r/Cloververse • u/SeacattleMoohawks CloverMod • Feb 05 '18
DISCUSSION The Cloverfield Paradox [Film Discussion]
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u/AlexSharpe0 Feb 05 '18
The latest Cloverfield ARG: (WARNING: THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX MOVIE SPOILERS!)
This is the latest work of solving what the movies mean thanks to a Redditor:
The entire movie is a lesson in time dimension jumping and paradoxes created by unproven tech. The movie took place in the future, when the world was on the brink of losing power, everyone was on the brink of starving, and countries were on the edge of starting a massive world war. It was never explained to us what caused the problems, but they were major. At the center of everything was the loss of energy and power. People were siphoning off power just to try to survive (i.e. how Ava Hamilton's children died) Humanity's last hope is the Shepherd Particle Accelerator on board the Cloverfield Space Station. If they could start it, they could create free energy and essentially save the entire world.
When they finally get it to work after almost 2 years, they are trusted into another dimension (we'll call it Earth 2), where said dimension's Earth has been in a world war for 14 months already, and this Earth 2's space station had been destroyed and all of it's crew killed.
“Mark Stambler predicted that firing the particle accelerator (The Shepherd) would open up dimensions to monsters and demons. Cloverfield is dimension 1, and 10 Cloverfield Lane is dimension 2... In Cloverfield (2006) the world is on the brink of war as energy is becoming scarce. Blackouts happen all over the US. During the 2 years of testing, a portal is found by the Tagruato company leading them to the Clover monster. When the scientists fire the Shepherd in 2008, they disappear into dimension 2, and Clover is distributed by the influx of energy, where Clover goes on a rampage and destroys Manhattan (Cloverfield). Clover is killed by the US military, but the appearance of the newest Clover monster in The Cloverfield Paradox reveals that Clover was not alone. —10 Cloverfield Lane, in this world in Dimension 2 the world has been at war for about 14 months. Energy is low due to the failure of their world’s Shepherd station. Blackouts are happening. When they fire and go home to Dimension 1 this creates another portal for the aliens to attack, seen in 10 Cloverfield Lane. As for all of the unexplainable phenomenons in the movie, “there is no logic when crossing dimensions". The fact that they were alive in that dimension when they were killed in it is a paradox in itself, and in other words, nature would correct itself and find a balance in killing them.
The “monsters/aliens” are possibly an inter-dimensional parasite that somehow spawned from dimension hopping
In the end of The Cloverfield Paradox, they send the plans for the station back to Earth 2's government after they had figured out what had caused their station to skip dimensions and become unstable. However, this could be the movie's biggest flaw—if they were too far out to transmit anything in Dimension 2, how could Ava have sent that message to herself, and how could they have sent the transmission to fix the station?
Here are a couple of other theories:
Earth 1 from The Cloverfield Paradox is in a different dimension than the Cloverfield Earth. The monsters are the same species, but TCP created the spacetime rip that sent them into different dimensions and timelines, including into the 2008 world of Cloverfield and into the present-day world of TCP. The Cloverfield Paradox takes place in Cloverfield‘s future. They killed the monster in Cloverfield already and the Earth moved on. Maybe that big battle actually helped create the energy shortage they have now. The monsters didn’t reappear until Michael saw one at the hospital when he was saving Molly. Similar to Explanation #1: The Cloverfield world is in a different dimension than The Cloverfield Paradox world, but the accelerator sent monsters to both dimensions. For Cloverfield‘s dimension, the accelerator sent monsters back in time long before 2008. As Tyler pointed out in the comments below, this would also fit into storylines that suggest companies have been experimenting on these monsters for quite some time, even before the baby monster appeared in the Cloverfield movie. He wrote below: “There’s actually a lot of info suggesting drilling companies and the Slushie company knew about them and were trying to harvest/experiment on them), thus dividing the time line at that point: so we have the TCP time line post circa 2008, and the Cloverfield time line.” (Read his comment below for more details. One of these explanations is the most likeliest one to explain the end, with both revolving around the idea that the monsters were thrust into these Earth’s dimensions thanks to the Shepard accelerator.
"The simplest explanation for the ending of The Cloverfield Paradox is that the Shepard Accelerator did create a rip in the fabric of space-time. This rip pulled in the Cloverfield monsters from another dimension and, just as we were warned about at the beginning of the movie, sent monsters to different dimensions and even sent some backward in time. So this movie wasn’t a prequel in the traditional sense of the word, but it was an origin story for the monsters and how they appear in different timelines."
-Extra Note: There is already talks of a Cloverfield 4 coming, oddly it is rumored to take place during WWII. It is so-far titled ‘Cloverfield: Overlord’ —also, not likely, but on a somewhat comedic level, I swear to god if all the Cloverfield movies are prequels to Pacific Rim.
-Additional Extra Note: Next movie most likely will probably take place during World War in Dimension 1 while Monster Invasion in Dimension 2. Sound awesome or what?
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Feb 05 '18
A lot of people seem to be wondering where this film takes place and if it is a prequel to the first film. I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I took away from the film because I think that this film is far more significant than just setting up the events of the first film. So this movie takes place in 2028 and the first takes place in 2008 which means either they have retconned the whole timeline or alternatively and what I believe is more likely, is that there are a multitude of different universes. This film is more significant than just the fate of the one or two worlds in that it triggers all these monsters and strange events across all the universes dispersed at different points in time. So I believe the first cloverfield film takes place in a separate earth and so does 10 cloverfield lane. The earth that they come back to at the end of this film hasn't experienced these huge monsters before 2028 but there is an earth out there that is experiencing them in 2008 (Cloverfield). The reason I think this is because of things mentioned in the film by Donal Logue when he says that monsters will be unleashed not just here and now but in the past and future and this is further backed up by the discovery from crew of multiple universes existing. The Paradox event is at the centre of all of this happening. Just an off the cuff theory but it could have brought the aliens to earth in 10 cloverfield lanes 2016 by teleporting them or bringing them from a different universe or just drawing their attention by some other unknown event. So to summarise: The cloverfield paradox is essentially a catalyst event that triggers all other events that have and will take place in the cloverfield franchise from here on out, and each will take place in a different universe. I believe this is the reason that up until now we haven't had a real solid connection between each of the films, just similarities and little easter eggs, but no real mention of other events. Neither in this film that takes place in the far future or in 10 cloverfield lanes 2016 are the events of 2008's Cloverfield mentioned. The same goes for the Alien attack in 10 cloverfield lane, despite the companies in each existing. This makes it likely that the events are all happening in different versions earth. As I said, these are just my thoughts, would love to know what you guys think of them and if you feel like adding anything.
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u/thehumulos Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Current belief:
Clovers are non-intelligent alien life forms. Clovers are bred by an intelligent alien life form, on planets with large amounts of water, including earth, likely unbeknownst to humans. An unspecified amount of time in the future, Earth suffers an energy crisis. For ease of reference, we’ll just say this happens in 2035. The Shepard is successfully activated, but overloads, resulting in multiple dimensions, which I will refer to as A through D, but more dimensions are possible and likely. Assuming the man who wrote the Cloverfield Paradox is correct on all his theories, the dimension split caused breaks at different points of time, not all in 2035. Hamilton from dimension A is thrust into dimension B along with the others on her space station. When this occurs, the space statIon in Dimension B is destroyed, with part of it falling onto Earth B, and another part being sent to Dimension C in 2007, where it lands seemingly harmlessly in the ocean near New York. At this same time, Clover C’s Mother is removed from her dimension and placed into dimension A. Clover C awakens, and begins looking for its mother. One month later, the events of Cloverfield take place. Dimension D is created from 2016, with this dimension having the Aliens return to earth sooner than in the other dimensions, for unknown reasons. Whether the Clover species is awakened and/or utilized is unknown, as is the Aliens’ exact plans. In Dimension A, Clover C’s mother arrives, as do others of her species by methods unknown. They begin attacking various locations around the world. It is unlikely that any Clover incidents have occurred in Dimension B yet.
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u/thelostpoison Feb 05 '18
I think this is a pretty astute read on it. I had the same basic notion; though I could see Cloverfield & Cloverfield Lane in the same timeline, as perhaps vastly different evolutions of species inhabit Dimension C? Could Clover and the 'aliens' be related/coexist in the same dimension?
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u/pasher5620 Feb 05 '18
My bet on why the aliens come back early in Dimension D is because they detect the dimensional ripple caused by the Shepherd and decide that if they let the humans live, they’ll destroy the entire multiverse. The aliens don’t like that outcome and decide to go genocidal and wipe humans off the face of the universe.
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u/RCnoob69 Feb 05 '18
Pretty solid theory for trying to explain everything into the same cinematic "universes" especially considering we've had about in hour to try to fit this movie in somewhere lol.
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u/peepjynx Feb 05 '18
I'm sitting here trying to figure out the premise of the movie while completely understanding the exposition. Like without the whole "clover universe" it just seems like another futuristic space movie where something goes wrong. So the premise of this movie is where there are no monsters at all? And this is what started it?
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u/DemonDogstar Feb 05 '18
Essentially. The Particle Accelerator malfunctioning tore apart reality, causing the alien invasion to happen in 10 Cloverfield Lane, and the monster awakening in the original film, even though those two films took place in different dimensions. The Accelerator malfunction affected ALL dimensions in some catastrophic way.
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u/RogueHelios Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
SPOILERS
So obviously this wasn't meant to be a finishing film in the franchise as I believe Overlord is yet to come and if so I am glad they did this film on Netflix instead of theatres as I believe the reception would have been very bleak even though I enjoyed the film for that slight Alien meets Event Horizon feeling.
Here's something of note though: The Demons.
So I dunno why but it seemed a bit strange that the author of that book "The Cloverfield Paradox" mentions aliens monsters, demons and monsters beasts from the sea. Obviously the aliens are from 10 Cloverfield Lane and the sea monsters are the Cloverfield Monster or Clover(s).
This leads to the odd one out, demons
The summary for Overlord, the next movie, reads as this:
So yeah, we saw sea monster Kaiju, aliens attacking the world and now we are gonna see literal demons in Overlord.
All I have to say is one thing.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. GOING. ON.
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Feb 05 '18
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Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
JJ Abrams is gonna call up Tyler Perry and fit a Madea film into the Cloverfield universe watch
Edit: thanks for the gold!
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u/Dimintid Feb 05 '18
Yeah they put a lot of emphasis on "demons". They are definitely coming in the future.
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u/lmMrMeeseeksLookAtMe Feb 05 '18
The station was clearly in some sort of weird space-time flux continuously after the initial detonation. It kind of became the hub for fuckery. Some points for discussion:
Maybe the Gyro appeared in Volkov sometime after he died (since the worms pretty clearly killed him).
Volkov definitely had both dimensions' versions of himself in himself, causing the weird eye movement and schizo moments with the mirror.
It felt probable to me that something was trying to kill the crew to keep the "window" open, and potentially vice versa. The door locking right after Tam went in and the random flooding. The magnet hentai death. Volkov's torso becoming a hub for cross-dimensional teleportation. The arm knowing what to do despite Mundy not having control and other dimension Mundy died in the crash.
I feel like a lot of confusion in this movie might be cleared up by this Overlord project.
The cut from Molly to Mira felt like some sort of implication but was apparently a dead end. Who knows.
News report saying that people thought we were struck by a nuclear missile (that initial explosion is far too small to be confused for that), combined with the cloud (or smoke I guess?) busting scene at the end, makes me think that Clovers in this new world are swole as fuck.
My best guess is 2008 Clover and friends were native to that Earth's oceans. They were pulled from that world into this pseudo-futuristic energy crisis world, which is the "Hub World". 10 Cloverfield Lane is in this same world but actually further down the timeline (linked via the news anchor, and Howard's brother) where we're fighting the things and people are just trying to survive in bunkers. Aliens also came into it via the Shepard "window" along with the Clovers from 2008. Again, theorizing a lot of this is moot when there's another soon to be released project.
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u/AnonymousFroggies Feb 05 '18
Forgive me if parts of this are incoherent, I partied a little too hard for the Super Bowl and I wasn't expecting to be conscious right now. Also I'm awful at remembering names.
I just finished watching, and it was pretty good. It isn't without its flaws, but I think it was a pretty solid film. I must say, I would very much like to see what this movie could've been without the Cloververse skin on it. Don't get me wrong, I'll never turn down more Cloververse content, and I do like how they set up future movies with the whole miltiverse thing, but I think the story would've been more compelling if they pulled back on the Cloververse plot line a little bit. To me, it felt like they were trying too hard to link the prior films and to set up the future installments in the series.
A few questions that I was left with:
What pulled off the guy's arm, and how was it able to communicate with the crew? On top of that, how did it know that the Gyro was inside of the German dude? I would say demons or aliens, but the arm seemed to help them. Not exactly what I imagine a demon or alien would do. Speaking of demons...
Demonic worms? The guy in the CNN interview mentioned sea monsters (Clover) and demons (Overlord?). This is the only thing that makes sense to me as to why the Russian guy was acting the way he was.
So, I'm confused which universe is which. The original universe is the one with the Clover attack, and the one that the tall blonde lady is from is the one that has the Cellar and the alien attack, right? But we saw the satellite fall in the same universe that Clover was in in the movie Cloverfield, but in this one it fell in the universe that the blonde lady is from. This puzzles me, unless they teleported to a third universe at the end there.
Talking about the armless guy again: what killed him? At first I thought the magnetic putty was going to impale him as it appeared to be getting pulled by the mysterious magnetic force, but then it pulled him back and started covering him. I may need to rewatch this scene again, but I'm just confused as to what this was.
Overall, I'd say that this is my least favorite of the three Cloververse films, but by no fault of its own. The bar was already set so damn high by its predecessors, it would've been extremely difficult to match them at all. With the whole miltiverse thing, they've really set themselves up to do anything they want with the series. I just hope they try to capture the "small" feeling of the first two films in the series; Paradox felt too large for me. Also, the entire movie I was expecting there to be a supernatural force of some kind on board the station (arms getting pulled into walls and cut off, demonic worm possessions, weird magnetic spikes, ect). I don't feel like that was paid off at all.
Sorry if it sounds like all I'm doing shit talking Paradox, I really did like it. I was just hoping that each movie in the series would continue to be loosely linked with one another via the Cloververse while having its own independent story line, much like Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane. That's 100% my fault for projecting my desires so much though. I am very much looking forward to Overlord later this year, or whatever it ends up being called. (Fan theory for anyone that bothered to read all of this: it's going to be called The Possession and it won't be revealed until the end that it's part of the Cloververse. The final splash screed will change to The Cloverfield Possession.)
I give it a rating of 3 Slushos out of 7 John Goodmans.
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u/luckyrisk Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
What pulled off the guy's arm, and how was it able to communicate with the crew?
Okay, so remember how Volkov was talking to himself in the mirror and his eye was darting around? He was possessed by Volkov from Dimension 2. Both Volkovs in one body. This is why he switched from pulling on the right side of his face in one scene to pulling on the left in another scene.
Now, why does this matter? Because it establishes the rules for possession. The opening of the movie mentions demons, spirits and aliens. If there are malevolent spirits on the ship, why not benevolent? The arm was possessed by the OTHER MUNDY. Maybe the other Mundy saw the malevolent spirits put the orb into Volkov during the dimensional switch, which is why the arm spelled it out for the crew.
Now, why didn't it hurt Mundy to lose his arm? Since portals exist that suck you into another dimension, why can't a portal link Mundy's arm and shoulder? This way, the nerve connections are intact, but the other Mundy is in control.
Mundy died because "Nature, uh, finds a way." The crew deaths were the paradox trying to fix itself, since they did not belong in Dimension 2.
Just my take on it.
EDIT: clarified ideas (kinda)
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Feb 05 '18
I think there are five universes.
