Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis, and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality.
The Cloverfield Paradox is a great science-fiction romp. I highly recommend it.
The critics’ response to The Cloverfield Paradox once again proves that ‘Critics Don’t Know Science Fiction’ or what’s good. The special effects are awesome. The suspense is great. The science referenced is deep (but don’t over-think it). The actors, although completely unknown to me, are terrific.
This third installment of the Cloverfield franchise is much more on par with the first.
The original Cloverfield was a great movie. The style (jerky camera footage) made me a bit nauseous when I watched it at first, but it made for a sense of realism that pulled me in as a participant rather than just a viewer. That feeling of not knowing what would happen next (or what the heck was really going on, for that matter) was what made it a great movie to me. Well, The Cloverfield Paradox does that again, only this time it’s in space!
Spaaaaaaaace!
Now, I won’t compare it to the fail that was 10 Cloverfield Lane. That was just psycho-thriller garbage with aliens thrown into the mix. It was like Signs, but with John Goodman manifesting the crazy of the entire cast himself right after a screeching fight with Rosanne Barr. Swing away Dan!
Anyway, below I’ll discuss some details about the plot and give some nitpicks. There are going to be spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie, go watch it first. But come back and read the rest of this and see if you agree. I’d love to hear your comments!
—————-SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT—————-
The movie starts off in the middle of a gas shortage line. I was thinking we were going to get some Clover action right up front, but it was the character back-story instead. You find out that Earth is in energy depletion hell and about to fight about it. Soon though, you are on the space station where the super-collider is being built that will generate infinite power (nitpick #1). Fail, fail, fail again. Then success, but a BIG BADA-BOOM fail.
After that, all sorts of weird happens. Not mega-critter or creepy critter a la Clover weird, but more Event Horizon without the malevolence weird. There’s plenty of eepy-creepy to enjoy. There’s also lots of space ‘spoldy stuff and a good bit of intrigue. Like I said before, trying to figure out what is happening is what makes it so good. And it has lots of different genre styles meshed together.
Now it’s time for my usual nitpick where I point out the things I didn’t like (sci-fi nerd complaints). 1) Infinite Power from the supercollider – Nope. Not even a theory as far as I know. I am not a particle physicist, however. 2) Play it again, Sam – They run the Shepherd (Collider) again to get back home. How does that work? They randomly jumped to the parallel dimension they were in, so why is the second time reversed? Why not another random jump. This was never fully explained to my nerdly satisfaction. And the third time they run it everything is fine because they blow all the condensation out. Huh? OK, whatever. 3) Displacement & Destruction – They appeared on the opposite side of Sol from Earth. Why did the other station go boom then? It crashed in the ocean (w/o burning up?). Why were they displaced. Why were able to go right back to Earth orbit when the returned after they spent days in a new solar orbit. It comes down to a case of ‘How Do It Know?’ for me.
Oh well, nerdy nitpick done. It’s sciency enough to enjoy, but like I said, don’t over think it (I don’t follow my own advice on this most of the time… which is why you should ignore most of my nitpicks in reviews.)
I give the movie 4 out of 5 stars with a healthy suspension of disbelief for the sake of enjoyment.
Words from the Wampuscat 