MovieChat Forums > The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) Discussion > Is this officially the 3rd Cloverfield f...

Is this officially the 3rd Cloverfield flick?

posted 5 years ago by BruceBanner (58)
2 replies | jump to latest

First Cloverfield was great, a cult classic of sorts. Had a Blair Witch horror vibe to it. Perhaps shakey cam is not your thing, fine, but it's still up there as one of the more original shakey cam flicks. Hard to flaw it really, if you don't like it then it's perhaps just not your cup of tea but it's harsh to call it a bad film in any way.

Second film was also great, a nice decision to style the sequel differently to the first, instead of focusing on the event and monsters after the original they decided to use the same initial event but told from a different perspective. This resulted in a more tense 'non-monstery' thriller which was definitely carried by the excellent John Goodman. I enjoyed the original decision to not follow on with what was expected, in some ways I felt they were collecting funds from the movies to do something really special with the next one...

... and then this... absolute pile of c**p. IS this really the next one in the series? B grade actors, sci-fi garbage and basically DooM storyline is the best explanation they can give to the backstory of what came before?!
It stank of low budget, the 'earth' perspective was a joke. One actor basically, on the phone texting others and somehow has access to a nuke shelter in the city!? lmao... Pullleeezzz... this was so bad.

It was like they had been given access to a space station set for a super low price (before it got dismantled from the previous film it was used for...) and so they set about a script revolving around that. They could have foregone all the ridiculous cgi and space expense and just set it at the Hadron Collider if that was the story they are really going with, the space stuff just really plummeted the believability of the entire trilogy. They didn't need to make up a story about having to use a space station (which is beyond ridiculous and more unrealistic in financing the construction of such a thing vs monsters walking around!), to conduct a 'space test' for infinite free energy, we're already for real doing whacky stuff down here on earth anyway.

But even if they went with the DooM 'opening a portal/dimension' storyline it could have been done properly. The film 'Monsters' feels like such a better sequel and direction Cloverfield should have taken.

5.6/10 on imdb, that's being super generous. This is utterly bad, 2/10 is being kind.

[–] CoachGainz (453) 4 years ago

Agreed!

Yes, unfortunately this is the third movie to the series. It seems that after the success of the first movie, Paramount and Bad Robot were both eager to continue. However, I don't think anybody involved with the first movie had any intention on making sequels and all of them moved on to higher level work and busier schedules.

So, Cloverfield got shelved despite a large, possibly the most faithful cult following, and box-office success. I believe Paramount which had good relations with JJ pushed for a sequel even tho everybody had moved on. So JJ had this idea to continue these low budget Sci-Fi movies with young talent and have them relate to Cloverfield in someway to help bank on the cult following. I'm sure Paramount was ecstatic with the idea for more 10-20 Million budget cloverfield movies. So they rolled in with 10 Cloverfield Lane which was originally a script that had no aliens/monsters/or scifi elements. Those were all added in post production at the climax and ending of the film. This was a cheap, and effective way to relate to cloverfield while also keeping it a secret.

However, as I'm sure most know despite 10CL being a critical and BO success many fans where disappointed that it didn't clearly connect to the original even tho JJ and others had no intention of connecting them outside of possible universe, name, and feel.

So, with the third moving forward after 10CL they again adopted the idea of a low budget with young talent. But this time Paramount and maybe even JJ mandated that it clearly connect to the original. I'm pretty sure the third movie had already been written and partially filmed around the same time as 10CL was released. So, it went through rewrites, reshoots, and long delayed post/release. The studio saw the finished product and knew it was a mess and sub par to the previous. So they ended up selling it to Netflix for around 50M which is probably close to what it cost to film and market.

Movies don't always workout. 2/3

[–] ducksoup (3933) 4 years ago

Huh, I always thought Mary Elizabeth Winstead carried the second Cloverfield movie...