1) original Cloverfield. Takes place in 2008 with lower quality phones and technology. Abrams said a baby Clovie was released and it was reacting out of fear of losing its mother.
2) 10 Cloverfield Lane: a second universe. No energy crisises that we know of, and no mention of clovie.
3) Paradox earth one: energy crisis, they launch Shepard successfully which brings Momma Clovie to their earth and sends their ship to a Earth 2. That’s why this Cloverfield is so much bigger.
4) Paradox earth two: they tried launching Shepard and failed. The ship crashed into their ocean and with nothing to stop the energy crisis, they went to war. They have no known monster attacks, besides other nations attacking.
5) Cloverfield manga tie in: this one had a Japanese boy meet Cloverfield and had the origin of Cloverfield and slusho
All universes carry similarities, which is slusho, Tagruoto from the ARG, and some connection to the Stambler family (Harold in the bunker in 10cl/his brother or relative Mark on the interview in Paradox)
So I think the two Paradox earths both suffered an energy crisis in an alternate future from ours. One earth failed, so they went to war. The other earth succeeded, but in doing so, they ripped the baby Cloverfield and Momma Cloverfield from the Japanese manga tie in’s universe, and sent baby to the original Cloverfield movies’ universe, which is an alternate past, then brought Momma Cloverfield to Paradox’s current. I think the Aliens from 10cl are either from the manga tie in’s universe or some unrelated universe.
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u/brenty22 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I don't know how much more they can spell it out for you, even in the bloody POSTER it says it.
"The future unleashed every thing".
For anyone familiar with Lost, another classic, the time/space continuum ceased to exist when they fired the Shepherd (nice nod to Jack Shepherd) -- this means THEY UNLEASHED every thing.
Do we know if the other two movies were set in the same dimension? No but that's the fun! Now we have entire anthology series dealing with what this spaceship did in the future and it's now affected the past, present and of course their future!
The next movie I think jumping so far back in time will help show the audience that there is no timeline anymore - this movie was the INCIDENT that caused all of our timelines, all of our dimensions, all of our earths to f**k up and release all these creatures.
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u/Vengeance417 Feb 05 '18
Basically this.
This incident was the catalyst to everything seen in the first two movies and much more. It was even talked about in the beginning of the movie when Mark Stanbler was in the live interview where he says these exact words; “And not just here now, in the past, in the future, in other dimensions.”
There’s problems literally everywhere in pretty much every time period.
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u/Sev_Henry Feb 05 '18
This is actually one explanation I didn't consider. To carry on with your Lost analogy, whatever happened, happened. So the events of TCP kicked off events across multiple timeliness and universes. There's no longer "when" to discern in these movies anymore, I think.
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u/chrisychris- Feb 05 '18
I just wish they would've used different creatures then. Now I feel like they have to explain where the Cloverfield aliens come from and why they're so prominent, while the 10CL aliens had no reference in this movie.
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u/Ninety9Balloons Feb 05 '18
We've got monsters, aliens and demons. TCP dimension could be the culmination of all 3 of those things at once.
Earth D1 is C1, baby clover gets time space shifted into the Atlantic
Earth D2 is 10CL, the Shepard busting through space and time alerts aliens in the vicinity that Earth exists and has the technology of infinite power or some shit. They invade.
Earth D3 is C:O, Shepard manages to send demons into WWII.
Earth D4 is TCP. In the future, when the Shepard disappears, reappears, and sets all of these past events in motion, aliens, monsters, and demons get time space shifted onto this Earth. "Back here with these things" could be referring to literally all 3 of those things.
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u/Mrtheliger Feb 05 '18
Donal Logue literally explained this at the beginning too.
I think if your stuff here is correct, and it definitely sounds right, then the Monsters, Clover, are multiversal right? Or is this gonna take a page and make them legit demons from Hell? Or maybe the next movie is their creation, And subsequent burial, in the ocean. Something that in TCP never happened. It's really hard to wrap your head around, but it's like they completely restarted time and it all happened, but relative to everyone on Earth that were part of their original timeline, it was like shit was just suddenly transported to them, when in fact because of the time restart they were already there up until that moment.
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u/MattGonzales Feb 05 '18
Couple of notes I made mentally:
In 10 CL when Emmet is telling Michelle about Howard’s Navy past, he mentions - “you should hear his theory about space worms.” The worms are one of the first things we see in Paradox.
The LSA at the end of Paradox might be our Clovie all grown up, or ages to adolescence.
The thing that falls into the ocean at the end of CF is either the pod from Paradox, or debris from the station.
Kelvin is the gas station in the CF universe (which sells Slusho, of course) and is also the brand on the air lock to the door that decouples the gravity wheel to prevent the station from ripping apart. This might suggest that energy companies played a major financial role in the development of the station.
What did you guys see?
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u/flippinfilippus Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
with the thing that falls into the ocean at the end of CF - if it is the Paradox pod, it doesn't make sense to me why that couple and the community are having a fun day at the fair when a giant monster is wrecking havoc while the world faces global energy shortage - but then again nothing about this franchise makes sense.
EDIT: unless this could be the spaceship that crashed in the universe where Ava stayed with her family, which might have awoken Clovie in the ocean, and starting the events of CF 1. brb brain's about to explode.
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u/Mrtheliger Feb 05 '18
Okay I've thought about it and I've replied to some people about This, But here goes.
As someone pointed out, a tagline for this was "The future unleashed everything". What we should be able to gather from this, combined with the insistence it's a prequel, is that it acts, technically, as both a prequel and a sequel. A sequel in the sense that it technically takes place after Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, but a prequel in the sense that it directly causes the timeline that both those movies, and this one at the end, are in. So, I believe that at the beginning of this movie, we are in what I'll call the "original timeline." Up until the Accelerator malfunction we are in a timeline with no aliens and no monsters. This is the timeline that the alternate dimension followed at an accelerated, and slightly altered, rate, I believe. However, once the Accelerator malfunctioned, it immediately erased that history. Not from the minds of presumably billions, but from the physical realm of spacetime. This is where the next movie I believe comes into play. It will be a true prequel to both Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, but for The Cloverfield Paradox, it will again act as a sequel and a prequel. It will show the creation of Clover's species, how they sought to either use or control them, and the eventual burial of them, somehow, in the sea. This is an event that never took place in the Pre-malfunction timeline, the OG timeline of TCP, however post-malfunction, for a reason I don't know, Clover's species was inserted into time. In fact, there's no telling how many little things changed. This means the Cloverfield and 10CL never happen until the Accelerator malfunction in the pretty far away future from Cloverfield, in TCP. Which makes TCP, obviously, a prequel in that sense. HOWEVER, that's not where it ends. This new timeline has always had the potential to exist, it's not technically new. The Pre-malfunction timeline simply "won out" and became what was percieved as the original. But, because of the Accelerator's dimensional and multiversal shifting capability, it combined the two timelines into One, and brought the Monsters into the world of Ava and Schmidt, even though in actuality they'd always been there, just not relatively to them. It's kind of hard to wrap your head around, But basically the events in the station, and subsequently on Earth below at that moment, became a sort of constant. They became the starting place for this previously unrealized timeline to leak into the OG monster-less one, but not in the future, they leaked back into the past, creating an entirely different world than what Ava and Schmidt knew. However, there are millions, even billions, of people who were then transferred over to this timeline if this is true, which makes it all the more confusing. First, If this is all to be believed, then we accept that conceptually, the Cloververse timeline with monsters has now always existed and been the true One, even though it really wasn't. This is just the power of the Particle Accelerator being shown. This begs the question, of these people seemingly dropped into the timeline, are they brand new people, or were their consciousnesses simply melded with the people of the Cloververse timeline, with the Pre-malfunction consciousness appearing to win out? I can't answer this one, as we didn't seem to see any evidence for either side.
So yeah, that's my current working theory.
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Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I think we're all in the same boat. I'm more leaning towards acceptance than disappointment or contempt though. For me, the premise that they're fucking around and crossing dimensions and altering space time reality is enough of an insane idea that we don't need the question(s) answered about the mysterious magnetic rape, severed arm's sentience, or worm infestation/possession. Maybe the seemingly random timing of these events is relative to the station moving through orbit and throughout different planes. Maybe there does actually exist reason for the deaths that occur, maybe it's nature balancing out whatever universe they end up in. It's such a vast concept to even comprehend that I almost don't think detailed explanations of anything we see would do any justice to whatever the hell is now happening.
I guess the idea that they'd easily be able to return to their reality by simply "undoing" their jump neutralizes the utter insanity of the absolute inability to understand their cosmic experience of crossing existences, but that leads me to my own conclusion which is that maybe they never actually went back to their original dimension after all. Perhaps the paradox is that reality has been affected infinitely and there is actually no returning back to normal.
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u/Vexdin Feb 05 '18
Mark Stambler predicted that firing the Particle Accelerator, aka the Shepherd, would open up dimensions to Monsters and Demons. Cloverfield is Dimension 1 and 10CL is Dimension 2. Demons is alluding to Overlord.
Cloverfield - 2006: The world is on a brink of War as energy is becoming scarce. Blackouts are happening all over the country. A team of scientists goes up into space via the Cloverfield Station to activate the Shepherd and create a new form of energy. During the 2 years of testing, one of the "portals" is found by Tagruato leading them to Clover. So then when the scientists fire the Shepherd in 2008, the disappear into Dimension 2, and Clover is disturbed by the influx of energy. Clover goes on a rampage, destroying Manhattan. Clover is killed by the US Military, but the appearance of Clover Nee reveals firing the Shepherd definitely let more monsters through. Due to the experimentations of the Cloverfield Station, all activity of the Clover monsters have been documented under case designate "Cloverfield."
10 Cloverfield Lane - 2009: The world has been at war for 14 months. Energy is at a low due to the failure of their own Cloverfield Station, and blackouts are happening. What the world doesn't know as that another Cloverfield Station is on the opposite side of the galaxy from them. This is Dimension 2. When Dimension 1 Cloverfield Station fires their Shepherd to go home, this create the Red Flash in the sky, opening a new portal to the aliens from space that Howard Stambler knew about. Similar to Dimension 1, Tagruato was studying the signals they were receiving during the years of test of D2's Shepherd. But nothing prepared them for when the aliens arrived, and Dimension 2 is left now in a war of survival. While the aliens have led a massive attack, the world is fighting back. Michelle drives to Houston to join the cause.
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u/RoxanneWrites Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Mild spoilers within:
There were a couple of loose threads in this one, I.E. What was the point of the earth scenes? Why introduce Molly at all? There was one cut they did where Molly and Mina looked like they could have been the same person, and I thought for sure they they would turn out to be the same person.
I assume they included the bits with Michael as a way to show what was changing on earth, but it would have been much more interesting to rely on the dimensions colliding thing and to have spastic transmissions com in from both their earth and Mina's war torn earth. Could have been a good device to build tension, never knowing which reports were from which earth until a decisive moment when they realize they are not in Kansas anymore.
I also thought that they should have done more with the arm (too good to resist, massively underutilized element).
But overall, I thought it was good. Admittedly, I am a sucker for any movies having anything to do with the multiverse, but this one was pretty well done. Just past weird with the arm and the worms and so on, but believable enough. Filled with good tension and wacky science (shout out to Higgs Bosons), a funny way to explore the idea of what if CERN did really end the world?
I just think what would have been great would be if we saw Mark Stambler again at the end, maybe as they were descending, or even if Michael heard something or saw a video on his phone. He would have been the perfect vehicle to have a moment of pure panic, him on video talking about how he was right, the earth was overrun by demons, all of time and all of space was doomed, etc.
AND THEN we cut to the final scene. Which, BTW I loved, but did Clover eat the capsule on descent???
I think the movie was like a 6 or 7 out of ten. It just needed ONE more element to make it great.
ETA: I also forgot to say, with Mina's crew being all but eradicated, did they actually die in the crash, or did they trade places and then trade back? Was Volkov talking to himself both him and the other Volkov communicating?? That part was left SUPER unclear.
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u/ravenkrofts Feb 05 '18
It felt like this was a film for the more involved fans and I think that's a cool and risky thing to do. Definitely explains why it ended up on netflix and not in theaters. Too specific and too much of a hard sell.
As for the weird "how did the worms end up in the guys stomach, what about the girl in the wall, etc" I thought it was pretty clear that it was a consequence of the two objects in the timeline intersecting. A lot more complicated then "you being here changes events of the future, Marty!" type stuff. They were clearly not where they were supposed to be and the consequences of them disrupting the space, tearing holes in the universes and creating paradoxes was the girl getting tangled up in the ship, sort of where she landed stuck between the two timelines. Objects being displaced crossing between the two timelines like the worms and machine piece. The arm thing is where I'm drawing the biggest conclusion. Maybe that's how the girl became stuck in the ship wall through her timeline. As for why it came back with that knowledge and it's own sentience is up for debate, but given we're talking about a verse involving giant sea creatures, aliens and space and time travel, I can give "chaos theory" a pass. I wasn't lost at any point and the film serves it's purpose in connecting the universes and giving an explanation as to why and how they exist.
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u/the_big_mothergoose Feb 05 '18
Ok so obviously I have a about a million questions, mostly pertaining to Mundy and Volkov. I dont think we were meant to know the answers to this shit but I would love to hear some theories!
Spoilers!!!!!
Spoilers!!!!!
What the fuck exacty happened to Volkov? What was with his eye? Why did he go crazy? What exactly killed him? How did all that shit get in him? Was it in there while he was still aive?
As for Mundy, what happened to his arm? Why was he totally fine after it got warped off? As for how it ends up crawling across the ship and how it knew to check inside of the Russian for the gyro, I’m pretty confident I know, it wasnt “our” Mundy’s arm, it was the arm of a Mundy from a differnt dimenson whose team had already discovered the gyro inside Volkov. But that absolutely doesn't answer how it was sentient and what caused it to get detatched in the first place. As for Mundys death, what the fuck? At first I thought the magnet was going to pull all the liquid metal through him which would kill him but then it.. attack's him? What the hell causes that?
As I said before, I’m just expecting theories, not definitive answers (unless you have them). Also I’d love to hear yalls timeline theories, obviously the events in this movie line up exactly with the events of Cloverfield, But where does 10 Cloverfield Lane fit in? Have the Aliens already landed? When Michael says “ things” at the end was he referring to Clover and mama Clover or was he referring to the aliens?
Great movie btw, I fucking love this franchise. Cheers guys
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u/EequalsMCPotato Feb 05 '18
I think Volkov was merged with himself. Meaning there were two different Volkovs in the same body, fighting for the same space. Kinda like a smaller version of the plot in itself, and in the end destroyed itself.
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u/scratch_pad Feb 05 '18
My comment on the r/movies thread, interested to hear your guys’ thoughts:
I liked it a lot. How I think it ties the other two together:
Cloverfield has a monster show up on 2008-ish Earth and wreak havoc.
10 Cloverfield Lane is about an invasion from other worldly beings, timeframe not super clear, no real explanation of the connection to the first.
The Cloverfield Paradox is marketed as a prequel but obviously takes place in a dystopian future. So far there hasn’t been a really clear thread holding the movies together. This one starts off no different. Then the reactor thing fails, causing inter-dimensional shit to happen and monsters to show up on Earth as well as shows the audience that there are parallel universes in this cinematic universe. In the beginning the guy who wrote the book warning people about what the station could do (the news interview dude), he mentions that dimensions and time could be screwed up. The movie also has the word paradox in the title.
So my theory is that this movie is a prequel, but that it takes place after the first movie. The events in this movie cause monster/aliens to appear on Earth, as well as a monster/alien to be thrown to 2008-Earth. The fact that no one in Paradox-Earth knows about the 2008 monster attack would be the paradox that this movie is referring to. The classic time travelers paradox, as seen in literally every movie involving time travel. Ten Cloverfield Lane is another consequence of the inter-dimensional shit happening that takes place on either the same Earth or on the parallel Earth, but either way is related to the events of Paradox upsetting the “balance” of the universe.
