Super Bowl LII’s thrilling finish wasn’t the only surprise of Sunday night, as Netflixenticed millions of football fans by dropping a preview for a new movie that debuted on the streaming site immediately after the Philadelphia Eagles finished off their win over the New England Patriots.

Netflix premiered a movie trailer for The Cloverfield Paradox, the third film in a loosely-connected sci-fi trilogy from producer J.J. Abrams, during one of the very expensive commercial breaks between the action of last night’s game on NBC. Of course, Netflix was far from the only movie studio or streaming service to promote new programming during the Super Bowl.

But the surprising twist from Netflix was the fact The Cloverfield Paradox would actually be available to stream as soon as the game ended. It was a first-of-its-kind move from the streaming giant, which may have taken its inspiration from the traditional TV networks that have used the post-Super Bowl time slot to promote new TV series or special episodes (such as last night’s long-awaited This Is Us installment on NBC) for years.

The move was made that much more surprising by the fact that Netflix had not previously confirmed its acquisition of The Cloverfield Paradox from Viacom’s Paramount Pictures, which produced the movie. The streaming site had been rumoredto be interested in purchasing the film, which was previously called God’s Particle and reportedly saw its release delayed multiple times. (Never a good sign for a movie.)

So after all of that, is the movie even any good? Well, so far, critics don’t think so.

Though The Cloverfield Paradox has only been available online for less than 24 hours, the movie is already being panned by movie critics, receiving a paltry 12% score on the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes (out of a total of just 25 reviews, as of Monday afternoon). The movie’s score on Metacritic, another online review aggregator, is a slightly more healthy 40 (out of 100).

But the film is undoubtedly receiving its share of scathing reviews, with critics calling it a “trainwreck” and “a bust of a movie.” Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson sums it up: “The Cloverfield Paradox reaches for so many outlandish twists, turns, and sci-fi tropes that it forgets to build the one thing that genre stories of its kind need: believable and sympathetic human characters.”

Some thing happened. You'll know why after the game.

— The Cloverfield Paradox (@CloverfieldPRDX) February 5, 2018

Yet Netflix doesn’t always care about the opinions of professional movie reviewers when making decisions on original programming. The company recently forged ahead with a sequel for the fantasy thriller Bright despite the fact that the first movie (which Netflix paid a reported $90 million to acquire) similarly bombed with critics. However, by Nielsen’s measurements (which Netflix disavows), enough Netflix users seem to have watched Bright to justify further investment.

Will that be the case for The Cloverfield Paradox? It’s too soon to tell (and Netflix never releases viewership statistics), but the 62% of the movie’s audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, while the film currently has a rating of 7.0 (out of 10) from users on Metacritic.

The film and its two predecessors, 2008’s Cloverfield and 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane, are share the same producer (Abrams) as well as a somewhat mysterious monster-movie narrative connection. Each of the two previous films have generally positive Rotten Tomatoes ratings, and they fared reasonably well at the box office ($170 million in global gross for Cloverfield and $110 million for 10 Cloverfield Lane) for lower-budget movies.

Netflix has not said how much it paid to acquire streaming rights for The Cloverfield Paradox, so as always, it will be difficult to judge whether or not the streaming giant’s purchase was a prudent one. But it definitely succeeded in generating in-game Super Bowl buzz.

第52届超级碗激动人心的结局并非周日晚上唯一的惊喜，因为Netflix在中场休息时间发布了一部新电影的预告片，引起了数百万球迷的兴趣。在费城老鹰队战胜新英格兰爱国者队之后，这部影片立刻在该流媒体网站上线。

昨天晚上的比赛在NBC进行了直播。在超级碗的天价中场广告时间，Netflix首次发布了影片《科洛弗悖论》（The Cloverfield Paradox）的预告片。这部影片是制片人J.J.艾布拉姆斯的科幻三部曲当中的第三部，但三部影片在剧情上的联系并不紧密。当然，Netflix并不是唯一一家在超级碗上宣传新影视节目的电影公司或流媒体服务公司。

但令人惊喜的是，Netflix的《科洛弗悖论》将在比赛结束之后立刻上线。这是该流媒体行业巨头首次采取这样的做法，或许是受到了传统电视台的启发。一直以来，传统电视台都会利用超级碗结束后的时段来宣传新剧或剧集的特别篇（例如，NBC在昨天晚上播出了一集备受期待的《我们的一天》（This Is Us））。

而更令人意外的是，Netflix之前并没有确认从影片制作方维亚康姆（Viacom）旗下的派拉蒙影业（Paramount Pictures）购买《科洛弗悖论》的消息。此前一直有传闻称该流媒体网站有意购买该部影片。《科洛弗悖论》最初名为《上帝粒子》，另有报道称，该影片的发布时间曾被多次延期。（这对于一部电影而言绝不是好消息。）

那么，这到底是不是一部好电影呢？到目前为止，评论界并不这样认为。

《科洛弗悖论》上线的时间不到24小时，就已经遭到了影评家们的无情抨击。其在评论聚合平台烂番茄（Rotten Tomatoes）的好评率只有可怜的12%（截至周一下午，只有25个评价）。在另外一个平台Metacritic上，这部电影得到的评分略高，但也只有40分（共计100个评价）。

这部影片确实收到了一些尖刻的评价，例如有影评家称它是“车祸现场”，是“一部垮掉的电影”。《名利场》杂志的乔安娜·罗宾逊这样总结这部电影：“《科洛弗悖论》中有太多稀奇古怪的转折和科幻概念，却忘记了这类电影必不可少的一件事情：可信的、能够引起共鸣的人类角色。”

有大事发生。比赛结束后见分晓。

— 《科洛弗悖论》 (@CloverfieldPRDX) 2018年2月5日

但Netflix在决定原创内容时，并不总是关心专业影评人的意见。该公司最近决定拍摄奇幻惊悚片《光灵》（Bright）的续集，尽管第一部电影（有报道称Netflix斥资9,000万美元买下了这部电影的版权）同样收到了评论界的差评。而根据尼尔森（Nielsen）的统计数据（Netflix否认了这些数据），观看《光灵》的Netflix用户数量，使其有足够的理由投资续集。

《科洛弗悖论》是否也是同样的情况？目前预测结果仍为时尚早（Netflix没有公布收视率），但在烂番茄上，有62%的观众给出了正面评价，Metacritic上目前的用户评分也达到了7.0分（总分10分）。

这部影片和2008年的《科洛弗档案》（Cloverfield）以及2016年的《科洛弗道10号》（10 Cloverfield Lane）出自同一名制片人（艾布拉姆斯），并且都有神秘怪兽类电影常见的叙事关联。前两部小成本电影在烂番茄上都得到了普遍好评，也都取得了不错的票房成绩（《科洛弗档案》的全球总票房为1.7亿美元，《科洛弗道10号》为1.1亿美元）。

Netflix并未透露购买《科洛弗悖论》流媒体播放权的价格，所以与往常一样，我们很难判断该流媒体巨头购买这部电影是否明智。但它确实在超级碗比赛期间成功吸引了人气。（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