Jump to content

The Cloverfield Paradox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gmaletic (talk | contribs) at 17:43, 5 February 2018 (→Plot: Got rid of double-use of the word "potentially"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Cloverfield Paradox
Film release poster
Directed byJulius Onah
Screenplay byOren Uziel
Story by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyDan Mindel
Edited by
Music byBear McCreary
Distributed byNetflix
Release date
  • February 4, 2018 (2018-02-04) (United States)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$45 million[1]

The Cloverfield Paradox is a 2018 American science fiction horror film directed by Julius Onah, written by Oren Uziel and Doug Jung, and produced by J. J. Abrams's Bad Robot Productions. It is the third installment in the Cloverfield franchise, following 2008's Cloverfield and 2016's 10 Cloverfield Lane. The film stars Daniel Brühl, Elizabeth Debicki, Aksel Hennie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O'Dowd, John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, and Zhang Ziyi, and follows a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station who, after using a particle accelerator, must find a way home after accidently traveling to an alternate dimension.

Under distribution by Paramount Pictures, the film had been in development since 2012, and initially had been named God Particle at that time, without being connected to the Cloverfield series.[3] Since then, the film was confirmed to be the third film of the series, but its release had been postponed repeatedly,[4] until its surprise trailer during Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018, with its release on Netflix occurring the same day, immediately after the game, within two hours of the first trailer.[1] The film received negative reviews from critics, who called it an "unholy mess" and criticized the writing and editing.[5]

Plot

In the near future, Earth is suffering from a global energy crisis. The collective space agencies of the world launch the Cloverfield Station to perfect the Shepard particle accelerator, a project far too dangerous to test on Earth. If successful, the station would provide an unlimited supply of energy for the entire planet, but some pundits argue this would create the "Cloverfield Paradox" and open up potentially dangerous portals to other dimensions. The crew includes Ava Hamilton, who frets about leaving her husband Michael for perhaps many years; the two have struggled with the death of their children in a house fire years prior, which has left their relationship cold.

The crew are unable to get the accelerator working for about two years, but eventually they are successful. However, the system overloads, causing a massive power surge on the station. When they restore basic functions, they find that Earth is nowhere to be found, and the station's gyroscope, necessary for navigation, has gone missing. As the crew assess repairs and try to find out what happened, strange events happen all over the station. Strange noises from behind a wall lead them to find a woman named Jensen who is fused among the wires, who they manage to extract safely. Volkov fears something is under his skin, and suddenly is compelled to craft a gun, but before he can threaten the crew, he convulses and dies, with the station's colony of worms spilling out of him.

While repairing the ship, Mundy's arm is pulled into the walls; he is rescued but his arm is severed clean off, completely painlessly and without bleeding. They later find his arm elsewhere on the station, moving on its own accord. They see the arm trying to write something, leading them to dissect Volkov's body to find the missing gyroscope. Once installed, they are able to locate Earth on the opposite side of the Sun, but as they receive transmissions from it, they find out that people there believe the Cloverfield Station was destroyed during operating the Shepard. After conversing with Jensen, the crew determine they were pulled into an alternate dimension. In this dimension, Hamilton's children had not died and she opted to stay on Earth as a civilian engineer with Michael, and Jensen had taken Tam's place as the lead engineer of the Shepard, during which she discovered that Schmidt had sabotaged the mission as a German military operative. They conclude that that the Shepard's malfunction caused them to cross dimensions, and the strange events are all related to parts of multiple Cloverfield Stations trying to co-exist in the same time and place.

Tam identifies the issue with the reactor and gives Schmidt the appropriate changes to rectify it, but she is also killed in a freak accident. While the rest of the crew agrees they need to reactivate the Shepard without modification to return them to their dimension, Hamilton debates about staying in the current one to be with her children.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Michael learns that they have lost communication with the Cloverfield Station, and that some major accident has wrecked the city, and he sees signs of a giant creature off in the distance. He begins to drive to the hospital to offer his services as a doctor, but stops to help a frightened girl, Molly, in the ruins of a building. Learning the hospital has been destroyed, he drives Molly to an underground shelter belonging to a friend, and takes care of her wounds.