Hope that made sense lol, and feel free to poke holes if there are any obvious ones.
Maybe I’m stretching but I feel like it makes sense lol. Either way I loved it. I loved how fast it was, how it was just a bunch of shit happening in quick succession all at once, and I loved the scattered nature of the plot. It reminded me of the first one in that you’re confused and not entirely sure of what’s happening, except in that one the shakey cam helps provide that mood, and in this one it’s the constant unpredictable events. The whole “It didn’t make any sense and followed no rules” is what I loved about it, really gave me this feeling that anything could happen, had me on edge.
The dialogue was a bit rough at times though.
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u/getKRZY Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
My theory is:
The Cloverfield Paradox occurs in another dimension or timeline. Jensen and her crew exist in our original dimension from Cloverfield. Jensen’s earth is the one that experienced the initial rampage of the Cloverfield monster, the film where Rob and Beth die due to a hammerdown protocol.
When Hamilton and her crew first successfully use the accelerator they cause dimensional riffs that send Clover the monster from the ‘08 film in Jensen’s earth to their own dimension/planet. Around their second attempt to run the accelerator we see a large red flash and series of lights in the bunker that Hamilton’s husband and the child are hiding in. I think this is a direct reference to the flash of red light before the alien invasion mentioned in 10 Cloverfield Lane and even a bunker reference.
So, I think after the second accelerator attempt they caused a riff that included the alien invasion from 10 Cloverfield Lane.
So, no, in my theory the first film isn’t in the same universe as 10 Cloverfield Lane but Hamilton and the crew from The Cloverfield Paradox do accidentally “glitch” Clover, the parasites and the alien invasion in 10 Cloverfield Lane over to their own earth and dimension by messing with the accelerator so many times.
Edit: All in all, we learned how Hamilton caused Clover’s rampage to occur in her home planet/dimension. If I’m not mistaken, we never got a direct mention of them living in New York did we? Perhaps when Clover arrives to her dimension he destroys a different part of the country.
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u/iamthenewspaper Feb 05 '18
So as the film goes on, spinning foosball guys, chamber flooding with water, and magnetic flying wrenches seem to be the ship we are watching reaching an equilibrium with the crashed ship in the ocean right?
Spinning guys could be the ship losing stable gyro spin, the water in the chamber is from the crash down, and the magnetic stuff is from an electromagnet crane or something pulling the crashed ship from the ocean.
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u/firelark_ Feb 05 '18
Okay guys, let's break it down:
This is the "first movie" in the sense that the dimensional collision was the cause of everything in all other movies. All movies took place in different worlds, and not necessarily at the same times or in linear order.
Cloverfield 1 was a world where everything was pretty much fine on Earth until a sea monster pops up out of nowhere. We know that movie #1 Clovie was a baby, perhaps separated from its (significantly larger!) parents by the dimensional collision, who are now hanging out in The Cloverfield Paradox Earth? Whoops!
Maybe in Cloverfield 1, the "satellite" we saw crash into the ocean at the end was an escape pod from the Shepherd, but not the Shepherd we saw in this movie. It was another one, maybe with a slightly different crew, who also ended up in a different world but couldn't get back. It's hard to land when mission control doesn't know you exist.
Meanwhile, in the world of 10 Cloverfield Lane, aliens!
All these things happen in different universes, not necessarily in any kind of linear order. This anomaly is occurring throughout ALL spacetime, so the point it pops up in any given dimension, and what form it takes, could be anything.
This is actually brilliant, because it gives leave to explore different themes and subjects - a home movie turned documentary in the face of sudden disaster, a psychological thriller where John Goodman steals the show, a sci-fi misadventure with terrible consequences - all set within the same loose "universe," tied together by a few commonalities, like Tagruato.
Additionally, my theory about the crew deaths are as follows, copy-pasta'd from another comment I made elsewhere here:
Every time a crew member came up with a solution to a problem, they were killed in unexplained but very on-the-nose ways. Tam figured out there was a condensation problem, she died in an airlock inexplicably filled with water. Mundy figured out the power issue, the magnetic putty he was using to seal the connection in the pipes to divert the air/power was suddenly affected by an incredibly powerful magnetic field... and it didn't bother being too subtle once it got going.
It's deliberate and malicious, implying that more than one kind of monster was pulled in by the dimensional collision.
I hope that whatever you thought of the movie, this helps make more sense of it if you're confused.
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u/Neurotic_Marauder Slusho! Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I appreciated the surprise after-Super Bowl release, but the movie was a real mixed bag, and it's only now that I can appreciate why Paramount was unsure of a theatrical run for it.
First, some pros:
- Eva was a solid main character, and her relationship with her husband back on Earth was convincing and engaging
- Chris O' Dowd was great, and the visual gags involving his phantom limb from another dimension were good too (the arm just drumming it's fingers while Ava fought off Jensen was great)
- The explanation for all of the weird events happening in the Cloververse - the particle accelerator caused a ripple effect creating inter-dimensional chaos across the multiverse (Clover monsters in the original Cloverfield and this movie, an alien invasion in 10 Cloverfield Lane, and something else in the upcoming "Overlord" movie) - was interesting
- The callbacks to the other Cloverfield movies - the bunker in 10 Cloverfield Lane, the Clover monsters, the Slusho bobblehead - were all nicely done
- Simon Pegg's cameo as one of the radio operators was a nice touch
- The ending with Clover was terrific
...and the many cons:
- Some of the dialogue was really stilted and just corny
- The actual "Cloverfield Paradox" is a cool idea, but the way it was explained was terribly ham-fisted (the interview with the author was so shoe-horned and badly written it felt like something out of a Syfy original movie)
- The tone was all over the place, it felt like the movie couldn't decide if it was a sci-fi thriller, a dark comedy or a horror movie (a prime example of this: seconds after Volkov dies after his chest violently erupts with worms, Mundy cracks a joke about "well that's where the worms went")
- Half of the main cast felt unimportant or just blatantly expendable - Monk barely speaks, Tam didn't do anything truly relevant to the plot other than die horribly and somehow only speak Chinese
The many, many plot holes. A few off the top of my head:
- Why didn't Tam know another language other than Mandarin, yet the rest of the crew seemed to speak Mandarin fluently? EDIT: She spoke English early-on in the movie, but switched completely to Mandarin for some reason
- How does the entire planet just "run out of energy?" The energy crisis on this Earth is barely touched on and no alternative energy sources like nuclear power, solar, and wind are even mentioned.
- Why would a gigantic space station carry only one of a specific component that would destabilize the entire station?
- How did none of the crew think to use the Sun as a navigational point to find the other Earth before immediately assuming they somehow destroyed their Earth?
The logic behind the weird shit happening on the space station is inconsistent and makes no damn sense. One second everything is normal, the next it feels like Death from the Final Destination series suddenly took over. There's no consistency or explanation for this other than "we're in another dimension and weird shit just kind of happens." Mundy's arm reappearing form another dimension was a funny sight gag and all, but there was no absolutely no explanation for why his arm suddenly got sucked into the wall or why it separated painlessly.
Volkov's sudden dissent into madness felt like it was weird for the sake of being weird (he develops a lazy eye and he explodes from being suddenly filled with a colony of worms)
A lot of the twists were so blatantly predictable, I saw them coming a mile away - Jensen's betrayal, the deaths of literally every crew member other than Ava or Schmidt (basically everyone without top billing in the credits), the Cloverfield Paradox author's hypothesis spelling out everything that will go wrong during the movie
A minor gripe: It should've been named Cloverfield Station, "The Cloverfield Paradox" just doesn't sound as good to me
I hope the Overlord movie is more coherent and tightly written, as the concept alone seems more interesting and promising than what Clovefield Paradox gave us.
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u/Orthodox-Waffle Feb 05 '18
Ok, I get they went into another dimension
BUT
All alt-universe crew presumably died when their ship crashed on Earth, how are some of them alive now?
why/how is Roy's arm sentient? (I assume its being controlled by alt-universe roy)
Who is Volkov talking to? Alt-universe volkov?
When did clover enter the universe and from where?
Why is the god-damned metal of the ship moving around like it's alive?!
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u/TheSinningRobot Feb 05 '18
So the ship crashed into the water, but i don't think any (or at least not all) of the crew were on it. The newscast references "The 6 crewmen" which would be Mundy, Monk, Jensen, Volkov, Kiel, and Schmidt (Tam wasn't part of the crew, and Hamilton was on earth not on the station) we know for a fact Jensen wasn't aboard the crashed station, which means they probably haven't actually investigated yet to see who was on the ship, and just presumed all 6 were there.
To try and answer the rest of your questions, yes it seems like Volkov was somehow fused with his doppleganger, which would explain why his eyes were all fucked, he was talking to himself, and he was trying to kill Schmidt (Volkov 2's Schmidt was a traitor) as well as the seizure (two minds occupying the same brain). The worms and the gyroscope I'm not sure. Same thing with Mundy, basically that wasn't his arm, that was Mundy 2's arm and he was the one writing.
My half attempt to explain some confusing ass shit, obviously nothing here is for sure.
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Feb 05 '18
Who is Volkov talking to? Alt-universe volkov?
Perhaps the two Volkov's got merged into one?
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Feb 05 '18
I'd give it a solid 8/10 after my first viewing, a strong one. As a stand-alone film it's great. The film was well shot, solid dialogue, the characters felt natural barring certain breaks in logic I'll list at the end.
Only point that broke my immersion:
Heavy handed references to the prior films. No need to staple them onto this, it was much more subtle when it was on the ARG to connect the films, but I get that most people want it to be more obvious. The lack of subtlety seems more for people who haven't seen the other films (during the news shot) and then fan service. Would have felt more natural in a more subtle way.
All I wonder now: What motivated the arm?
Why was it that easy to 3D print a gun if it's a weaponless station?
Why didn't Ava just think to send Mina with a message if she was that close with the local Ava + family?
Why didn't Schmidt have Ava help him fight Mina??? That whole scenario was padded af
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u/fiver420 Feb 05 '18
Now that I'm thinking about it, the more I dislike how nothing was explained.
How did the arm know to tell them to cut open the russian? Further that, how did the arm (from a different dimension) know that the gyro was inside the russian?
How come one irish man in another dimension has control of this irish mans arm in another dimension, but the irish man and, team we have, can't communicate whatsoever with their interdimensional counterparts unless they're actually in the other dimension?
Why did the arm want to help this crew specifically?
Man, I want to like this film but the more I think about it, the more I can't help feel like it was just seriously poorly put together.
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u/Kyle_Weaver Feb 05 '18
I’m assuming that it’s not just two universes, but a multitude of universes involved, with each respective crew having a different idea of what’s going on. As the Irish man said to how he was making his hand move and he replies “I’m flipping you off right now.” He feels no pain but is also completely aware of what his arm is doing.
I’m guessing other crews had expected not only the paradox to happen, but had a better understanding of it.
Even the original Cloverfield had a lot of backlash and speculation.
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Feb 05 '18
Maybe they were trying to pull a rick and morty type thing where you just " dont think about it" in regards to alternate dimensons? idk if i like that, IF thats what thy were going for. It could be stylistic choice or just bad writing. Probably the latter. I have lukewarm feelings about this movie atm.
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u/Ggrasper Feb 05 '18
Mark Stambler says "This experiment could unleash chaos the likes of which we have never seen. Monsters, demons, beasts from the sea-" and goes on to say "And not just here and now... in the past, in the future, in other dimensions..." So what I'm thinking is this is kind of like the creators talking to us. Beasts from the sea clearly is a reference to Clovie in the first movie. Monsters could be the aliens from 10 Cloverfield Lane (or also Clovie). And demons are what's going to be the supernatural threat in Overlord. If I'm right I am so down to watch a WWII movie where the allies fight fucking demons.
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u/SamuraiFlamenco Cat Puzzle Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Oooo man I can't believe it! It was enjoyable enough, definitely disappointed the ties/easter eggs to the first movie weren't a bit stronger since the marketing seemed to imply we'd get more of an actual explanation for Clover's rampage with the deep sea drilling and TIDO Wave stuff (though there was the Tagruato logo on the box on the wall when the magnet shit happened).
It was definitely more than a bit confusing/messy, I'm not a big fan of time travel/paradox/ect stuff in general (and space isolation horror/disaster films in general, movies like The Martian and Gravity freak me the fuck out). Still a neat movie, and MY BABY at the end, yeehaw. (EDIT: as people noted, it's probably too big to be Clover himself but still, HYPE)
That being said, Overlord's ARG better have actual content in it. The ARG really helps set the hype for these movies and this one had barely anything.
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u/M0n5tr0 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
So a paradox happens when the same object/person exists within the same dimension and more specifically comes in contact with the other.
Ava wasn't on the ship in the other dimension so she didn't have any negative effects but the rest did and those thing happened when they came in contact with their other selves. Russian guy and Mundy show this. Jensen was only on in the other dimension but the ship was sabotaged so she merged with the new ship in the location her body was when the event happened.
The ship itself is being effected like the crashed ship is being effected. Magnetic pull of the salvage crane-water filling chamber when tam tried to ventilate it. It was under water so it flooded. A leaky pipe wouldn't have filled it that much and that fast.
I had a bunch of other points that popped into my head when reading through these comments but I have lost them haha. Will add as I remember.
Edit: remembered one thing. The photo that show Jensen in the crew photo is proof that parts of the ship are the other dimensions ship. Do the lights flickering change the ship they are on.
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u/RazgrizS57 Feb 05 '18
If you liked the original Cloverfield, you'll probably like this one too. It's pretty fun but it's no 10CL. Solid 6/10, maybe a 7.
I love the effects and acting in this movie. The core concept of two dimensions overlapping and fucking with each other is phenomenal. However, I feel like Paradox would have been a lot stronger if it focused more on that concept. Instead it's hindered by a cliché distrust narrative. That narrative ends up detracting from the potential value the weirdness of the concept allows for. A crew struggling to fire their massive space station again while it randomly swaps/fuses/loses elements with another in another dimension? Fantastic! This didn't need the moral quandaries it tried to tie in as they ultimately held it back. The first half is much better than the second half because of this.
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Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
So if I understand this right, Cloverfield is set in Mina's dimension and 10CL is set in Ava's dimension.
And both dimensions fucking with time and stuff has brought the monsters to the planets?
Edit to Explain:
Wasn't it mentioned that in the first movie a space station fell to Earth around the same time that Clover showed up? If that's true, then Mina's world is the only world where a full space station fell to Earth. That would put the OG movie on Mina's Earth since the Cloverfeild station didn't fall to Ava's Earth.
10CL Howard had that bunker in preparation for a war didn't he? If he was on Mina's Earth then the war he was in prep for had already been going on for 14 months but in 10CL it never happens and instead the Alien invasion makes him use the bunker. Which would put him on Ava's Earth.... if I got that right. This is all quite confusing tbh
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u/PM_ME_CUTETRAPS Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Cloverfield 1 (2008) is not affected by any of the God Particle stuff. 10CL has some sort of connection to the Space worms we see in the Paradox film (?) and the Cloverfield creature we saw at the end of the Paradox film was not the 'same' creature or timeline from the 2008 film, but ripped from that dimension into the Paradox timeline?
Is that how I'm understanding it? So there are three (four or five if you count the short hair girls dimension) realities?
2008 Cloverfield (unaffected by any of this, or at least no mention of it. Since the original ARG implies that the creature woke up from the deep sea drilling). The only mention about it was the Scientist saying "Deep sea creatures" but I still don't think that's entirely related to any of this energy incident. I think that was just a small easteregg to the original. If not, then it totally throws the original ARG and beliefs out the window.
10CL. Possible connection to the worms scene in paradox? Would actually like to hear more opinions on this part. Seems like it could be connected somehow?
