I have to agree with the mixed feelings. I liked the overall idea, but the execution introduced so many flaws that it’s hard to see what was good about the film.
Regarding the arm, at first I thought it might’ve been the parallel universe counterpart that’s still being controlled by that universe’s Chris O’Dowd, and they figure out they could communicate that way—still silly, but makes at least marginal sense. But no, it was just magic.
How could the arm hear them?
I tried to ignore it, but the angular momentum was in the wrong direction on the rings. They would’ve all been walking on the walls. It drove me nuts.
The other Shepard crashed into the ocean - so that’s not it.
I personally just thought “so, that’s what ‘Phantom Limb’ means” and went with it. I thought it was hilarious.
It fit into the movie only in the idea of ‘strange and un-explainable’ that was predicted if the paradox was hit - I don’t think we were meant to understand ‘all’ of the oddities that could happen - that was the entire point of the paradox.
Right, but now were in the same camp as Evil Dead. Which is fine if we’re dealing with the supernatural, demons and the occult, but I’m still under the impression this is supposed to be sci-fi.
I’ve seen worse.
From what I’ve read it was in development hell since 2012, and originally was supposed to be a completely independent movie. Somehow it ended up being drawn into the Cloverfield universe so it could finally be made (or released? I wasn’t clear on if it was filmed back before it was a Cloverfield sequel). They didn’t make much of an effort to make it, uh, Cloverfield-y, did they?
And even if the floor had been pointed outward the way it should have been, their apparent gravity would have been constantly pulsing- the rings were *also *rotating around the axis of the station itself.
And then when they went down the spine of station to cut off the damaged section, somehow they had gravity at like a 90 degree angle to the station. Made no damn sense.
Like most of the movie, it’s like the director just said, “This’ll look cool, now how do we write it into the story?”
That would certainly explain the arm thing, the airlock full of water freezing instantly, the woman trapped in the wall, and the gyroscope inside the Russian guy.
I LOL’d at the eyeball scene and at the arm scene (The arm scene reminded me of Evil Dead II).
I was wondering why this was a titled “Cloverfield” movie. It makes sense now that I’ve read this thread.
1st Cloverfield movie: months of advance publicity prior to opening
2nd Cloverfield movie: announced weeks before release
3rd Cloverfield movie: announced the day of release
4th Cloverfield movie: JJ Abrams comes around and chucks the Blu-Ray through people’s windows unannounced.
I’ve never seen the original cloverfield, but I have seen movies 2 and 3.
I think because of that, whenever I see a movie with ‘cloverfield’ in the title I don’t think about monsters. It doesn’t cross my mind, because I missed the original.
It seems like they just took totally unrelated movies and then added a monster in the last 2 minutes in movies 2 and 3. I don’t get what exactly they are trying to pull. That’d be like if I made a movie like Logan Lucky and then in the last 20 seconds you see Jason Voorhees standing in the background and then I titled it ‘Friday the 13, part 13’ or something. I believe the plot for movie 2 was totally unrelated to cloverfied, so they just tacked some monsters on in the last few minutes. They probably did the same with movie 3, just tacked on a monster int he last 5 seconds.
Having said that, I thought the premise for the cloverfield paradox was interesting. But they didn’t enact it well. The arm getting stuck in the wall, how is that related to parallel universes?
I look at it this way… In a world where there are parallel universes there are infinite parallel universes and if there are infinite parallel universes then there are infinite possibilities. In fact every possibility must exist an infinite number of times with infinite variations, even the possibility of seemingly sentient arms (although I suspect the explanation in this case is not sentience but remote control but you get the idea).
I saw Cloverfield and this piece of drek. I wasn’t aware that there are others. Are they worth watching?
10 Cloverfield Lane was good.
50 min in is about when it goes from “I see potential here” to “man, this is stupid”
That is the only one worth seeing.
Let’s face it, I would have gone to see this in theaters if that had been my option. I quite liked the first two Cloverfield movies and have just sort of figured that these are a sort of Twilight Zone-esque loosely connected oddball movies.
The inconsistencies in this one were hard to take. There was enough unexplained that I checked for Lindelof in the production team. No, he wasn’t there. But I’ve always felt it was Lindelof more than Abrams that brings that sort of surrealist writing to a project.
Still, to a certain extent I’m glad I saw it and I look forward to the next one. Abrams promises that they’ll all tie together in the end and I want to see how that gets pulled off. And I find I really enjoy even the IDEA of a series of Twilight Zone-esque movies that tie together somehow.
Also, the series earned enormous kudos from me with one line:
“Oh, come ON!”
[spoiler]Spoken by Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character in ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ when she escapes being a rape victim/prisoner/stalker vibe movie only to realize she’s actually IN an alien invasion movie.
My kids and I fan wank that she’s actually Ramona Flowers from ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’ and the relationship she’s fleeing at the beginning is her dysfunctional one with Scott several years down the road.[/spoiler]
I agree that this was dreck. Totally unfocused. “Anything could happen because dimensions” is a dumb premise for a movie, and the execution wasn’t any better.
I liked the first two Cloverfield movies, but this is the last time I see one without reading reviews first.
Yeah, but his casting reminds me of casting Danny McBride in the latest Alien movie. I haven’t seen that film, but I imagine him just smoking pot the whole time and saying things like “Fuck you losers! I’m not going anywhere NEAR that motherfucking alien!” because that’s the only character he plays.
The Cloverfield Paradox did nothing to tie together two seemingly disconnected films (one about a giant monster, the other about an alien invasion). By the film’s “opening a rift in time and space” logic, they could literally tie EVERY film together by just sticking “Cloverfield” in the name.
Jumani: Welcome to the Cloverfield
Alien: Cloverfield
Cloverfast & Cloverfurious
I did watch all of it now and while the first hour is good, the rest was a mess and I was not a fan. It declined into a mess.