As the Cloverfield Station crew prepare to re-engage the Shepard, diverting power from their life support systems, another strange circumstance causes Mundy to be trapped in a strong magnetic field that leads to that section of the station exploding, killing Mundy and leaving the station adrift in two parts connected only by a few support beams, with the accelerator ring still spinning dangerously. Kiel sacrifices himself to manually disengage the accelerator ring, even though it could have easily been done remotely as described by Hamilton. Hamilton makes plans to take the station's shuttle to return to the alternate Earth with Jensen while the others continue to activate Shepard to return to their dimension and restart the power supply. However, Jensen turns on them, recovering the gun Volkov made and using it to threaten the crew and kill Monk, believing that this crew killed her own crewmates, and wanting to make sure Shepard stays in this dimension. Hamilton eventually overpowers Jensen, takes the gun, and shoots a window, ejecting Jensen into space. Hamilton decides to return to her proper dimension, but leaves a message to her own self in this dimension with the required adjustments for the Shepard device, but reminding her of the value of her family. Hamilton tends to Schmidt, the only other surviving member of the crew, and they use Shepard to return home, and then make Tam's modifications to engage the Shepard to provide the power supply as intended. The two then are forced to evacuate via shuttle to return to Earth due to the lack of life support.

Michael is contacted by the control station letting them know they are back, but couldn't be warned in time about the state of Earth before they evacuated the Cloverfield Station. He angrily demands that Hamilton and Schmidt be told not to return to Earth. As the shuttle breaks through the cloud layer, a giant monster comes up roaring through the clouds.

Cast

Additionally, Simon Pegg and Greg Grunberg provide voice cameos as Radio Voice and Joe respectively.

Production

Pre-production

The film was first announced in November 2012, under the title God Particle, based on a script by Oren Uziel and to be directed by Julius Onah. With J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions as the production studio, it was set to be released under Paramount's InSurge label, limiting the film's budget to $5–10 million.[6] At this stage, the film was established to take place on a space station in Earth's orbit and a resulting incident that causes the crew to find Earth has gone missing.[6] Uziel said that his script had been a spec script he wrote about one year after finishing up a similar spec script for Shimmer Lake.[7] The pick-up of the film occurred around the same time that Paramount and Bad Robot bought the rights to the spec script The Cellar by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken, which ultimately was reworked during production to become 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), adding in elements to tie that script to the first Cloverfield film; however, when Uziel wrote his screenplay for God Particle it had not been attached to Cloverfield.[7]

In March 2015, Paramount decided to close the InSurge label; The Cellar had been moved under the main Paramount label, but God Particle's fate was unclear.[8] By February 2016, Paramount confirmed it would release the film under its own label, with a planned February 2017 release date.[9]

Casting

In March 2016, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo were confirmed to be cast in the film.[10] In April, Variety reported that John Krasinski was in early talks to join the film to play one of the astronauts,[11] but had a possible conflict due to a commitment with a television series.[12] In May, Elizabeth Debicki,[12] Daniel Brühl,[13] Chris O'Dowd,[14] Zhang Ziyi,[14] John Ortiz,[15] and Aksel Hennie[15] were announced as members of the cast. Cinematographer Dan Mindel was confirmed to join the film from his résumé.[16]

Filming

Filming began on June 10, 2016 and wrapped on September 23, 2016.[15] According to Uziel, it was during production that he came to learn that the film was being connected to Cloverfield, requiring him to rewrite a few scenes and added addition shooting.[7] Uziel speculated that the decision to connect to Cloverfield was due to the difficulty in marketing a stand-alone science-fiction film at the time, and felt the connection between the films was more of an anthology series similar to The Twilight Zone, with each movie dealing with how people with complex relations deal with a other-worldly dilemma.[7]

Release

Shortly after filing in October 2016, The Wrap learned from insiders of the connection of God Particle to Cloverfield, though neither Paramount or Bad Robot commented on this discovery.[17] However, by December 2016, Paramount affirmed the film's connection; the title God Particle had been dropped in favor of listing the film as "2017 Cloverfield movie".[18]

Alongside the renaming, Paramount reslotted the film's release from February 2017 to October 2017, to give more time for post-production.[18] The film suffered two additional delays. In July 2017, it was announced the release had been delayed another three months to February 2018.[19] In January 2018, the release was moved for a third time, to April 20, 2018.[20] The reason for these latter delays was not given.[21]

In late January 2018, The Hollywood Reporter stated that Netflix was interesting in picking up the film from Paramount, following a similar deal the streaming service had worked out for the film Annihilation. Paramount's chairman Jim Gianopulos felt the film's budget (which ballooned to over $40 million from an initial $5 million) was too large for the film to be profitable with a traditional theatrical release and that it still needed work done, and "while Abrams expressed an intent to get down to business in post-production, it was too little, too late".[22] Around this time, speculation of the film being named Cloverfield Station arose, though this was not confirmed by Paramount.[22] Further speculation circulated in Hollywood sources that work on the film was actually complete and that its first trailer would be revealed soon; 10 Cloverfield Lane had a similar surprise trailer.[23]