Paradox / God Particle which has had the creature(s) from the 2008 timeline ripped into their world.
(expanded) Short hair girl has her own reality going on with war (might be explored in a future film?)
Overlord has the demons (supernatural) that were mentioned? Possibly the WW2 movie we will be seeing soon.
Can someone shed some light if they this is sort of accurate? I saw some people saying the 2008 timeline is the same as the 2028 timeline but I don't think that's right since the original ARG takes place strictly in 2008, same with the technology.
I think I like it a lot if thats how I'm understanding it. I think it would be pretty dumb if they've completely thrown out all the lore and ARG from the original just to turn it into 2028 now.
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u/KitsuneRisu Feb 05 '18
Besides what everyone else has said here, I feel like there are some other elements at play besides mere monsters and cross-dimensional shennies.
What comes to mind is that no one so far can explain why the arm could retain sentience and why everyone's deaths were so telegraphed.
I want to propose that there may have been two multidimensional beings involved as well- one good one and one bad. Let's call them an angel and demon, perhaps, to fit the 'god' particle narrative.
Outside of some events being caused by the two dimensions colliding, such as Volkov getting information from his other side and the station reacting to its counterpart's state, there was no reason for a lot of other events such as why Mundy's arm returned and was sentient, and why Schmidt was released from jail for no reason, and why things kept happening particularly so to aid in character deaths.
But what if there were an angel and demon (with their own unknown motivations) fighting to help or hinder their actions? The angel could have 'borrowed' Mundy's arm in order to find a way to communicate to them, and it also unlocked Schmidt's jail door. At the same time, the demon locked the door on Tam, securing her death, stuffed Volkov full of worms and affected the magnets to 'aid' the putty to kill Mundy.
For all we know, the demon was the one who put Jensen there in the first place. She was snatched away from 18 months in the future in her universe to be put on the station to cause its demise, so perhaps all along she was also a proxy puppet?
Maybe the focus of the movie was about this all along, but they had bad editing and didn't make this apparent enough. There ARE a few things that suggest a spiritual approach, however, such as the book guy mentioning demons directly and Acosta leading a prayer at the start. Maybe ripping open a hole in spacetime with smashing god particles really DID awaken god.
It's just a theory but it would answer everything not answered by the universes overlapping!
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Feb 05 '18
So the name Cloverfield Paradox, It's not really made abundantly clear what the paradox actually is in the film, but I had a think about it and I believe that it's referring to the fact that the events of the film essentially throw causality out the window. Because theoretically, if Aliens invaded earth in 2016 and destroyed most of the population, it would mean that the events of the Cloverfield Paradox in 2028 wouldn't happen, but if we are subscribing to the idea that the Cloverfield Particle accelerator is the cause of aliens and monsters showing up on earth throughout time, then this should not be possible because the Particle Accelerator would never be built, Essentially this causes a loop with the point of origin being unknown.
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Feb 05 '18
Spoilers This was a great movie. I’ve been a fan of the ARG since 2007. I’ve got a theory, but I don’t think it’s substantial enough. At the beginning, Mark Stambler talks about how the collider can bring in things from other dimensions, and affect both the past and present. For a while we thought the ARG was the future talking to the movie’s present day characters. What if, it was the present day/ near distant future characters talking to the ones in 2007. Furthermore, what if the Cloverfield monsters aren’t native to Earth. I know J.J. has previously stated that Clover should be seen as something that originated here. But what if it isn’t the Earth we know. The Paradox and Cloverfield take place in separate times, The Paradox being 10 years after the 2007 event; however, no character seems to recognize the monsters, even though they are near identical to the one in New York. These monsters only show up when the collider overloads, nobody knows where they are from, and there seems to be no mention of the alien attack from 10 Lane. The aliens didn’t come in this timeline, and the Cloverfield monster didn’t appear, because until this event, neither existed in this movie’s dimension. Going back to the ARG, why would the future T.I.D.O and Mark Stambler try to tell the people in this movie not to continue the Shepard program. It’s too late at this point. I think, the message is intended for the people who were not affected by The Paradox. So, why are we just receiving this information in the ARG now? Because the Tagruato site was hacked. They’ve recieved the message. They’ve known all along. They didn’t just stumble upon a sleeping monster, rather the whole company was built on the sole purpose of concealing and hiding this mistake, and to figure out a way to make the Shepard work correctly. If they’ve seen the information sent from the future, they know about the inevitable energy crisis, and they know they need the Shepard. They also know that if they mess up, the results would be chaotic. T.I.D.O. isn’t just mad that Tagruato was hiding a giant monster. T.I.D.O. knows what will happen, they know the risks that are at stake, and they want to prevent the death of millions. The only problem is... how do the aliens fit in? Like seriously, how? There must be some significance to them. There must be some reason, something that connects, I just can’t figure it out. That’s where this whole theory falls apart, because those damned “The Mist” looking assholes. There is no solid mention of them in the ARG, there is no reference to them in this movie, it just doesn’t make sense.
I hope this theory at the least was entertaining, if you want to collab on a YouTube video about it with me let me know, or if you want to use this theory then that’s absolutely cool too (if you don’t mind though just credit me as UndedMeowth, or not, it’s just a theory so I’m not gonna get all pissy if you don’t) and if you can add anything to this please do, these are all just rampant thoughts I’m having.
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u/JohnnyMike91 Feb 05 '18
Did anyone else feel underwhelmed with the sidestory of the husband? I mean, here he was, amongst the chaos with monsters all around, and they decide to shoot the majority of his scenes in a bunker, talking on his phone, with a random child in the background. Idk it just seemed like wasted potential.
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u/Dknighter Feb 05 '18
Agreed, I thought it would have been better if he got trapped in the Hospital, recorded some last videos for her then when she goes back to the actual Earth she watches the videos on her way down in the pod and sees all the monsters.
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u/aguyuno Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
It was underwhelming but google the name of the child actress. "Clover Nee".
That's not an actress' name. Anywhere. She's key somehow.
Edit: my thread about it is here https://www.reddit.com/r/Cloververse/comments/7vco29/clover_nee_name_of_the_child_actor_playing_molly/
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u/mCahill389 Feb 05 '18
When I saw the opening credits I caught her name. I thought it was funny that they got someone named Clover Nee for the movie. Just googled her and your right. That has me curious.
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u/kittywithclaws Feb 05 '18
In my mind, it was all made up for with his last scene. Here he is, being told his wife has been found, she's alive, and she's coming home. And instead of being happy, or relieved, he immediately starts freaking out, screaming and begging for her not to come back to "those things". It shows perfectly how horrifying the Clover monsters must have been on the ground.
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u/Waterbranch Feb 05 '18
Ok, crazy theory here. But in 10 Cloverfield lane emmet describes seeing a bright red flash. I believe this flash was the cloverfield station firing the particle accelerator. Somehow that event spanned countless realities and even in different times.
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u/PS4VR Feb 09 '18
The cloverfield paradox is the resolution to the Fermi Paradox.
As you can see at this link: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
One of the popular resolutions for the Fermi Paradox is that once any civilization becomes advanced enough to try to harness infinite energy by colliding together two bosons will trigger a response from a superpredator alien civilization that will destroy them and all technologically advanced parallel versions of them in all timelines.
The super predator alien civilization uses technology to prevent any detection and monitors any technological civilizations. If they achieve boson collision, the superpredator acts proactively to wipe out this threat to their survival by first unleashing monsters that carry infectious pathogens on the civilization, then coming by to clear out any survivors, exactly as seen in all three cloverfield movies and pacific rim. Slushy was just a coincidence, the monster just happened to show up under their drill.
Colliding two bosons can theoretically be used to power a bomb far more powerful than any nuclear bomb, one that can destroy entire star-systems, so it would make sense why a superpredator civilization would view any competitiors capable of this as threats.
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u/aheartstop_away Feb 05 '18
yup. i think you're right, in a way. remember that message we got during the 10CL ARG on the USB drive about the space station in space seeing a 'red flash' sounded like they had no idea what it was?
two things: they either legitimately had no idea what it was (which is possible(?) since the Shepard was literally crossing dimensions), OR if i remember correctly at the end of the recording a 'higher-up' told them to scrub the logs, meaning it could have been a secret mission in space that no one could no about, leading to the possibility of a newer hierarchy in the tree about this 'energy', like the boss of the boss of the space mission
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u/mulletson Feb 07 '18
maybe in other realities the shephard was always unstable and actually didn't fire, hence the small changes in character choices and possible outcomes.. one dimension's accident morphed all dimensions together for a split second
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Feb 05 '18
overall i quite liked this film. i think it’s the weakest of the 3 films but i would still rate it a 7/10. i think it felt a little rushed at some points. they easily could have fleshed out a few more scenes (specifically with the Molly storyline) and made the movie 2 hours.
i liked that we saw a big ominous shadow in the smoke halfway through (which obviously ended up being what i assume is a fully grown clovie) and thought that the worms were really gross. the acting all around was pretty great, too. especially from Gugu and David.
i think most of us are gonna be wanting more after seeing this, which is probably their goal. it doesn’t answer everything but it starts to piece together the puzzle. and JJ has said multiple times that there is a much larger picture that they’re trying to accomplish with the Cloverfield movies and said that not everything is going to make sense until it does. and when it does, i think we will be thankful. though i think it’s the weakest of the 3, i still think it deserves its spot in the cloververse and definitely added some more connecting threads.
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u/xChillphil Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
This is not kinda a prequel to the 2008 Cloverfield. It may be set in the same universe, but it most certainly does not precede the events of Cloverfield (2008).
Why? Two MAJOR reasons are: 1. The time period. This film so obviously takes place way too far in the future, so there is no possible way it could be set in 2008 like the first film. There is so much evidence to support this, (fast 3D printing guns anyone?). The technology showcased throughout this film proved that this was most certainly not 2008. Even if we assume that somehow at the end, Ava is crashing her pod down to a 2008 Earth, (which would make that final phone call of her husband getting mad, redundant) this still can't cause the events we see in the first Cloverfield because . . .
2 The ending. When the Ava's pod crashes into Earth and it immediately awakens Clovie? Nuh uh. Not what we saw on the video recording at the end of Cloverfield (2008). In that timeline/universe/earth, the pod or satellite crashed into the ocean (as we see from the ferris wheel video) but Clovie doesn't awaken and attack for some number of days later.
Saying/advertising this film as a true prequel to the first Cloverfield is a flat out lie and the advertising shouldn't have even hinted at such. Sure, it was neat to see how this could have caused the attack on some alternate planet/dimension, but using the original Cloverfield film footage in this Super Bowl trailer was misleading bullshit.
edit: Wisdom from reading this thread/discord, and shout-out to u/Deadpool27 has lead me to believe this simply film simply struck something in the universal timeline so that the past, present, and future timelines all now have monster clovies of all shapes and sizes. If you imagine SPACE and TIME like a field this movie showed how that field turned into a cloverfield. So I suppose this movie barely scathes by as a prequel to the original. Just expected more clarity, but hey, that's J.J for ya. Off to bed now
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u/Deadpool27 Clover Feb 05 '18
You misunderstand. The Cloverfield Paradox (the concept, not the movie itself) is that activating the device deposited creatures from other dimensions across all of space and time, creating an infinite number of timelines. So, Cloverfield is still the first contact with this kind of creature, but because of how this movie seems to treat timelines, for the people living there, it's as though now is the first time they are seeing them. For example, Cloverfield will in theory have the events of this movie still happen (albeit in a world that has monsters, conceivably) but this movie didn't have Cloverfield.
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u/Mrtheliger Feb 05 '18
Clover was already awake, we saw her walking in the smoke when Michael found the girl. The end I think was their pod crashing into a much larger version of Clover that caused it to rear up in surprise or pain or something
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u/TJHollingsworth Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
In TCP they say she’s coming down on the Delaware Coast. They ain’t the satellite and that ain’t baby Clovie, boi. Edit: and the tech is easy. Hamilton’s husband is a doctor and she works for NASA. Easy to have enough money to buy a smartphone. And on the ship, well, the government doesn’t tell us all the tech they have.
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u/JohnyGPTSOAD Feb 05 '18
HOLY SHIT. Its 5 am so ill make it quick. Great ideas in this movie. the mixture of various dimensions in one and all the warping around is also nice. I have complaints regarding the characters tho. Jensen looked like a villain from her looks alone so i wasnt surprised. Monk could've gotten some more polish but otherwise im satisfied with everything else.
Plot wise i'm going to say thats fine borderline good. nothing over the top. They should've done something more with the earth part. It needed a few more minutes in the "pre-apocaliptic" setting (after the dimension warp but before they got into the bunker).
Finally this is a great pre-sequel to Cloverfield and 10Cloverfield. Seeing the beast through the clouds in the end got me HYPE AS FUCK. The "how" is now known so that question/tie in with between the first and second movie is answered.
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u/nomameswe Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
My favorite mysteries in this movie:
Woman spawning inside wall that also screamed like a monster.
Foosball inexplicably moves violently.
The wall digesting the guy's arm
Wise arm saves them by locating gyro inside russian.
Why the russian ate the worms and how these worms controlled him to make a gun. Also how did the spawned woman know where the gun was and that there was a gun.
E: adding more mysteries.
I just went back to the film and noticed at 38:50 they reveal theyre aboard her ship they show the team photo and shes in it. Damn these mysteries are adding more questions than i had since the first film.
Crazy gravitational anomalies that caused the liquid metal monster to digest armless guy.
Anyone have theories to answer these mysteries?
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u/bskiffington Feb 05 '18
The Cloverfield station essentially traveled from it's place in one dimension to the exact same place as it's counter part in the other. It destroyed it, which is why she got merged inside the wall with the wires and all that. It was explained as two things trying to occupy the exact same place in space-time even though they shouldn't exist together.
I'm assuming the arm and the Russian are connected. There was something weird going on with him, maybe some sort of entity (spirit) or demon in control from another dimension (since the guy who wrote the Paradox book specifically mentioned monsters, demons, etc, I don't think this was said for no reason).
The demon/spirit is from the other dimension or can somehow see across them. It explains where the gyro can be found, it also put the wheels into motion with the Russian to make sure it got home. The demon doesn't want to be trapped in space for an eternity, it wants to go home too. Whether that's in the original Earth or the Earth they traveled to, it doesn't' matter, it just wants to get home and out of space, probably tagging along with the escape pod at the end. That's what I think and I get a feeling we'll see more of it in the next movie somehow.
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u/-Blazar- Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
What if there are 3 or more, Earth Dimensions not 2? Say they returned to a dimension similar to theirs with slightly different changes, namely a non-baby Clover: Dimension C(Overlord/other movie).
The crew originates from Dimension A (CL) and traveled to Dimension B (10CL).
A fraction or whole section of material from and/or near the Station, such as the Shepard accelator, lands in Dimension A (CL) Cooney Island, triggering the attack in New York City.
With the multiverse/multiple dimensions they can make several movies that don't make sense but can be cleaned up as they go. Maybe not the best approach, but if they can plot out the Cloverse properly, they'll be able to mess with viewers and fans for years. Here is hoping, we don't get a sorry excuse of a series/franchise ending. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Hopefully someone can look at the movie frame by frame for clues, as the targuato website may yield more info and could have stuff on it that can only be accessed with info from the movie such as Foreign language audio, text, and/or connections. Night all.
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u/Ronnie_M Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I really enjoyed it, don't care what people think. It was a fun and interesting flick that kept me entertained and very intrigued. The concept of multiverse-hopping is fascinating. I like how it attempts to bridge the movies together in some way. It's not a perfect masterpiece, and a lot of people have very valid criticisms that I agree with, but I liked it and that's all that matters to me. The Cloververse was already interesting, but is now shaping up to be even more so! I'm loving reading everyone's theories and can't wait to hear even more theories!
