When the screen saver is better than the movie

I don't know if you have a version of Netflix that does this, but on our smart TV, when you leave
Netflix on without making a choice for a good ten minutes, it goes into screen saver mode. And what happens in this mode is that it cycles through maybe 20 different shows or other original properties Netflix is trying to push, though strangely, they're not usually the ones currently being buzzed about. In fact, some of the shows I've seen featured here, I only know about at all because I've seen them in this mode. (The Danish series The Rain, anyone?)

The way they do this screen saver is clever. It's a still promotional image from the show/movie/original property, not a moment that actually takes place on screen, but an artistic rendering that in some way amplifies the tone and/or themes. Then it does the thing that makes it distinctive: It takes different pictorial elements in the image and slowly moves them toward or away from one another, so the relative proximity begins to increase, decrease or indeed overlap.

It's a pretty entrancing effect. I could sit and watch it for quite some time, and have.

It's in this context that I finally want to bring up The Cloverfield Paradox.

As a prime example of just how random the properties on this screen saver mode really are, this is a promotion of a movie that hit Netflix over a year ago and was widely considered one of the worst movies of 2018. It narrowly avoided ranking in my bottom five of the year, and others' take on it was pretty similar to mine.

Simply put, it was a mistake Netflix should have made and quickly moved on from. Instead, they're still trying to drum up viewers.

But that's neither here nor there. What I want to talk about is how much better this image is than anything in the whole damn movie. So good, in fact, that I've chosen to devote an entire blog post to it.

Since I've included the image above, I don't need to describe it to you, but I will contextualize it for you if you're luckier than I am and haven't seen the movie.

The Cloverfield Paradox doesn't have a lot to do with the other movies in this "series," but then again, neither did the very good 10 Cloverfield Lane. The series, if it is to continue, is developing into a bit of a Black Mirror, serial-style approach to exploring similar themes, and I'm totally behind that if the movies are good. This one isn't, but that doesn't mean that future Cloverfield movies might not be.

This one deals with a crew on a space station that suddenly "loses track" of Earth, and may have slipped into another dimension. Believe me, it's not nearly as cool as it sounds. The few good ideas the movie has are executed poorly, with a weird mashup of tones, resulting in the sub-par product you either did or did not see.

But this image is pretty damn great. It illustrates the fact that the movie ultimately features two versions of the scientist played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, dealing with a theoretically interesting quandary about whether to switch dimensions and go on living in the other one. Like I said, not nearly as cool as it sounds.

The way the image moves apart as described above, it's like the two Gugu Mbatha-Raws being pulled apart from each other, with the tendrils connecting each other being elongated like so much melted cheese. It's cool to watch, and just a little terrifying.

And though these images stay on the screen for no longer than 20 seconds apiece, I'd really love to see the logical outcome of this separating movement, so we ultimately got two distinct Gugus. Either that, or the sides of each of her faces starting to crumple inward and making it an even more compelling work of modern art.

If a screen saver could make The Cloverfield Paradox seem that much more compelling, I wonder what it could do for an even worse Netflix original sci fi film from 2018, Duncan Jones' Mute.

Probably nothing, but I'd like to see them try.