This year’s Super Bowl was full of surprises. The Eagles won their first Super Bowl, Tide basically killed the rest of the commercial competition, but it was Netflix that gave us the biggest surprise of them all. They revealed that once the game was finished, the latest installment of the Cloverfield franchise, The Cloverfield Paradox, would be available to watch.
Formerly known under the title Cloverfield: The God Particle, this film has been pushed back several times. The latest news had been that the film would be premiering in theaters on April 20, 2018. So you can imagine the shock when after no trailer, no big plot reveal, that during the Super Bowl, an ad announced that the film was ready to be watched in a few short hours.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Orbiting above 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.
As we can see, there is a slight twist on the plot details originally given — not that the Earth is actually blipped out of existence, but rather that the scientists see a terrible alternate reality where the Earth is doomed somehow. We can see in the trailer that the scientists also begin to experience bizarre phenomena themselves, so maybe there are still a few plot secrets to be discovered.
The film is directed by Julius Onah, and written by Doug Jung and Oren Uriel. The main cast includes David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Elizabeth Debicki, Chris O’Dowd, Zhang Ziyi, and Daniel Brühl. Was this sudden premiere always the plan? Or did it come about sometime after the repeated delays in the film’s premiere date? Either way, it seems like J.J., Abrams is still full of surprises when he wants to be. We’ll call this one a win for the mystery box.
The Cloverfield Paradox is now available to stream on Netflix.
