Back in 2007, J.J. Abrams gave a TED Talk in which he discussed his storytelling philosophy and introduced audiences to something he calls “the mystery box.” In addition to being a cheap magic shop gag, the unopened mystery box became a metaphor for the narrative elements Abrams was most passionate about, i.e.…
Given the critical failure of Netflix’s The Cloverfield Paradox—a film whose surprise Super Bowl release and troubled production have inspired more conversation than its less-than-stellar plot—it seems like a good time to reexamine the Cloverfield franchise’s history of manipulating audience expectation. As part of…
This past weekend saw the release of a big, expensive, attention-getting science fiction spectacle on streaming service Netflix, one that had people talking throughout the subsequent week. Unfortunately for the people behind it, that spectacle wasn’t Altered Carbon.
Netflix and J.J. Abrams managed to pull off another impressive Cloverfield marketing stunt during the Super Bowl, not only releasing the first trailer, but announcing that the latest film in the loosely connected franchise, The Cloverfield Paradox, would be available for streaming the instant the game ended. It was a…
Based on the critical response, it seems like the surprise post-Super Bowl Netflix release was the best thing that could’ve happened to The Cloverfield Paradox. The movie got a few hours of buzz from people who saw the Big Game commercial and then monster fans rushed to see how it would connect to the other …
The Super Bowl Sunday release of The Cloverfield Paradox took everyone by surprise, in part because its very existence had been in question up until the first trailer dropped. But its mostly unheralded arrival isn’t necessarily a sign of a lack of confidence from the streaming platform, which reportedly paid more than…
Like characters in one of those zombie movies where no one says “zombie,” the crew of the Cloverfield space station—a big metal psilocybin mushroom orbiting near-future Earth—doesn’t know what it’s in for, having left our planet without ever having seen a single sci-fi horror movie: not Alien, not Event Horizon, and…