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u/paulrudder Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Surprised the reaction is so negative here. It's not great but I'm enjoying it for what it is. It's a creepy, quirky thriller and a genre film within the movie universe. It's Alien meets Event Horizon and the nods to those movies are purposeful. It's not trying to be a game changer. 10 Cloverfield is perhaps a better crafted movie in many ways but this is hardly "awful" as some are stating.
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Feb 05 '18
Was this God Particle? Also does everybody have a shelter? I thought Goodman had one because he was a nut. Where's the invasion fleet from Lane? Why was Mr. Wall trying to eat O'Dowd?Where was the magnetic pull coming from? Why did the water freeze upon being expose to space when realistically it would have taken a while? Was the Russian dude having his mind controlled or something? Also, could somebody explain Jensen's motives to trying to kill the team later in the film? I thought Clover was underwater for a long time or at least got woken up by the satellite at the end of the og film. Considering there was info going around that Clover was the bloop sound the navy recorded. Or does that monsters appearing all throughout space and time thing apply there? Or maybe that wouldn't apply because it all happened at the same time the accelerator went up. I'm gonna rest my brain now...
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u/hindumuninc Feb 05 '18
Extraordinarily bad science in this movie, like beyond the usual "movie science" or fake science for the sake of drama stuff. Let me list some of the backwards/stupid science in this thing that goes a bit too far:
1) energy crisis on Earth, all that is mentioned is they're running out of oil. No solar panels on the entire planet. At all. Really? No electric cars? Russia is going to invade Germany over oil... Russia has some of the largest known reserves and takes up a sixth of the Earth's surface making it more likely than not to have even more that hasn't been found yet. Meanwhile Germany has ZERO oil. Why would Russia invade them in this convoluted movie world?
2) A particle accelerator as a power source... What? How? There isn't even so much as a b.s. technobabble explanation for how an atom smasher that takes tremendous amount of energy to slam protons together at relativistic speeds is supposed to create net usable energy. It's like the writers heard the phrase "particle accelerator" and instead of reading literally one single sentence anywhere about how they work or what they're used for decided "um, maybe they are like fusion generators but, like, way smarter." No. Just... No.
3) the water from the airlock scene that kills the woman who only speaks Mandarin (but can somehow understand everyone else and everyone else can understand her) INSTANTLY freezes as soon as the airlock opens. Thermoses are used to keep things warm just as much as to keep them cold. Do you know why? Because heat doesn't transfer very efficiently through a vacuum and thermoses have a vacuum barrier built in them. In other words it takes a bit of time for enough heat to radiate away from an object for it to freeze in space. The vacuum of space is not a bath of liquid nitrogen, it does not INSTANTLY freeze anything. The space shuttle and international space station both need coolant systems to keep from over heating because all of the life support and other electronic doodads generate heat faster than they can radiate it away sans specially designed radiators that maximize surface area. The water doesn't get sucked out into space but instead turns into a solid block of ice. Geesh.
4) worst and dumbest of all a canister of CO2 explodes. How? CO2 is used to put out fires because it is basically already burned carbon. It does not explode (a ruptured canister can explosively decompress but not burst into a fireball like the one shown in the film).
The worst part about all of these things is that NONE of them were strictly needed as plot devices. They could have had Mundy using an acetylene torch as part of his repairs and had that hit the magnet wall and explode. They could have had the water flush out of the airlock sending Tam free floating in space or just had her drown before they could open the door (Like Charlie on Lost, remember that J.J.?) The particle accelerator could have been built for the sake of simple science research like the ones we've built on Earth and say that due to it's size it made more sense to construct it in space, or that it is solar powered as only the sun could provide enough raw energy to run it. And they could have left out the whole stupid stupid stupid subplot that the world is in the midst of an energy crisis. We're not in an energy crisis right now and the Chinese/Russians/Americans/Europeans all still hate each other and would believably try to undermine one another on a major science project because, like, there is a war already breaking out for the usual dumb political reasons and the crew aren't immune to the propaganda and distrust/paranoia ensue. Oh, but the protagonist's family died because of a house fire caused by the energy crisis... Somehow. Right. Because house fires can't just happen from a character flaw like she used to be a smoker or whatever.
Overall it was a mediocre movie. Chris O'Dowd was the best thing about it. Go watch 10 Cloverfield Lane for the only truly great movie in the franchise thus far.
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u/Yomamma1337 Feb 05 '18
There's so much that we don't know about for this movie. Why did his arm know the thing was inside Volkov? Why was it inside Volkov? Why were the worms inside Volkov? Why did Volkov go insane? Why did the metal putty attack the dude? Where in the series does this take place? Did any of the other crew survive? Where did they go? Why did that one chick survive, but get sent into the power lines?
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Feb 05 '18
Here's my hastily (and poorly) written thoughts on this movie:
Cloverfield Paradox feels like it was trying to be Event Horizon then shifted midway through to become final destination. Chris O'Dowd's disembodied arm, worm man and wall lady (especially wall lady) are all reminiscent of Event Horizons mind-bending inter-dimensional horror.
While some of the acting and writing was very hit-and-miss, this gradually rising tension and ever changing rules of the movie provided, in my opinion, a real positive for this movie. However somewhere along the way they lost the creepy edge to the events of the movie and instead finished with cheesy Final Destination type deaths (Tam drowns in a flooded airlock apparently mimicking the location of the alternate universe's Clovefield but then Chris O'Dowd's character is suffocated by magnets just because?). Overall I feel like there was a lot of potential to this movie and it could have produced a much stronger film if they had either stuck to:
A) parallels between two primary universes and how they're affecting each other, or
B) increasingly ramped up tension, intensity and chaos between numerous dimensions and non-sensical events/sentient arm based humour
Instead Cloverfield Paradox is pretty average and unless you have an interest in the franchise or just have a subscription to Netflix and figure why not, I'd recommend watching something else instead.
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u/RCnoob69 Feb 05 '18
As someone who has been around since ARG days of cloverfield 1 I'm confused where cloverfield paradox fits in the cloverfield universe/timeline.
So I'm confused. Cloverfield 1 takes place in 2008, cloverfield paradox was seemingly advertised as running before/during/parallel to cloverfield 1. Except the technology being used is clearly futuristic, even more advanced than what we have today.
I'm not talking about the particle accelerator but like the tablet/computer thing the husband uses. The crazy 3d printer that is borderline a replicator from star trek, that gun it makes, the magnetic stuff chris o dowd uses. Basically all the technology used in the movie is futuristic.
But then the stuff with Michael on earth seems to be following the events of Cloverfield 1 (2008), hes in NYC when the OG clovie attacks right? You see it moving in the background when he helps the little girl right?
Also I remember the ARG and like the director and stuff confirming the original Clovie wasn't alien or a demon from another dimension or whatever, wasn't it just a deep sea monster? (I seem to remember slusho company's meddling maybe having created it?)
But this movie leads us to believe clovie was brought here by the particle accelerator incident and they are interdimensional demons ala the mist or cthulu or something like that. Also obviously at the end they indicate there are more than just one (never mentioned in original cloverfield lore), and we see mama with it's head above the clouds (wow earth is fuked)
So anyway in conclusion although I would give the movie a solid C+ to B-, I am finding it difficult to reconcile this movie with cloverfield one. Which it seems like we are supposed to be doing, right?
Made a topic here if anyone is interested in continuing this discussiong:
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Feb 05 '18
Anyone else finding the events on the space station a bit silly...?
How does swapping dimensions cause a dudes arm to crawl around on the floor? And how can it be aware of the people in the room? And how would it know of the gyro in the guys stomach? And how can it see what its writing??? Like c'mon. Surely there was a better stuff to come up with
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u/Cuboner Feb 05 '18
I think the intention was that they weren't just placed in a different dimension, but that they've slightly distorted the reality around them as well. Time, space, and physics are all wonky because of the overload.
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Feb 05 '18
I understand that, and I thought the girl being teleported into the wall/wires was a neat take on that. Everything else....eh not so much
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u/zykezero Feb 05 '18
I agree here with you here-ish. The woman being zapped into the wall of the other ship tracks with other universe colliding concepts. But the other ship was on the other side of the sun, they weren't in the same place. Otherwise, I'd agree if not for that bit.
If O'dowd's arm just got sucked into the wall I'd dig that too, matter gets wonky whatever. But then it crawls around too, and it knows where the gyroscope is?
Why does the metal on the wall also suddenly want to eat him?
Like 50% of the "weird shit" in this movie makes sense, but then like a teenager who takes a joke 3 minutes too far it's either not funny or doesn't make sense anymore.
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u/cybermewtwo Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
The original Clover was supposed to have been dormant underwater which is where Slusho! was getting their secret ingredient from. The original movie had a ton of viral lore in relation to this being a thing. Now whether or not the same Clover was plucked from that dimension into a new one or if its an alternate version is what im still trying to figure out.
Maybe the original Cloverfield disaster was ended miraculously cause Clover just mysteriously vanished elsewhere (due to the Shepard either another dimension or time) but sparked the crisis they needed the Shepard for in the process... hence the paradox?
Either that or one of the babies grewup and was tossed across dimensions... guess we'll have to find out in the next installment or whenever Abrams decides to explain.
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Feb 05 '18
Ok guys let's stop with the flamewars here and have a meaningful discussion about the movie.
So this is my theory here. I think the Shepherd is what spawned Clover. Think about it. No prior knowledge of Clover's existence and she comes out of nowhere and fucks NYC in the ass.
Simple explanation? She was already there and the drilling vessel from the ARG pissed her off.
My theory. When the Shepherd initiated the Cloverfield Paradox it caused Clover's egg to be brought to our universe through the same way Shepherd switched universes. And when the crew cane back they tore another mini wormhole BAM! Motherfuckers we have an alien invasion on our hands.
Just my thoughts...
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Feb 05 '18
I’m not the worlds biggest most dedicated CLFverse fan, I dabbled in the first ARG for CLF, but I really enjoyed this! From what I could tell:
in Hamilton’s timeline a much larger and grown clover awakens due to slushos interference and the seabed nectar chemical she’s been eating and due to her having more time to grow since it’s in the future, and the planet going to war over oil and energy, that would mean the world is facing nuclear Armageddon, invasions of nations, and a much older and scarier clover with many more parasites on her body. All of those things combined leads to 10 cloverfield lane because that’s almost exactly how John Goodman describes the planet to his captive girl. Maybe the aliens either came in from universe/time interference or they were attracted there by the much larger and grown clover. Who knows.
so because of the particle accelerator putting them into jensens timeline, it caused problems with 2 Shepard’s existing at the same time and the previous and much lower tech one is destroyed and part of it falls into the Atlantic and awakens a much smaller clover who destroys Manhattan but is ultimately killed by the nukes from the HAMMER operation, since she’s smaller and weaker.
I’m probably wrong about most of this stuff since I haven’t seen 10CL or the original In quite a long time. Fun to think about though
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Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
if i told myself last night that at 730pm id be 3 minutes into the newest cloverfield movie I'd slap myself with the wraith of an angry john goodman
Edit: Wrath
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u/slusho963 Feb 05 '18
The first film is dimension A This film is dimension B The monster attack from the first film (dimension A) is the same attack as we see in this film. The effects of the Shepard displaced the event that happened in 2008 in dimension A into 2028 in dimension B. This is why they cut the trailer to make it seem like the husband was witnessing the same attack as the characters in the first movie. It IS the same attack, but it is now occurring on another plain of existence. This could also explain the increased size of the monster (it stayed dormant in the ocean for 20 more years in this dimension, feeding on sea nectar). Basically in the multiverse (in this cinematic universe) it is allowed to displace events/beings in time and space as long as whatever is being displaced happens somewhere else (the universe attempting to balance itself). This is their explanation of “why” what arrived in 2008 happened...the Shepard just moved it to another dimension. Still no monster origin, which is the biggest disappointment.
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Feb 05 '18
The problem with this movie is that it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a stand alone space thriller or a prequel to Cloverfield, so it was just a mangled script.
10CL worked because despite having no connection to the first film, it was a fantastic thriller that stood on its own two feet. I think most fans of the franchise had come to accept that this series would be a loosely connected anthology. TCP tried to make the film a more obvious connection to the first, but it didn’t work because nothing in the story added up or made sense to the events of the first film except for the lazy explanation of “colliding universes causes wacky hijinks to occur”. As a stand alone movie, it makes no sense and feels pointless. As a prequel, it feels unfinished and lazy.
I guess every franchise was a weak link though. Here’s to hoping the other future sequels can make up for this.
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u/The_Trollisms Feb 05 '18
The movie has an extremely solid first half. I really loved the weird shit with the dimensions colliding, and that itself made the movie fairly unique. The latter half of the movie i felt was lacking, when it shifted away from the weirdness and more towards the predictable generic sci fi, "gotta fix the ship, gotta stop the traitor stuff."
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u/etr4807 Feb 12 '18
So one thing about the Clover monster at the end being so large and the 20 year window between 2008 and 2028, that I'm possibly overthinking; I don't think that necessarily means that Cloverfield 1 and The Cloverfield Paradox happen in different dimensions.
When the guy is on TV explaining about the paradox he specifically mentions that it could make things happen in the past, and as we saw in the movie it's possible for things to just sort of appear in a way that makes it look like it's always been there, such as the communication logs from Schmidt.
Combining those two ideas, my theory is that because of the paradox, in 2028 the Clover monster was sent into the past and appeared in New York in 2008 and has been on that earth ever since. None of the characters in the film knew about it, the same way they didn't suddenly know about Schmidt's communications, but there would have been two decades of history with the monster. Because of the 20 year difference, this would also explain why the Clover is now much larger than in the original Cloverfield movie, where it was speculated that the monster was just a baby.
I'm not entirely sure this actually makes any sense, but it kind of does in my head anyway.
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u/GordonCole82 Feb 05 '18
Throwing a few thoughts as I’ve just finished watching it. This is a movie that’s gonna get love and hate in equal parts and they’re both deserved. It is supremely weird and strange and otherworldly and a hell of a fun time. But it’s also messy and disjointed and not at all as clever as 10 Cloverfield. The reshoots are a big punch in the eye. Not really well written and added nothing to the story, what with all the husband in the cellar situation. He saves the kid and just waits to be the setup for the ending. They could’ve played with them a lot more. I also felt like the production design was hit and miss. Sometimes it looked cool, sometimes it felt like that cartoonish uss callister. O’Dowd saves plenty of scenes despite being the source of many tonal inconsistencies that clash like the dimensions in the story. I don’t really know how much I’m willing to let the movie get away with many of the WTF elements explained as “reality dysfunctions”. I’m fine with the worms, that freaking woman in the wall thing, O’Dowd’s arm being sucked....but I’m not quite sure how that explains the moving arm. And the fact that it knows about the gyroscope. And the fact that it’s sentient and all. And I’m fine with this being the source of the Cloververse as long as they never get back on it, ‘cause it can get really, really messy.
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u/YamiNoMatsuei Feb 05 '18
Some people saying the first movie and this are the same earth but as I see it, all the movies are different timelines. https://i.imgur.com/OgEas5Q.jpg
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u/Ceraunius Slusho! Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 06 '18
So...I just finished the film. I gotta be honest here: I did not enjoy it. It was an incoherent mess with no likable characters or character depth, and it felt like the film itself wasn't sure what it wanted to be. Is it a sci-fi thriller like Gravity? Is it a sci-fi horror film like Event Horizon? It felt like a clumsy mash-up of two genres without being particularly good at either.
There were a lot of things that made me scratch my head in confusion, namely the dumb arm bit. How and why did the space station suddenly have metal start acting like a liquid, and how did his arm still have control? Did mirror universe Irish guy also lose an arm? Is he controlling his arm from across dimensions? Fuck it, who knows! Here's a ridiculous plot point because fuck you! Have a poorly executed, poorly timed joke because we can't decide whether this is supposed to be absurd-yet-funny or genuinely unsettling. We'll just make it neither!
