A Breakdown Of The Cryptic 'Cloverfield' Movie Franchise
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A Breakdown Of The Cryptic 'Cloverfield' Movie Franchise

Movies filmed in secret, trailers coming out the same day of release, mass hysteria!!

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A Breakdown Of The Cryptic 'Cloverfield' Movie Franchise
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It all started in 2008. A mysterious movie called “Cloverfield” was released in January and people couldn’t stop talking about it. The trailers were cryptic, nobody knew what to make out of this movie, there was little to no information prior to its release. “Cloverfield” plays like an apocalyptic movie, depicting a group of friends in New York City as its being destroyed by a large creature known to fans of the franchise as “The Cloverfield Monster.”

The movie is filmed in first-person, utilizing found-footage to tell the story. Movie theaters had to put warning signs up at the box office due to how quick the camera would shake and look around amidst the chaos of the events of the movie. The characters and the story aren’t entirely too important in this first “Cloverfield” movie. Nobody in the cast really sticks out and I wouldn’t be able to tell you the intricate narrative structure of the movie. That’s usually a bad sign but in a movie like “Cloverfield” which is considered “disaster porn” it’s acceptable.

Fast forward to 2016 when another “Cloverfield” movie was announced, however, this one wouldn’t function as a direct sequel but more like a standalone movie. It was announced by the film production company Bad Robot that the “Cloverfield” franchise would work as an anthology series, all the movies taking place around one big event but not having the characters or locations connect intricately. The trailer for “10 Cloverfield Lane” came out just a month or two before its release which caused even more intrigue and curiosity over the movie, probably more than the first “Cloverfield!”


I did my research and found out that “10 Cloverfield Lane” was initially conceived as its own movie about people trapped in a bunker during the apocalypse and later in production they decided to tie it into the world of “Cloverfield” which had both positive and negative effects on the movie as a whole. “10 Cloverfield Lane” stars John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Goodman knocks it out of the park in this movie and it's legitimately one of my favorite performances of his.

His character has a large apocalyptic bunker full of supplies and resources to last years, the character Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays finds herself in a car crash and rescued by Goodman who brings her to his bunker. The rest of the movie is a tension-filled drama where you’re constantly switching your opinion on how truthful John Goodman’s character is being. There are times where you doubt anything wrong is actually happening outside the bunker and he is just trapping her inside for his own personal reasons and other times you believe that the outside world is uninhabitable. The movie does a really great job at making you constantly second-guess yourself and become more suspicious of Goodman’s character as it goes on.

Obviously, people who saw “Cloverfield” know what’s going on in the real world during the events of “10 Cloverfield Lane.” As the audience we know it’s best that the characters in this movie were in a bunker so as not to be eaten by that huge scary bird-like monster from the first movie. The majority of this movie takes place inside the bunker and the movie makes you feel very claustrophobic with its setting. The last 20 minutes of the movie is where it definitely falls flat in my opinion. At the end of the movie, the girl escapes the bunker and finally makes it to the outside world where the air is breathable and nothing seems too out of the ordinary.

Suddenly a large UFO and alien monster come and attack her and we sit through a whole sequence where she battles the alien and blows it up. It seemed very out of place in the movie especially after a good hour or two of tense, character moments in the bunker. I think the movie should’ve just ended with her escaping the bunker, seeing some odd shape in the distance and ending with a line like “Oh crap-!” Instead, we have to watch a whole monster fighting sequence, it was a bit of a misstep but I think it was included exclusively to tie into “Cloverfield.” It’s not the same creature she battles but it’s definitely a visitor from past the stars and beyond the moon, helping with the world building of this franchise’s movie universe. The picture below is a still of the monster from the first "Cloverfield," now we're led to understand that this creature was just a baby despite being the size of skyscrapers. The monsters near the end of "10 Cloverfield Lane" and the end of the next movie I'll be talking about are much bigger.

Now it’s 2018 and ANOTHER “Cloverfield” movie was sprung on us, even more suddenly than before. For months there were rumors that a 3rd movie under the working title “God Particle” would be released this month. However, as of last week, there was another rumor that a 4th movie was set to be released in October in addition to this “God Particle” movie.

Then it happened, right there in a commercial break during the Superbowl, a trailer for another “Cloverfield” movie called “The Cloverfield Paradox.” It was announced that this 3rd movie would be released exclusively to Netflix with the 4th movie still set to be released in theaters in October. To make things even crazier, at the end of the trailer they said the movie would drop on Netflix that same night after the game! Regardless of the movie franchise or its reputation, putting out a trailer for a movie and releasing the movie on that same day is such a bold move for a studio. I just needed that football game to end quickly so I could watch it!

“The Cloverfield Paradox” takes place in a space station housing a particle accelerator (probably why during production the working title was “God Particle.”) A group of scientists in this station attempt to crack the energy crisis and gift the Earth with unlimited energy, obviously things go wrong and the particle accelerator transports them far from Earth which is under the process of being attacked, sequences similar to the 1st movie play out in the background. Trying to find their location in the galaxy, the crew on the space station start to notice growing tensions between them. The movie essentially turns into a space survival movie similar to the classic “Alien.” It borrows these space survival tropes which is a detriment for not being entirely unique but I’m a sucker for movies where the characters are trapped in space with only themselves, and at times, an unknown entity.

I can’t really say “The Cloverfield Paradox” is really all that good...I can see why it dropped on Netflix. People would probably be much more vocal about their complaints if this movie were released in theaters and people had to pay money for each individual ticket, putting it all on a subscription service most people have was a great idea. The movie isn’t bad by any stretch but it definitely had faulty advertising. The trailers during the Super Bowl made it seem like it’d have a direct connection to the first “Cloverfield,” finally linking the movies together. Instead, it’s just its own standalone movie that at the end tries to connect to the first movie a bit unsuccessfully.

I do want to praise the cast for their performances and I give props to the tension built on that spacecraft. There was some really interesting imagery that was used in tense moments like "the lady in the wall." I don't want to get too into spoilers so just wait for a lady in a wall to know what I'm talking about, it's a really really well-done scene. The scene with the Russian guy's eyes, the exploding worms, and the trapped arm in the socket were moments that made me wince and feel slightly uncomfortable. I chalk it up to the movie doing its job right, the tension along with disturbing imagery really pulled you in. Unfortunately the plot became riddled with talk of alternate dimensions halfway through. All that convoluted stuff made for an interesting sci-fi premise but it did not work as a “Cloverfield” franchise entry it was hyping itself up to be. I thought it was an acceptable sci-fi movie, very similar to “Prometheus.” I like “Prometheus” as a sci-fi exploration/survival movie but it failed on many fronts functioning as a prequel to “Alien.

The “Cloverfield Paradox” wasn’t bad...it wasn’t great...it was simply ‘meh.’ A+ on the marketing though, even though it was misleading it was still such a great move to spring this on an audience. Filming a movie in secret to then go “Hey world, here’s a trailer for our movie...and guess what? You can watch it tonight!” is such a unique game-changer and it’s a move I see services like Netflix or Hulu completing (with better movies hopefully) in the near future.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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