments, a movie that isn't tense whatsoever no matter how much it tries, a movie which introduces a random villain for about 10 minutes for no reason at all.
If you're not a fan of Cloverfield, this movie might be fun if you're looking for a way to waste 102 minutes of your precious, limited time here on this Earth. If you are a fan of Cloverfield, please don't watch this embarrassment. Please just pretend it never happened. I'm pretty sure Netflix, Bad Robot and the Cloverfield franchise at large are gonna do the same. And Paramount is thanking their lucky stars right now that they didn't spend any money on advertising this dud. Mark my words.
Shudder.
No comments:
Post a Comment