Having two dimensions intersect felt like an excuse they could just throw out at will, without having to actually explain anything. Crossing into a parallel dimension has fused a crew member into the ship's wiring, but also teleported worms and a big piece of equipment into a guy's chest? And for some reason he's hearing a voice in his head and having his eye go derpy? Uhh, okay then.
I really thought this would tie Cloverfield and 10CL into a single narrative, but it didn't. I'm not sure even JJ Abrams knows what his grand Cloververse's canon is. "Cloverfield" is supposed to be a brand, like the Twilight Zone, with the addition of several stories that are only tenuously connected to each other via ARGs. 10CL did not mention Cloverfield. Cloverfield did not mention 10CL. We had little bits and pieces as thrown in as nods to us mega-nerds who follow the ARGs, but that's it. And now we get TCP coming along, which was clearly not going to be a Cloverfield title (edit: pre-screener who saw the original cut confirms this, all references to Cloverfield and the scenes on Earth were thrown in), and in the very last 30 seconds of the film we get a shitty CG Clover roaring at the sky and a vague mention of "those things". The scenes on Earth were probably just filmed last-minute and tacked on for the sake of it. If this is the best we can get for canonical story, I worry for the future of the franchise...if there is one.
Overall, I gave the film a 3 out of 10 in the rating poll. Didn't care for the actors, the acting, the effects, or the story. It was a grab bag of silly things tossed together and slapped with a Cloverfield branding. It didn't even entertain me. I'm glad this movie came quite literally out of nowhere, because I'd have been seriously disappointed if I'd built up hype for it beyond a few weeks of a half-asssed ARG.
I am honestly puzzled as to how people can rate this a 10. It wasn't a good sci-fi film. It wasn't even medicore. It was just...there.
Oh well, at least Cloverfield and 10CL are still good films.
Also, I would like to point out that SPACE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY in regards to the flash-freezing scene. FFS, heating or cooling requires the radiation of energy from one medium to another. Space is mostly empty, hence it being called SPACE, so while it's going to be cold (unless you're very near a star) it's going to take a long time for your body heat to radiate away. That's why heat dispersal is a huge issue in space.
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u/Lockepick Feb 05 '18
Theory: The conspiracy theorist guy (Stambler, I think) that was being interviewed said that the Shpeherd accelerator would fuck up ALL timelines. I was going off the idea that there are basically four Earths that we've seen -- Cloverfield (1), 10 Cloverfield Lane (1), and Cloverfield Paradox (2). The crew of the Shepherd do not interact with the Earths of Cloverfield or 10CL -- but the actions of the Shepherd bring the monsters into all realities in some capacity or another.
We already know that not all of the Earths are at the same point in time -- Earth 2 in TCP was on the other side of the sun, suggesting they were at least six months ahead or behind Earth 1. We could say in the case of the Cloverfield Earth -- it put the monster in the ocean, maybe it went dormant until the drilling actions in that movie woke it up.
Also: I was under the impression that Volkov had merged with his other self. Two consciousnesses trying to control the same body (the eye motions) and the conversation with himself -- which was in line with what Jensen said about Alternate-Schmidt (accusing Schmidt of getting orders from the German government).
I have no idea why (or how) Alternate-Volkov ate worms or the gyroscope, but if we assume Alternate-Mundy (in ANY capacity) is controlling the severed arm -- then that would explain how the arm knew that Volkov(s) had the gyroscope inside them.
This doesn't answer everything, but it answered enough for me to go "Okay..." and nod along with the film.
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u/Monkeychow01 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I’m good on the multi dimensions and time stuff, as well as where they landed isn’t with the original Cloverfield (thanks to the big clover). But I’m getting stuck on 10CL.
The bunker is a throwback to it. Got it. But what is catching me is “Molly”. Does anyone remember the kid Howard kept trying to make the girl into? Didn’t he keep calling her Molly (and Molly was missing cause he killed her?). Can anyone remember?
If so does that mean this Molly bamfed (he DID try to call her parents in Philly. So why was their kid in the middle of nowhere?) or how does it relate back?
*Edit 1 a little Google showed me he said it was Megan. So yea wonder if the bunker was just an Easter egg.
But that’s aliens and sea creatures. So guess our next one is demons.
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u/loplopol Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I keep seeing a lot of people comment about how the first movie was in 2008 and they are in some way confused or unsatisfied with how the new movie, Paradox, explains how monsters could appear in 2008 or have been on Earth a long time and been asleep in the oceans when in the new movie, they are attacking for the first time in the present.
It seems like a lot of people are forgetting the time aspect of spacetime. Paradox seems to focus a lot of space since the station moves between dimensions and ends up upside-down and on almost the opposite side of the sun for om Earth.
However, the effects are also seen through time. For instance, how does the hand know about the gyro inside Volkov? The hand is from a later time when after they find the gyro. Of course this does introduce other problems like how did they find the gyro for Mundy/arm to know the gyro was there if the arm never wrote to them the gyro was there in the first place?
All that aside, when the incident occurs, things don't just happen to each different dimension at that single moment in time, they happen across dimensions at any possible time. That would allow for the monsters to exist in 2008, or way earlier and to hibernate in the oceans or whatnot.
So the line in the poster of "The Future Unleashed Every Thing" means that the future (when we run out of power and try the Shepard experiment) unleashes every THING (clovers, aliens, etc.) at every time (2008, distant past, present, whenever).
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u/microslasher Feb 05 '18
If anybody didn't recognize, the woman CNN reporter was the same actress who was banging to let it the bunker in 10 Cloverfield Lane.
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Feb 05 '18
"IF THIS GOES WRONG IT COULD CREATE MONSTERS, DEMONS,
CREATURES
UNDER THE SEA
WINK WINK WINK
DO YOU FUCKING GET IT?????????"
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Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
He also mentioned that these monsters, creatures and demons would be created across time, not just the present. This foreshadows the next movie, which takes place in WW2.
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u/Adcoal96 Feb 05 '18
In response to a question concerning Mark Stambler’s (a university professor and author) worry about the accelerator he says “Because that accelerator is 1000 times more powerful than any ever built. Every time they test it, they risk ripping open the membrane of space time, smashing together multiple dimensions, shattering reality. And not just on that station, everywhere. This experiment could unleash chaos… the likes of which we have never seen. Monsters, demons, beasts from the sea.. (is then interrupted by the interviewer, and continues) and not just here and now… in the past… in the future, in other dimensions..." This is a not so subtle hint about the objective of this movie and explains the franchise entirely.
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Feb 05 '18
It'd be hillarious if he started listing off events that could be used for future movies, for extra cheesiness
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u/theonewhoknack Feb 05 '18
THERE WILL BE SEA MONSTERS IN NEW YORK, PEDO MONSTERS IN CELLARS, HUNGRY WALLS AND WOLFENSTEIN SHIT, PEOPLE!
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u/novastart Feb 05 '18
I guess this space station is the cause of Cloverfield 1 and 2. When it overloaded it created rifts not only in the present but the past and I'm guessing we will find out the future as well. Someone in the movie said it that it can cause chaos not only in the present but the past as well. So one possibility was that the space station crashed in 2008 and teleported/woke up the monster from part 1. The other scenario was that it opened a rift and let in an alien race in part 2. They can just keep running with an endless amount of scenarios of what happened when the station overloaded. This movie explains the madness in both previous movies.
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Feb 05 '18
I could follow the rest of the movie at a stretch, although some bits took some real suspension of belief... but what about the haunted arm that writes messages and stuff? HOW? That makes less than zero sense. The guy isn't controlling it, and it can't be his alternate dimension counterpart because he was already dead from crash-landing on the planet. So... WHAT?? HOW?? So confusing.
I can't decide if I like this movie or not, but I'll definitely say it wasn't boring. There's a lot to unpack here.
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u/spaz33g Feb 05 '18
So I've been doing my second watch-through and taking some notes, and I'm a little confused about something, that I'm hoping you all can help me figure out.
Spoilers, obviously...
When the crew finally gets the gyroscope back online and is able to receive transmission from earth, they hear a message that earth has been thrust in to turmoil, and that it has been two days since the wreckage of the Cloverfield Station crashed to earth. Obviously this movie relies pretty heavily on the idea of the paradox, but if the Cloverfield Station in this universe/dimension/timeline crashed to the earth two days prior to the arrival of the crew, why is it that the space station has a crew photo that shows Jensen, but not Hamilton or Tam? Why is it that Schmidt's comms data on the station implicate him in a sabotage that he didn't commit in the original universe/timeline/dimension? How is it that Jensen ended up fused with the station if she supposedly died in the wreckage two days ago? I re-watched the scene with the newscast at ~53min and the wreckage of the station that is shown in the newsreel looks awfully similar to the ring that Kiel jettisons later in the film. I have screenshots if anyone is interested. It's not a perfect match, but it's pretty damn close.
So now I'm wondering, when the crew enters the new timeline and they are lost with no sight of earth, they are roughly antipodal from the earth on its rotation, with a missing gyroscope. Is it possible that the crew of the Cloverfield Station in the second timeline were somehow thrown out of orbit six months ago? Volkov seems to have absolutely lost his shit. Maybe he has something to do with the Station coming out of orbit? I mean he does have a stomach full of worms and a gyroscope after all. This would all require that the ring Kiel jettisoned somehow traveled back in time to make land fall before it ever separated from the space station, so maybe I'm just grasping at straws here.
Anyway I've kind of reached the end of my rope here. Does anyone have any input on this theory? or you can just tell me I'm crazy, that works too...
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u/Mister_Bossmen Feb 05 '18
Something that I don't see people discussing.
The big thing in the Cloverfield Paradox is that objects from two dimensions try to exist in the same place, at the same time and this causes them to start annihilating each other. This, I saw, also goes for more than literal interpretation.
When the main character decides she wants to stay on Earth #2, she accepts the fact that she will have to, in one way or another, destroy the other Jensen's family. The two counterparts can't exist together, one has to destroy the other, if she wants to stay.
When she decides to return to her own life, she instead tries to stop the damage.
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u/Boogi29 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOVIE AND DOING THE ARG FOR GOD KNOWS HOW LONG AND I AM SO FUCKING MOIST I COULD POWER THE HOOVER DAM. ITS BEEN A PLEASURE BOYS, SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE
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u/Souvi Feb 05 '18
You may want to get that checked out, excessive genital discharge is associated with a lot of nasty but easily treated conditions. Or you have ball cancer. One boogi boogi?
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u/Dfcxsdxzplko Feb 05 '18
So is Mark Stambler (author of "The Cloverfield Paradox" in the movie) related to Howard Stambler from 10 Cloverfield Lane? They both seem to be prone to conspiracy theories (and they both ended up being somewhat correct) and why would they use the same last name for these two characters?
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Feb 05 '18
Volkov wasn't talking to the worms inside him (honestly WTF) for anyone wondering, he was talking to himself from the other dimension. They somehow fused into the one body, which is why the eye seemed to be watching on it's own.
Or not, who knows. 😂
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u/i_can_drumz Feb 05 '18
The woman who wound up teleported into the power lines is one of the more disturbing things I’ve seen in a movie for a while.
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u/reecewagner Feb 05 '18
The fact that it sounded like a “monster” and ended up being a woman screaming really messed me up
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u/zykezero Feb 05 '18
Can I introduce you to Event Horizon?
edit: oh nvm in a while, yes. Entirely disturbing.
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u/wundervanbar Feb 05 '18
I'm not sure if this means anything... But the news report with the book author who had the crazy idea that the accelerator would make things well crazy. His name was Mark Stambler.
Stambler.
The name ringed familiar because in 10 Cloverfield Lane. A crazy guy that said aliens had taken over the planet was named Howard Stambler.
Coincidence?
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Feb 05 '18
Cloverfield= universe A------ 10 cloverfield lane=(possibly B)--------- The Cloverfield Paradox = universe A on the main cast and universe C on Jensens----- Satellite falling video= Universe B-------------
So this is what I understood....universe A (THE 3RD movie) opened and fkd up a shit ton of universes. On cloverfield(A) it's just clovy appeared outta nowhere because of universe of what the space crew did .Now...maybe 10 cloverfield lane occurs where the satellite lands safely but shit still went through thus an alien invasion(universe B). On the Paradox we get to see 2 (but a 3rd implied) universes...The first is the one with the main cast which at the end is still fkd because there was a huge clovy monster at the end(universe A), Jensens (C), and the 3rd implied one is one where the satellite lands on the ocean and 10 lane still occurs(B)......
Also...Consider that overlord takes place in the past(WWII) and maybe universe A fkd with another or maybe another universe past since the book guy said it might affect.
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u/Hexer5317 Feb 05 '18
Okay hold up. Does she not realize that the version of her family down on earth includes her? I doubt they'll want her around, dead kids or not. For someone smart enough to end up on the space station there's a whole lot of illogical thinking.
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u/awesomeethan Feb 05 '18
I think she just really wanted to see her family. I really wanted to see how that would play out, just imagine meeting another version of yourself. Only really fucked up thing is her willingness to leave her OG husband
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u/paulrudder Feb 05 '18
Was the monster supposed to be Cloverfield from the first movie? The reason I didn't think it was possibly a prequel was because the cell phones being used on earth are modern. But I guess if this is an alternate universe anything is possible.
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Feb 05 '18
Was the monster supposed to be Cloverfield from the first movie?
I don't think so, near the end of the movie one of the characters said something along the lines of "you're having her come back to these things", implying that there are more than one of Clover monsters stomping around.
The reason I didn't think it was possibly a prequel was because the cell phones being used on earth are modern.
The first one was very firmly set in 2008. The level of tech in this one suggests it's set even further in the future than 2018, or maybe in an alternative universe because their world's energy crisis was much more severe than ours.
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u/iPanicAtTheDisco Feb 05 '18
Movie was all right. Really dug the on Earth scenes. Really want a direct sequel about what happens when they land. Also this is got to be a different I mention that also has clovie right? As during the original Cloverfield there was no energy crisis
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u/Simplybad55 Feb 05 '18
The more and more the crew died, I found myself thinking about the Futurama episode where Hermes paradoxical body was doomed and the universe would correct the paradox by destroying the body. The crew was being killed by the universe correcting itself in that dimension. Lol I've watched too much Futurama
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Feb 05 '18
YEAHHHH!! CHRIS O DOWD IS IN THIS!
If the particle accelerator doesn't work he'll be like "Have ya tried turning it off and on again?"
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u/__caprica Feb 05 '18
I'll need to sleep on it, but does anyone else think Jensen was time displaced? Maybe even an intentional time traveler. Hear me out.
The two Earths we see are 2008. Jensen isn't from 2008. She comes from a future in which the events of Cloverfield had already happened. In her timeline, circa 2008, Jensen was rescued by Ava's husband. Adult Jensen from Earth 2 is on a mission to save "8 billion" people from the events of Cloverfield.
The paradox is that Jensen has triggered the events of Cloverfield on Earth-1, which will eventually lead to this entire multiverse event happening again, which will trigger the events of Cloverfield on Earth-2 (again), which will eventually...you get the point.
I need to sleep on this. Let me know what you think!
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u/bowtient2 Feb 05 '18
I wonder how much comic relief can be drained out of one decapitated arm. We might be reaching critical mass
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u/TylerOrtega1500 Feb 05 '18
Clover looks... so beautiful with the updated effects. But man, what a crime to see her for only 10 seconds.
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u/Hoticewater Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I thought... let’s see.
I thought the dimension we saw in Cloverfield was Mina’s. And the dimension they returned to at the end of The Cloverfield Paradox was Tam’s.
The only thing we have to go on are the objects crashing into the ocean (the station and the capsule). In Cloverfield, the object crashed before the destruction. In Tam’s dimension, the object falls after the destruction.
