A major event happened during the Superbowl. While the game was the bigger event, at least in terms of cable television ratings, the actual major one was the dropping of “The Cloverfield Paradox” on Netflix directly after the big game ended. Technically, it is the third installment in the J. J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield films that have been dropping ever since the found footage/Kaiju combination dropped 10 years ago. The film made waves after it was dropped, but not necessarily for the reasons one would think.
The film’s reviews ranged from mixed to very poor, with most of the criticisms coming from the fact that the film’s desperate need to connect to the other Cloverfield films made it come off as a jumbled mess that ended up feeling like multiple films crammed into one.
While those are the criticisms toward the actual movie, one has to admire Netflix’s drive when it came to how they released this film. The Cloverfield franchise is one that has built itself on using a viral marketing campaign to make its films seemingly come out of nowhere, and this time, Netflix seems to have allowed that marketing campaign to completely overpower the major criticisms and backlash that this film received.
So what happened exactly? This film faced a lot of similar circumstances surrounding the previous entry in the saga, “10 Cloverfield Lane.” It had a tense viral marketing campaign that was seemingly building up a film that originally had no connection to “Cloverfield” at all and had a different name, “God Particle,” similar to how “10 Cloverfield Lane” originated as a completely separate project known as “The Cellar.”
Originally slated for an October 2017 release, the film was constantly pushed back due to supposed production problems, mainly attributed to the massive amount of money that Paramount lost that year due to having one to many flops on its hands. Paramount also suffered a personal loss, as CEO Brad Grey, who was ousted from the company earlier that year due to a power struggle between company backers and the family of majority owner Summer Redstone, died on May 14 from lung cancer.
After finally getting a pushback to April 2018, a new set of rumors came out that Paramount had supposedly sold the film to Netflix for roughly more than $50 million, allowing the studio to instantly profit as well as avoid a likely theatrical misfire and a costly marketing campaign. As a result, Netflix was able to continue what fans are now calling the Cloverfield trend of marketing, successfully managing to one-up the previous film as well as give new meaning to the phrase “coming out of nowhere.”
However, this does spell concern from true movie lovers, who criticized Netflix heavily when they broke into the original film game back in 2015, due to the fact that they would seemingly take any project for any amount of cash, as well as the fact that most of the movies they churned out were critical disasters.
Because of this, another heavy criticism that came their way was the fact that Netflix had prolonged the careers of celebrities like Adam Sandler and Marlon Wayans, comedians and actors whose theatrical work had seen much better days. However, in the last two years, Netflix has struggled to up its game in terms of critical work, giving way to a whole new batch of critically acclaimed television, as well as finally nabbing some Oscar nominations with the historical epic film “Mudbound.” With the critical backlash surrounding “The Cloverfield Paradox,” however, fans are beginning to worry that Netflix is falling back into its old habits of just taking anything for a quick buck.
Image from Netflix via YouTube.com