The events of the preceeding month culminated on February 4, 2018, where, during a surprise advertisement during Super Bowl LII, Netflix announced it had acquired the premiere rights for the movie, now named The Cloverfield Paradox, and would be available on the service, immediately after the game. According to Deadline.com, this approach made the film "instantly profitable" for Paramount compared to a theatrical release.[1]

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 14% based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10.[24] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews."[25]

John DeFire of The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "trainwreck of a sci-fi flick bent on extending a franchise that should have died a peaceful death almost exactly one decade ago."[26] Writing for Deadline.com, Dino-Ray Ramos said "The Super Bowl trailer for Paradox gave the impression the movie would reveal the origin of the monster that appeared in the 2008 movie and was later on hinted at in the critically acclaimed 2016 follow-up — but it barely did that. Instead, it stalls the franchise as a pastiche of sci-fi cinema veiled in clever marketing."[27]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c D'Alessandro, Anthony (February 4, 2018). "Netflix's Ultimate Super Bowl Surprise: 'The Cloverfield Paradox' – Watch Trailer". Deadline.com. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Film releases". Variety Insight. Archived from the original on February 5, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  3. ^ "The Cloverfield Paradox Explained - Netflix Surprise". www.wishmachinery.com. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  4. ^ Evangelista, Chris (January 2, 2018). "Cloverfield Sequel Release Date Moved to April". Slashfilm. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  5. ^ James Hibberd (February 5, 2018). "Netflix Cloverfield sequel trashed by critics: 'An unholy mess'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  6. ^ a b Kroll, Justin (November 30, 2012). "'God Particle' believes in newbie helmer". Variety. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  7. ^ a b c d Chitwood, Adam (May 17, 2017). "Exclusive: 'God Particle' Writer Oren Uziel on How the Film Became a Cloverfield Movie". Collider.com. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  8. ^ Kroll, Justin (March 23, 2015). "Paramount's Insurge Gets Absorbed; Bad Robot's 'The Cellar' Moves to Big Studio". Variety. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  9. ^ McNary, Dave (February 16, 2016). "J.J. Abrams' Space Thriller 'God Particle' Gets 2017 Release Date". Variety. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  10. ^ Han, Angie (March 29, 2016). "J.J. Abrams-Produced 'God Particle' Casts David Oyelowo and Gugu Mbatha-Raw". /Film. Retrieved June 9, 2016.
  11. ^ Kroll, Justin (April 12, 2016). "John Krasinski Circles J.J. Abrams Sci-Fi Thriller 'God Particle' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  12. ^ a b Kroll, Justin (May 5, 2016). "'Night Manager's' Elizabeth Debicki Joins J.J. Abrams' 'God Particle' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  13. ^ Kit, Borys (May 10, 2016). "'Civil War' Star Daniel Bruhl in Talks to Join J.J. Abrams' 'God Particle' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  14. ^ a b "Chris O'Dowd Joins Bad Robot's God Particle". May 26, 2016. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  15. ^ a b c McNary, Dave (May 27, 2016). "John Ortiz, Aksel Hennie Join J.J. Abrams Sci-Fi Thriller 'God Particle'". Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  16. ^ "Dan Mindel – CINEMATOGRAPHER" (PDF).
  17. ^ Donnelly, Matt (October 26, 2016). "JJ Abrams' 'God Particle' Is Next Film in Cloverfield Series (Exclusive)". The Wrap. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  18. ^ a b McNary, Dave (December 8, 2016). "J.J. Abrams' 'God Particle' Pushed to October, Renamed 'Cloverfield Movie'". Variety. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  19. ^ Dave McNary (July 21, 2017). "Paramount Pushes 'Cloverfield Movie' Back to 2018". Retrieved August 13, 2017.
  20. ^ Nyren, Erin (January 2, 2018). "J.J. Abrams' Next 'Cloverfield' Installment 'God Particle' Shifts Release Date Again". Variety. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  21. ^ Desta, Yohana (January 3, 2018). "What's Going on with God Particle, the Delayed Cloverfield Sequel?". Vanity Fair. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  22. ^ a b Kit, Borys (January 23, 2018). "Netflix in Talks to Acquire 'Cloverfield' Sequel From Paramount". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  23. ^ Libbey, Dirk (January 29, 2018). "Cloverfield 3's First Trailer May Debut Sooner Than We Thought". Cinema Blend. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  24. ^ "The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  25. ^ "The Cloverfield Paradox reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  26. ^ DeFore, John (February 4, 2018). "'The Cloverfield Paradox': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  27. ^ Ramos, Dino-Ray (February 5, 2018). "'The Cloverfield Paradox' Review: A Mishmash Of Sci-Fi Tropes That Leaves More Unanswered Questions Behind". Deadline.com. Retrieved February 5, 2018.

Template:Netflix films and documentaries

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cloverfield_Paradox&oldid=824159475"