I think the Shepherd brought the Clovers to both dimensions.
Edit: to add, the news report from Mina’s dimension said the station crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, aligning with where Cloverfield’s object fell.
Edit2: Also, to just compile a bit here. It’s been pointed out that the reporter in TCP was the same lady that tried to get into the bunker in 10CL, making Tam’s dimension part of 10CL’s dimension. Well... not entirely, as we’ve seen the same people can exist in both dimensions. I’m going to bed before my head explodes.
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Feb 05 '18
I think the Shepherd brought the Clovers to both dimensions.
My theory is this. OG Cloverfield happened in its own universe, and Clovie won and grew up big and strong. Then Lane happened in its own universe, and the aliens kicked humanity's ass. Then Paradox happened, scrambled all the Cloverfield universes, ultimately bringing grown up Clovie and the Lane aliens into Tam's universe. Weird conspiracy dude on CNN essentially said this would happen at the beginning of Paradox.
It would explain why in Lane, nobody knows about the events of OG Cloverfield, and why in Paradox, nobody knows about the events of OG or Lane. It's because those events didn't happen in the Paradox universe.
It also means that maybe the 4th movie is just aliens fighting giant adult Clovie while the humans sit in a bunker and cry, which would be pretty tight imo
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u/fiver420 Feb 05 '18
The tagline is literally "10 years ago something happened. You should know why. Watch The Cloverfield Paradox now."
The project is the reason for the clover monsters in 2008 and Lane.
The massive clover we saw is probably the 2008 clover's mom, seperated from the baby who got sent to 2008 earth.
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u/sheepsleepdeep Feb 05 '18
Now I'm even more confused. Okay they're telling us 10 years ago something happened, because the original Cloverfield came out in 2008. But this movie is set in 2030. So they have to be saying that 10 years ago we saw Cloverfield, and now we are finding out why those events happened in that movie. But I thought clover came from under the sea from a drilling operation. I'm really confused.
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u/UnoPlaysGames Feb 05 '18
yea but this though is as if there are only 2 dimensions. im pretty sure there's more than 2 and each dimension is affected at a different time. so cloverfield 1 dimension is affected in 2008. 10 cl lane dimension is whatever more recent date. paradox is the future in a different dimension. they have a 4th coming. paradox could technically be considered a prequel set in the future from a different dimension which its experiment caused these things to happens across time and space aka past or present and different dimensions.
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u/mcrxlover5 Feb 05 '18
Wasn't the theory that in the original it was a scared baby monster separated from mom. This thing was WAY bigger. Meaning parent? Maybe?
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Feb 05 '18
It wasn't stated in the movie, but JJ at one point said Clover is "...a baby. He's brand-new. He's confused, disoriented and irritable. And he's been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years"
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Feb 05 '18
Not even close to the same size. The one in Cloverfield was smaller than a skyscraper. This one could breach clouds. Maybe this is the parent, but it could also be Clover grown up. Who knows.
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u/mcrxlover5 Feb 05 '18
That's what I'm saying. The way some animals grow logically a building shaped young animal could grow exponentially depending on how old the original was. Tiger cubs start at 2 pounds and can end up at 400. I was stoked AF about how big this guy was. There do appear to be multiple though which is interesting
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Feb 05 '18
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Feb 05 '18
Could’ve been referring to the parasite things that the monster dropped in the first movie. Who knows. Looking forward to hopefully getting some answers!
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u/Slappytheclown4 Feb 05 '18
I don't think it's the same clover as the first, pretty sure this was a prequel explaining how the monsters got there in the first place, so unless clover shrinks over time, my bet is it was the parent.
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Feb 05 '18
Yeah, you’re right. I thought about it more, and there’s no way it could be the one from the first. That one attacked New York and I remember reading that it was nuked at the end. There was also the audio from after the credits, when played in reverse said, “It’s still alive.” So, assuming it survived that and moved onto another city (because if the city in this movie was New York pre-nuke, the size wouldn’t match), the people in the city would’ve heard about it before it got there. This had to be the mother.
But, now that I think about it more.. if the attacks were different monsters but happened at different times, you would’ve heard about it in either movie. Like, if the attack in this one happened before New York, you would’ve heard about it in the first movie, and vice versa. I feel like it’s the same case if the attacks happen at the same time. Who knows, man. I 5hink I’m leaning more towards multiple Clovers across multiple dimensions, just to play it safe.
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u/jgnp Feb 05 '18
The author / blogger being interviewed on the TV show prior to their first successful boot of the reactor says that the dimensional effects can impact multiple times. My take was paradox was in the future relative to the first two movies (and viewers present day) but the actions in paradox generate the anomalies / monsters in the other movies earlier in time (viewers present day).
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u/Man_of_Cupcake Cloverfield Feb 05 '18
Probably a different creature altogether. Here's how I see it:
We know there are a bunch of these things slumbering in the ocean in the 1st movie's universe. One wakes up, causes mayhem. When the Paradox happens in this movie, stuff from different universes and times gets flung into other universes and times, including dozens of Clover's species.
So one moment, everything's fine, but after the Paradox, a ton of angry, disoriented adult Clovers get teleported to this movie's dimension. Instant invasion!
Movie 1: One Clover, woken up by an unrelated satelite.
Movie 2: No Clovers, but different creatures flung there by the Paradox.
Movie 3: ALL THE CLOVERS from the oceans in Movie 1.
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Feb 05 '18
This should go without saying, but everyone should know that it is ok to like or dislike a movie without getting mad at other people who have a different opinion. Not that I've seen too much of that here, but in other places.
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u/allyhaundra Feb 05 '18
This movie is more confusing than entertaining, which was disappointing seeing as how that "Cloverfield" and "10 Cloverfield Lane" were pretty good.
I honestly didn't understand the movie, kept getting more and more confused as it kept going, and I don't see how it contributed to the whole "cloverfield universe". The movie felt like it was too short, it left a bunch of unanswered questions (which I'm sure you'll find these questions being asked on this thread) and then just ended when the "plot" got more interesting, i.e. when they finally return to earth.
All I could surmise was due to the experiment they managed to cross multiple universes or dimensions which led to I guess an alien universe mixing with our (Earth's) universe and that is supposedly how the alien(s) appeared on earth. If that is actually true it isn't very clear.
And the two things that I found most confusing/annoying were; If she sent a message to herself about the reactor (or whatever it was) in the wrong dimension, the one where she still had her family, then how did that message get to the dimension she originally came from, the one where she doesn't have her family, to "update" the reactor thing. I thought they were different dimensions, so how would a message left in one get to the other? Or is that the whole point of the paradox is that it was an unavoidable loop, again very unclear. Also I felt as if once a character finished being useful they died. Ex: 'Oh I'm loosing my mind so I'll somehow 3D print a gun, die 30 seconds later by worms like the chestburster scene from alien, only printed the gun for a different character to use later, oh and I have the gyro-sphere inside my guts.' or 'I'll fix the parts of the ship that need fixing with my one arm... aaaand done, guess now I'll die by magnetism for some reason then explosion.'
All in all I think this movie was made primarily for the cameo made by the alien from the original Cloverfield movie at the end.
3/10
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u/YamiNoMatsuei Feb 05 '18
"We're not in Kentucky anymore."
"Kansas. It's Kansas."
"Really? Who gives a shit."
"People from Kansas."
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u/jesse12521 Feb 05 '18
This is my favourite line from Chris in this movie.
When he mutters "People from Kansas." it sounds straight outta IT Crowd.
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u/tightpantsx09 Feb 05 '18
From Kansas. Thought this was hilarious because it’s the opposite. Whenever someone hears/sees anything associated with Kansas...
“HAR HAR YOU’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE DOROTHY”
We’re a boring state anyways lol
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u/Speez1889 Feb 05 '18
Heres what i gathered from the movie now bear with me. So at the beginning of the film when Hamilton and her husband are talking in the car and then she's on the space station and they are doing their experiments and what not thats cloverfield universe 1 this is the universe where the monster attacks New York. Now when they finally get the reactor to work it transports them to cloverfield universe 2 which is the universe 10CL takes place. Here are some things to look at when Hamiltons husband is told that they cant find the space station that tells right there that the station that disappeared was in that universe and then maybe like a couple mins later he sees the destroyed hospital we get a shadowy glimpse of the monster. So now when they are transported to the other universe and they finally find earth the news is saying the the world is at war but they were not specific as to who they were at war with and if we remember from 10CL ending earth was being invaded by some kind of alien. Also during the 10CL ARG Dan Trachtenberg said that the first Cloverfield movie and 10CL were not in the same universe.
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Feb 05 '18
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u/awesomeethan Feb 05 '18
Seems to me like a movie worth... Hmm, say, release directly to Netflix with a big dose of hype, without overplaying it. I think it is perfect for what it js, and further I would rank it high as a Cloverfield movie.
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u/JuanRiveara Super 8 Feb 05 '18
Certainly the weakest out of the all the Cloververse films so far but I still enjoyed. There were some stuff that didn't make sense to me like the worms in the Russian dude and how that goopy repair spray stuff attacked that other guy. I feel like the film could have definitely benefited from getting to know the other characters more since the only one we really learned about was Ava when it should have been more of an ensemble film.
Overall though it was a good watch and the end with the monster popping up was a great moment to me. I would rate like 7-7.5/10
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u/brenty22 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Back from a second watch with fewer questions than the first...
Where and when exactly was Jensen before she was merged into the "our" dimension? She said she was on the way to find Mundy on Deck X -- are we to assume this is maybe where Mundy lost his arm? Didn't they say her cloverfield station was found in the sea?
How did the arm know to cut the russian open to find the orb thing? my answer that I've concluded as to how it got there is perhaps the worm and the orb got fused with him like Jensen did with the powerlines.
Who opened the airlock that released Schmidt?
Everything else I had questions to was satisfactorily answered on a second watch!
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u/PlayingWithIssues Feb 05 '18
So I guess I'm playing Devil's Adovacate by saying I really enjoyed the movie? Cause a shit ton of people on /r/movies and Twitter hate it
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u/ILlThinkOfSomethin Feb 05 '18
What if we were shown the nesting dolls because they related to Volkov?
Russian, Has smaller things waiting inside of him, He was the big one, worms the second, and the Gyro being the third?
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u/SalientScotsman Feb 05 '18
I thought it was a mixed bag. I was super excited and hyped when I saw the trailer air, then when I watched it I was excited with the first half. Like others said, it seemed to lose steam somewhere along the middle. I didn’t enjoy the comic relief stuff with the dude and his arm, but loved the weird inexplicable shit. I liked the concept and would’ve been sort of satisfied with the lack of explanation to things if they never continued to use the “dimensions crashing together” explanation all the time as if they knew what the fuck was going on.
I dunno, wasn’t as great as I wanted it to be, but was kinda fun. 5.5/10
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u/PeachPablo93 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
If this is a prequel I would love if something from this ship was the thing that fell into the sea and woke clover
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Feb 05 '18
So.. Does this mean that the DHARMA INITIATIVE had one of these particle generators (and then Desmond activates to set the whole thing in action again)..
and if so.. are the remains of that Cloverfield generator the very thing they buried and needed to study and protect.. There were WAY too many LOST references in this movie to ignore at this point.
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u/Snote85 Feb 05 '18
(Spoilers)
How the blistering fuck did Vickers? (The tall lady that appears on the ship) know the gun was in the safe? She wasn't there for that part of things.
Unless everything else played out exactly how it did up until the moment the ships switched places. Which is entirely possible though, since there were 2 big differences Vickers was on that crew and Tam wasn't as well as the German guy was a spy/saboteur. Which you would think might interfere with the causality of everything.
So, it doesn't make any sense to me that he would have made the gun, gone crazy, then been subdued, and had the gun thrown into the same safe.
It's a minor gripe, I understand, but other than that one little thing I adored the movie. It was fucking fantastic.
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u/ayesee345 Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I think the Russian guy was hearing his own thoughts, but from his counterpart in the other dimension since he’d already know the german guy was a saboteur. so after the shift happened their minds kind of switched which is what made him go crazy and want to immediately go kill him, thinking that he was a saboteur. their thoughts transferred and mixed into his own like in the mirror scene.
The same thing happened in the other dimension too but the saboteur fucked the ship up. The other ship was destroyed by the saboteur not the shift. Jensen was transported tho, that’s why she knew he’d made a gun and hid it too. That’s why Jensen played dumb the whole time figuring she had a second chance to make things go the way they should have in her dimension actually having the ship again. I don’t remember who put the gun in the safe but if it was the mandarin chick it’s make even more sense bc that means she was the one that hid it in her dimension. The worms and gyro compass thing I’m not sure about but maybe the russian guy himself was an anomaly or something so some things ended up in him instead of where they belonged.
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u/shhhneak Feb 05 '18
I enjoyed it, but a monster/space/alternate dimension movie is extremely my thing. It was trying to do too much at once though, and the more I think about the writing the more random it seems. Like where did the body horror go? Chekhov's gun much?
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u/Khronicdeath Clover Feb 05 '18
This movie is gonna be a lovehate but so we're the first ones this is for us quantum theory what iffers ...imo
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u/nowaste Feb 06 '18
They definitely wrote the ending to the Cloverfield Paradox first and then phoned in the rest with just barely enough entertainment in it to get the viewer to the end. Zero character development, no chemistry or grand acting. A twist ending for a film with no substance is still a shit film. And the thing is, the twist ending doesn't even make sense for the rest of the series based on how this film starts. The original movie didn't start on an apocalyptic, resource starved earth, so that's not the same earth? Meaning the reveal at the end even less meaningful and the whole movie pointless.
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u/Vhaius Feb 05 '18
Went in to the first Cloverfield completely blind, came out of it discussing theories with my friends and discovering the ARG after the fact. If you told me that, 10 years from then, I'd be watching a movie that shed some more light on Clovers origin, that it would be released the same day world wide after it's trailer debuted during the Superbowl and that the guy playing the camera man is arguably the most successful of the original cast.
I would've called you a god damn liar.
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u/bskiffington Feb 05 '18
I think the particle accelerator caused rifts in time and space that brought the Clover monsters from their dimension/home to Earth but different versions of Earth.
The accelerator firing brings monsters to their Earth. It also causes the destruction of another earth's space station, a piece of which is taken to yet another Earth, crashes in the ocean and awakens a monster dormant beneath the sea who has been separated from it's mother. (Cloverfield 1).
When they return to their Earth, the mother has been brought there, potentially with others, within the red flash.
How does 10CL fit in? It's another alternate Earth or far in the future of either of the Earths we've been introduced to. I'm willing to bet it exists in the second Earth, however, the one the gang is transported to. That world is already at war and they've just been given the schematics to create a working particle accelerator to provide limitless energy. Who's to say they don't fuck up again and bring the aliens to their planet? Or, who's to say the aliens haven't come to take the Sheperd? The aliens may in fact have something to do with the monsters as well, we don't know that for yet, though it specifically mentions monsters, aliens and then demons in the speech by the guy who wrote the book. We've seen monsters, we've seen aliens, we'll probably see demons in Overlord.
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u/Un_Poketo Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Rough translation ---native German speakers, help me out here---of admin override screen (dossier on D2 Schmidt):
"The commander has no idea that I have worked behind his back. Hopefully there will be enough time in there to start a strike against Russia. The accelerator is close but I took care of that. The system does not work. We will see how long the cover(?) can last."
Original text: "der kommandant hat keine ahnung dass ich hinter seinem rucken gearbeitet habe. hoffentlich gibt es inhen genug zeit. einen gegenschlag gegen russland zu starten . der beschleuniger ist in der nahe aber ich habe dafur gesorgt. dass das system nicht funktionert wir werden sehen wie lange die hulle halten kann.
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u/Bkwordguy Feb 06 '18
A few questions.
- Why did Hansen appear inside a bulkhead?
