Tyler Krenzin
Lantern Staff
With the third installment of the Cloverfield franchise comes a surprise. Out of the blue, a Super Bowl commercial showed the trailer for the movie saying it will be released right after the big game. As a big fan of the Cloverfield franchise, I stormed off to my room right after the game to watch the movie. What came to me was a surprise. With the third installment of the Cloverfield franchise comes a surprise. Out of the blue, a Super Bowl commercial showed the trailer for the movie saying it will be released right after the big game. As a big fan of the Cloverfield franchise, I stormed off to my room right after the game to watch the movie. What came to me was a surprise.
While the only iteration of Cloverfield to contain the actual “Cloverfield incident” was the original, the second iteration 10 Cloverfield Lane was a small budget film that when brought to J.J. Abrams, the director of the original film, decided to make re-shoots to transform it into a Cloverfield movie. This is what I am assuming happened here. The movie comes across as another small “art house” film that only made it to mainstream because of the Cloverfield name. Other than the name, this movie’s tie in is as questionable as it could be. Scenes were probably re-shot to make it seem as if it was originally made for the actual franchise. This seems to be the route that Abrams wants to take, to profit off the name without making an actual large investment. Making a true sequel to the massive hit franchise would be an investment that the studio may or may not be afraid to pull the trigger on.
The actual movie itself fails in several categories. While playing host to a talented cast of actors, they alone can only carry so much of what this movie has to offer. You can immediately tell what shots fell close to the end of the budget. One scene, in particular, comes to mind when one character in the film has his arm cut off. It doesn’t take much observation to see that the special effects took a massive hit. It was almost laughable.
Almost laughable, it’s hard to describe a movie from a franchise I hold so dear. However, as a fan, it’s my responsibility to shine a light on things when I am not happy. I’m disappointed that I have to be mad about this movie. I wanted nothing more than this movie to be great, but even I, who can turn a blind eye to bad writing as long as everything else comes to fruition. This just isn’t the case for Cloverfield Paradox. Nothing about this movie was enjoyable, no matter how hard I fought to find something.
Cloverfield Paradox seemed to fall apart at the seams, an ok movie idea muddled up with the Cloverfield name. 5/10
