It's one of those films where all the blame is placed on the script.
The magical severed hand wrote the script.
The script is not the issue here - you can easily see how the film was re-thought during the editing process. It eliminated several ideas (i.e. the worms) and re-shuffled the rhythm of the story (the title sequence featuring scenes that clearly were staged with dialogue but were cut down to force a new narrative idea), obviously re-shooting the whole beginning (the scene in the car) to make the protagonist´s emotional connection to her family front and center.
THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX, originally a movie called THE GOD PARTICLE, fell victim to a typical "too many cooks in the kitchen"-approach. In the end, it was forced into the CLOVERFIELD universe, and when that did not really work out, it was rebranded as a NETFLIX movie - which was a clever marketing move, definitely.
We watched the movie on our snow day yesterday. It wasn't an all-time great, but it was a fun afternoon diversion. I didn't really notice any of the score except for the opening credits, which I thought were pretty good.
I don't think it necessarily needed the tie-in to the original.
What an abysmal, derivative, pretentious piece of utter dreck that was! Cheese-us christ, i could hardly believe it. The final act was so bad that i expected to see "directed by Alan Smithee" at the end. There were good ideas somewhere in there, yes. But these were drowned out by heavyhandedness, mediocre acting and no sense for drama at all...
Ouch. 10 Cloverfield Lane definitely had its merits - but this? Maybe it was ghost-directed by M. Night Shyamalan?
From what I heard in the film, I really liked what I heard. It was big, bold and sounded like a huge orchestra. The movie: top notch effects, a top notch cast and....it ends up being a low rent turgid mess. Certain "Event Horizon" things happen for no apparent reason.
But the score is one of McCreary's best and it does bring the film up a notch ala Goldsmith.
I gave this one a spin today.* I skipped the film after the reviews here, but I thought the score played great on its own. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's very well done, and the long cues held my attention the whole time. That urgent ostinato drives the score throughout, and the couple of longer set-piece cues are compelling listens. I'm always dubious when a choir shows up in a score like this (I just think it can be overused), but this one won me over. Nice stuff!
* By "spin," I mean I streamed it via Apple Music, and nothing spun at all – like "cover art" and "dialing a phone," it is a term now completely divorced from its literal meaning.
I don't understand how the movie is getting crapped on. It's not great - it's really pretty middle of the road. But for dumb matinee entertainment type of thing, it was fun enough.
Of course, I watched it in a month where I also experienced "I Frankenstein," Burton's "Dark Shadows," and some movie about angels fighting and falling in love called "Fallen." So maybe it's just a grass/fence/greener grass thing
Yeah 10 Cloverfield Lane was a fabulous score. Great film too. Alas The Cloverfield Paradox was not at all a great viewing experience for me. I wanted to like Bear's score as much as his 10CL but it just didn't hit the mark, undoubtedly because the film was meh. Watching it reminded me of bits of other films, most notably Event Horizon.
Very impressed by this, away from the film, wherein you couldn't really hear it that well. I thought it was mixed way too low. Needed some Meyerson. Track 2, Ava & Michael is seriously gorgeous...AND track 11...F&CKWOW! I can't say I'm a big BMc fan, outside of his OUTLANDER scoring and bits and pieces of certain scores. He reminds me of Marco Beltrami, in that I quite like what I hear and it generally supports the images really well, but I never really get into the music as a standalone experience and lots of it flatters to deceive. Plus, I never recall strong or memorable themes from either composer. More textural and ambient scoring and design. But anyway. This is really good, like SOUL SURFER and DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK good, from the other fella.
Just chiming in again to say that I haven't tired of this score, and if anything it has grown on me, although I tried to watch the film last night but couldn't get through it.
The last two tracks, "A Stable Beam" and "The Cloverfield Paradox," are for my money the best that McCreary has composed so far. Utterly breathtaking.
I do hope that an actual CD will be released soon.
Got an Event Horizon vibe on this as well. That is not a good thing.
What of the worse movie watching choices I ever made.
Thankfully since then I've refined my ability to weed out crap like that.
Event Horizon is one of the few times in a movie theater where I felt like I had essentially been mugged. Like the movie cornered me, took my my money and left me feeling sad and ashamed.
Got an Event Horizon vibe on this as well. That is not a good thing.
What of the worse movie watching choices I ever made.
Thankfully since then I've refined my ability to weed out crap like that.
Event Horizon is one of the few times in a movie theater where I felt like I had essentially been mugged. Like the movie cornered me, took my my money and left me feeling sad and ashamed.
Cheese-us christ, i could hardly believe it. The final act was so bad that i expected to see "directed by Alan Smithee" at the end. There were good ideas somewhere in there, yes. But these were drowned out by heavyhandedness, mediocre acting and no sense for drama at all...
