Hey everyone we are back again with another movie review. I
was originally going to talk about Superbowl trailers but one of those trailers
was for The Cloverfield Paradox, called The God Particle when it
was on my list of anticipated movies for 2017. And not only that, we also got a
release date, it was coming out on Netflix that night after the game. And
I finally got a chance to see it. So let’s see what all that waiting is for. I
have tried to write this as a non-spoiler review. I really have. That’s part of
the reason this is later than anticipated. But unfortunately, this is one of
those movies you can’t talk about without talking about the movie. So,
out of the ordinary and spoilers ahead.
I’m not really sure where to start with this one. I’ve been
sitting on writing this because I felt like I needed some time to parse through
my thoughts on this. So here we are, and hopefully I can make some sense of
this. Since I will be talking about specific things that happen, hopefully we
can come around to some kind of conclusion once we get to the end.
We’ll get this out of the way; The Cloverfield Paradox
isn’t a bad movie, if that’s where it seemed like I was going. I’m just not
sure it was a good movie. Even that seems a little harsh. There was a
lot I really liked about this movie, I just had some problems with it, too.
Even writing this I’m still not sure how that will affect my final verdict. But
let’s get into some details.
Let’s accentuate the positive here, to begin with. This is a
really good cast. Not only is it a really good cast but the performances are
all really solid. None of the problems I had with this movie had to do with the
actors. Having the film on a space station, it leads to a similar dynamic as on
the International Space Station in which the people there come from a variety
of different backgrounds and different countries. That leads to some really fun
and interesting interactions between the cast, although as I’ll talk about
later, it’s something I also wish they’d really gone deeper into because there’s
some amazing potential that doesn’t really get utilized. But otherwise, that
aspect was one of the high points, even if we made a few Zemo jokes and at one
point went ‘That’s where that guy’s from! He was the one that Jane went on a
date with in Thor: The Dark World!’.
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| The face you make when you find out your dating competition is Thor |
The second thing I really liked was the sci-fi aspect of it.
For the most part. The whole idea with the Shepard accelerator (I only made one
Mass Effect joke when they said that, I promise) was really interesting, and
the fact that it was something that they had to work on and wasn’t successful
right away. Sometimes that kind of thing is too easy and fires on the first go,
and that would have robbed us of some of those character interactions that I
liked. I liked the whole multiverse/temporal paradox angle a lot, too. The
extra level of uncertainty in what to believe, what is true for our universe
and what is from the other one, and that kind of thing. I thought the
introduction of Jensen, a character who was part of the mission in the ‘alternate
universe’ was actually pretty creepy. Like when she’s stuck in the wall and
shrieking and then recognizes Hamilton and you’re like WTF is going on here?
That was cool. I’m such a sucker for sci-fi, and this one had a lot of ‘my
things’: both hard and speculative sci-fi, working off of actual science as a
starting point, multiverses, ethical questions/how people deal with stuff. This
should’ve been a slam-dunk, guys.
Other things I liked: The effects in this film were overall
well done. There wasn’t any point where I went ‘oooh, that looks bad’
like I have in other movies. Especially in sci-fi where you need the
technology/space stuff/etc. to look convincing or else things get cheesy pretty
quick. The score was good but a few days later here nothing particularly
memorable stands out, so do with that what you will. There is a little bit of
humor in and amongst everything that’s happening and that generally lands. I didn’t
really care for the whole bit with Mundy’s arm at the time, but the arm as a
character has kind of grown on me and I’m pretty okay with it now. I also liked
how the Shepard was supposed to fix everything, ended up causing a huge mess in
the process, and then in the end saved everybody and now everything will be
hunky dory. That’s a meta thing though, and not to do with the movie.
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| which in NO WAY represents how Allie Shepard defeated the Reapers, I swear. |
Okay, let’s talk about the part that sucks: the flaws. I
have two main issues with this movie that are sadly kind of big ones in the
grand scheme of things.
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Don't you, forget about me
Don't, don't, don't, don't Don't you, forget about me |
As me and the other half were hashing this out, this was my solution: when the station disappears we go
to Earth the first time when Michael finds out. We stay in space for the rest
of the movie until the very end. Have Michael and Joe’s final phone
conversation in voiceover as the pod comes back down to earth, ending as it
cuts through the cloud. Keep the final shot of Clovie rearing up immediately
after. End. Boom. I would also cut out most of the references and uses of the
word Cloverfield except for
maybe the conspiracy theorist on tv at the beginning (but I would have cut that
off sooner. It went on too long and got too on the nose) and seeing it on the
outside of the station as they depart for the final time. That’s it.
2.
Not setting out rules, and
thus not following them, leading to zero logic. This is the other big issue for
me that I couldn’t ignore. The best way for me to explain it is like this: I
enjoy to both read and write, with my preferred genres being fantasy and
science fiction (fitting for this discussion). Now whether it be magic,
technology, or something else, your universe needs to have rules as how it
works. And then you have to adhere to those rules. Without that, logic
and suspension of disbelief go out the window. I found that probably by about the
midpoint of the movie, where things start going wrong and getting weird, that
they must have been making this up on the fly with no logical thought put into
things. Stuff just happens with no rhyme or reason. And I know, they’ve
created a massive disturbance of space and time and so maybe the effects are unpredictable, but
there needs to be something for the audience to buy into what’s going on. It kind of seems like they backed themselves into a corner by killing
Volkov off relatively quickly and without the really interesting interpersonal
drama he was cultivating, especially with Schmidt, that they needed something
to put in there to keep the story going so they didn’t have to tip off the reveal
with Jensen too early. I liked the temporal/physicalWhy are things displaced? Even some
speculation form the characters? A line about location of things in their
universe vs. the alternate one? Nothing?
displacements of things a lot, but
they didn’t do a whole lot with it.
Then when they start the mid-movie
cast reduction, it just feels like they go to a point that could be logical and
then just go that step further just because, or for extra shock value. I say
this especially in regards to Tam and Mundy. Why did that chamber fill with
water? Are we supposed to extrapolate that it was because the other Cloverfield
Station crashed into the sea or because she was doing work regarding water condensation? Why is there no water anywhere else then? Why did
it wait until that point to flood? Was the flash freeze necessary or just something
for shock value? As far as Mundy goes, if the magnetic sealant was being pulled
to the suddenly-magnetized (again, with no explanation) door, why in the next
shot is against the opposite wall trying to engulf him like a Venom symbiote?
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| not exaggerating |
When it was all set up to go right through him?
The wall's obviously still magnetized or it wouldn’t have pulled that CO2
canister. It would’ve made more sense if the sealant and/or Mundy hitting the
wall had somehow caused the explosion. And why did the other wall suck
in and pull off his arm earlier on? There is even less logical reasoning for
that other than to have the humorous disembodied arm bits later on. Did
alternate Mundy have one only arm and this was a ‘course correction’? It’s
never touched on, nor does the ability of the arm to move independently and
intelligently, even after the rest of Mundy dies. I understand that it’s the
whole idea of ‘we’ve ripped a hole in space and time and now weird stuff is
happening and we have no idea what the hell is going on’, but there’s no logic
behind it the way there was for the displacements. And no one ever says
anything about it. If this was happening to you, wouldn’t you at least ask
maybe once, if only to yourself, what is going on? I needed something
here, guys. I don’t care if it’s a Star Trek-esque technobabble explanation,
but you can’t just have stuff happen and gives us nothing on why. And I
don’t want to hear that ‘mystery box’ garbage, that’s no excuse to be sloppy in
world-building.
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