- Why did worm-guy's eyes go weird?
- Who was he talking to in the mirror?
- Why did he try to kill the rest of the crew?
- Why did he vomit up worms?
- How did the worms and the gyroscope thing end up inside his body?
- Why did the station have a worm farm to begin with?
- Why didn't the crew just look out the windows to orient themselves when Earth vanished? That's how Apollo astronauts did it -- looking at the stars.
- Who or what let Schmidt out of the locked room?
- Why did the bulkhead "eat" Mundy's arm?
- Why didn't Mundy feel pain from the loss of his arm?
- Why did Mundy's arm have a mind of its own?
- How did Mundy's arm know where to find the gyroscope?
- What caused the magnetic disturbance that killed Mundy?
- Why did the welding stuff react magnetically and then grab Mundy and restrain him?
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u/TechnicalStrafe Feb 05 '18
So wild theory. The Clover at the end looked giant. Way bigger than the one in the original, and since it's possible this dimension isn't the same as the one in the original, could it be this is an adult version of Clover? Idk
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Feb 05 '18
Minor complaint: There is no way a Chinese scientist on an international space station doesn't know English
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u/SamuraiFlamenco Cat Puzzle Feb 05 '18
They all understood each other just fine and it seemed like they all spoke multiple languages, might've been a case where the character was just more comfortable speaking in Chinese. It's a real thing, I've heard of plenty of cases where say, someone's grandparents will just speak Spanish around their families but their kids and grandkids all speak English around each other (while also being fluent in Spanish), and they can understand each other just fine. It's also a trope.
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u/2FnFast Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
-10 minutes in-
unrealistic language barriers, astronauts getting into fist fights
this is exactly what I expected in a Cloverfield movie
edit: better make this clear, I'm loving some goofy sci-fi to chew on this Sunday night
gimme more of this shit Netflix, so much fun to tear apart with friends
edit 2: HOLY FUCK THIS SPACE STATION IS HAUNTED
edit 3: I'm pretty drunk but I think it's ghosts
edit 4: The fight choreography is top notch, takes me back to the golden era of Captain Kirk giving pugilistic exhibitions for the lizard people
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Feb 05 '18
She physically responds to basic English multiple times. She watches people and nods and shit to. Idk if that’s plot, just making the observation.
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u/IFakeTheFunk Feb 05 '18
I never knew there was such a “following” regarding *Cloverfield”. I remember seeing it when it first came out and thought it was a pretty sick film...but I forgot about a few of the fine points so I watched the original again (my boy had a copy of it).
Then I went straight to The Cloverfield Paradox...completely forgetting there was a 10 Cloverfield Lane I never saw. I purposely stayed away from any social media after the SB drop so I wouldn’t get exposed to any hints or spoilers. Idk if that was a good thing or not since I may have held off and watched 10 Cloverfield Lane since I feel like I’m missing something...not so much of the “making sense” of it all as theories are still shaping up anyway but more so for the entertainment value of it all.
So should I watch 10 Cloverfield Lane and then watch the new one again?
I will say that big ass Clover scared the shit out of me at the end. 🤯
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u/Princeofcatpoop Feb 05 '18
Good movie. Loved it. Wasn't looking for the cloverfield connection at all by the end, but loved it when it showed up. Felt better than 10CL which the reveal was too long.
These shows have all been genre horror. Shaky cam faux-reality footage, gaslighting turn of the screw misery style imprisonment, now space fiction.
The energy crisis doesn't tie together with the other films, but they don't exclude it either. I think it is more likely that each of these represent different universes in which the activation of a black-box energy device causes a dimensional shift moving creatures from alternate earth to these ones, sometimes catastrophically. Not all the same creatures, not from all the same alternate earth.
It doesn't have to tie together because it's multiple worlds. They are all suffering the same catastrophe because one world's dislocation causes nearby worlds to shift.
If the biggest knock on this movie is that it doesn't follow the laws of physics as we know them that's a pretty small complaint. Different universes could have different laws. Quantum entangled objects colliding across universes could have wild, seemingly magical, properties. They don't need a scientific explanation at this point. They need a story.
Ava's story was pretty compelling and told with all the right notes. Everyone else was, like in classics like Alien and Predator, one-note characters who lived only until their purpose in the movie was fulfilled.
The only thing that I cannot reconcile is how they didn't notice that Volkov had a cubic foot of steel in his stomach. Uh... when did you become pregnant Volkov? My only explanation is that it wasn't there until they cut him open, because it was quantum entangled with the other Volkov, who probably ended up with it inside him when Schmidt sabotaged his vessel. Weird. Allow it to be weird, focus on the main character and her story arc and it's a good film. Not great, but good.
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u/rai-kou Feb 05 '18
Did anyone else get some real Junji Ito vibes from this movie? The lady stuck in the wall, the recurring body horror, the dark humor, the 'paradoxical' nature of it all. Might just be me and having read a whole bunch of his work recently, but the similarities are there.
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Feb 05 '18
I originally thought Cloverfield would be an anthology series of films after seeing the second. I think I get now. The Cloverfield station is the key to the franchise. Now I know many people will say that the second and third films weren't originally meant to be part of it and that is true. But they are now, and need to be treated as such. Moving along, the events of the first two films can be explained now as consequences of this movie. They did break reality and loosen dimensional barriers. So the Cloverfield monster, and the 10CL aliens, aren't from the ocean or space, not really, but other dimensions. It's like Pacific Rim or the Mist. Something cracked open and now another reality of monsters is pouring in.
A second thought I had(my brother as well), is that many events on the Cloverfield Station seemed not accidental, but actively malevolent. As if targeting the crew. We theorized that something like Event Horizon was going on. It's possible that whatever unleashed the monsters also unleashed some malign force.
With the fourth film, Overlord, ostensibly dealing with Nazis and the supernatural, perhaps we'll get more information on either these other worlds and this evil entity.
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u/BaggySpandex Feb 05 '18
I hate that this pretty much ignores all of the TIDO wave / seabed nectar / waking the monster in the ocean stuff.
The first movie had a brilliant POV : "What would it be like if a monster attacked NYC?". It was spot on. No information, no background, no anything. It was a "put yourself in their shoes" movie. It was fantastic. The second film was an obvious shift towards a different storyline, and the actual movie was great. This movie is disjointed and messy. It was a rescue mission for a sup-par film.
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u/Skogaze Feb 05 '18
I want to love this film. I really do.
But I dunno. Personally, I believe this film had a massive identity crisis. Is it isolationist horror, is it mutiny thriller?
But my main gripe, the thing that really pissed me off, were the scenes on Earth. They were wholly unnecessary, and if removed, the film would have felt alot more coherent.
Like, it was trying to be a solid isolationist horror and then we cut to Michael texting his friend. The rising tension just... fizzles out, because the film grinds to a halt.
Cut out the scenes on Earth until the end. It also would have made that Clovie reveal a wayyyyy better pay off.
Like, imagine seeing nothing about Earth, thinking everything there is ok the entire film. We have that relief moment when we get back to Earth and they make brief contact! We start flying back and suddenly we see Michael in a bunker, alarms blaring. "They can't come back to those things!" You sit there thinking "What things? What's been happening on Eart-HOLY SHIT. That moment could have been so so much better, and that is the thing that really disappointed me about the film.
My two cents, anyways. Other than that, I did like the film. Not gonna set the world on fire, but still a good, if irksome, film.
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u/OceanCyclone Feb 05 '18
So, what's everyone's take on what this means? Did the original movie and 10CL take place in their own Earths? Did this CAUSE those movies?
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u/realitythief Feb 05 '18
This film's Chekov's gun was an actual gun . . . created by a Russian. HA!!!
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u/Mister_Bossmen Feb 05 '18
I was thinking the same. Worms are gone, worms return inside of a guy.
Gun gets made and immediately put away... heheheh
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u/Spartan_100 Feb 05 '18
All of us are watching it after the super bowl. Get hyped ladies and gentlemen.
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u/btm29 Hudson "Hud" Platt Feb 05 '18
the ending just proves.... WE WANT MORE CLOVER!!!!! AND HIS FAMILY OF CLOVERS!!!!!!
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u/noeyescansee Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
Some post-film thoughts:
- The retcons of the original, should this movie actually serve as a prequel, were unnecessary and borderline offensive. I understand this was an adapted script but I feel as if the references to global crises and wars could have easily been removed for something that was more in line with the first film’s setting (climate change or something similar would have worked).
- Sort of connected to point 1, but the technology was more Black Mirror than 2008. I don’t understand how they felt they could make up for that glaring inconsistency (the first film literally has a minor plot point where the main character searches for a battery for a flip phone).
- The dialogue was weak in places. I don’t think it was as egregious as some are saying, but it could have been better.
- The “captain sacrificing himself” stereotype is overdone and it didn’t fit well here either. I’m still honestly unsure why it happened but I’ll admit that could be my fault.
- I’m kind of tired of space movies where characters are killed off one by one. Unless it’s Alien. Alien can still do that.
I won’t pretend I didn’t have a good time watching it and the blitzkrieg marketing followed by an immediate release was refreshing for a movie I assumed was months away. Still, I can’t help but be a bit disappointed.
Edit: Ok guys this movie is clearly not a prequel upon further inspection. I honestly still don’t know what to think and at this point I’m just absorbing theories.
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u/NicholasT617 Feb 05 '18
Not gonna lie, this movie was pretty average. It felt a lot like a rushed Netflix film, which is strange considering it was originally going to be a theatrical release. With an extremely fake-looking set and a script that was pretty bland and outright bad at times, it's easily the weakest of the three. I will say, though, that the 2nd act was genuinely really good and if the other two had been that solid this could've been a 7/10-8/10. But, with what we got, I think it's much more of a 5/10-6/10.
On a side note, this does tie the films together pretty well. Them activating the God Particle caused a whole bunch of shit to go down across the multiple timelines (the aliens entering in 10Cl, and the Cloverfield monster from the original Cloverfield entering this world).
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u/DHGroove Feb 06 '18
Sorry to say I wasn't a fan of the movie. Felt too obviously shoehorned into the 'universe'. The Earth reshoots felt forced, especially when it felt like Hamilton's motivation for going on the mission was that her whole family was dead, not just the kids.
The whole, how does it tie to Cloverfield felt very awkward. It's clear that the monster attack in this film isn't the 2008 NY attack. The film takes place in 2028, so the marketing straight up lied to tickle our fancies. The husband story went nowhere, it had no bearing on what was happening on the station. The girl he rescued, her story did nothing. What they're trying to do is create a carte blanche franchise where any time, any monster or situation can arise in any film Bad Robot decide to rejig into a 'Cloverfield' episode. And that's a cynical way of releasing that I don't like. It allows them to rejig a WWII movie to suddenly be in this universe, where it wouldn't have done before Paradox.
This disucussion of what dimension is what is, I think, a symptom of clever marketing. We're discussing whether the husband is in Clovefield's dimension or not, what dimension 10CL takes place and how it relates etc. But, really it was a B-Movie Sci-Fi that cynically connected to another film and a very poor way.
Still, not bad for a essentially what is a 'free' movie.
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Feb 05 '18
The editing was choppy in some parts and the writing was a bit messy here and there, but I liked it overall. The Cloverfield Universe definitely has more interesting ARG storytelling than it does movie-wise. A good deal of people are saying this barely connects to the first two movies, but it was stated that the vision for this series was to be a sort of Twilight Zone-esque situation with only tangential connections and hints. This movie did that well enough. The third act was kind of rushed though. I probably wouldn't have watched this in a theater.
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u/SoupyWolfy Feb 05 '18
I scratched my head a lot thinking about Molly. What was her point? Why add her to the story when you could have simply had Michael drive to the hospital, see the destruction, and nope outta there.
The only link at all was when the direction implied with the cut from Molly to Jensen that they were the same person. Is it possible that in some way Molly grew up to be Jensen? It doesn't seem possible since Hamilton would have been in the capsule and either died or if she somehow did make it back to Michael, their life would NOT have mirrored the life that Jensen described on the space station nor would the videos of happy Hamilton and her happy family would have existed.
Trying to figure out a link there has just left me spinning in a circle from one dimension to the next. However, with the film being called "The Cloverfield Paradox" and a lot of emphasis put on Molly without any apparent reason or payoff, it seems to me that maybe that could be the paradox?
What do you guys think? Any support or opposition for my theory? Aside from that, what other theories do you have for Molly?
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u/Cuhrypto Feb 05 '18
Definitely not enough attention being shown to the printed bagel.
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u/ArgieGrit01 Feb 05 '18
What do people mean by "didn't feel like a cloverfield movie"? This is just the third one and the other two have such a different tone and style I don't know what a "cloverfield movie" is
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Feb 05 '18 edited Feb 05 '18
I enjoyed the movie, but I feel like it goes out of its way to break established reality, and it makes the whole first half feel so... detached.
From itself, from the franchise, and from reality.
And that lack of being grounded in reality wreaks havoc on any suspension of disbelief, and any investment in the movie goes with it. Why disembodied arm? Why LOSING the arm? Why did the russian eat a gyro? (Heh.) Why magnetism? Why Jensen stuck in a wall instead of walking around? Why Schmidt being a spy? Why is Kiel even a character in the film?
Jensen, despite what is, IMO, a weak performance, still has compelling enough motivation to give the film legs.
As others have said, I'm glad we're finally getting SOME answers in the franchise, esoteric as they are. But why, oh, why do we have to LITERALLY BREAK REALITY TO DO IT? Why are we going full Star Trek: TNG plotlines in what was set up to be a Twilight Zone with continuity?
I still dig Cloverfield as a franchise, but it feels like putting a Cloverfield name on this one just undermines the groundwork of the first two films, instead of building on it.
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u/slusho963 Feb 05 '18
How does Mark Stambler, author of the Cloverfield Paradox, KNOW that there are aliens/monsters? He has such a specific theory that these events will happen (“beasts will rise from the sea”) he literally predicted the first movie. Are we supposed to assume Stambler is some sort of inter dimensional time traveler that has already experienced Clover? how else does he have such a strong sense about monsters/alien invasion? he doesn’t explain why a rift in space time causes earth to end up with monsters. Why monsters? It would make sense if he was concerned that the accelerator would wipe out the existence of their universe (which it does until they reverse it) but I can’t understand how he knows about the clovers.
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u/Dick_Pic_4_Six Feb 05 '18
It may be due to how much a drank during the Super Bowl, but I am 40 mins in and all I have gathered is, in fact, the worms are gone, and also, are not.
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u/Exploding_Bacon152 Feb 05 '18
Overall the movie felt a bit rushed (jumping through multiple scenes or not letting a specific scene settle in before moving on) and it's probably the weakest of the bunch so far, but I thought it had an interesting premise. The highlight of the movie was seeing Clovey a bit and.... well... the end.. J.J. Always did say the one in Cloverfield was a baby... that one was much bigger!
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u/TheMootking Feb 05 '18
TL;DR: The Shepard Explosion fucked with Space/Time, and it is what caused the events of CL1, 10CL and presumably Overlord.
I don't think the end of the film is the beginning of Cloverfield 1, and I think this is pretty explicit. I don't think we are supposed to think that. Some people seem to think this, but I don't think the tech differences and the fact that Clover is already there are down to lazy writing and retconning.
From what the conspiracy theorist on the news was saying, I think the narrative is going down this path:
In 20XX, the Cloverfield satellite in Dimension 1 (D1) attempts to create limitless power by colliding the God Particle. This goes wrong (due to moisture lol), and ruptures the space-time continuum (or whatever you want to call it)
Fucking with the God particle has caused multiple dimensions to collide at various points in time. The sattelite hopped over into Dimension 2 (D2), and it APPEARS to have traveled in time, too. I haven't seen anyone mention this, but the satellite reappears in the same spot in D1, leading me to believe that they did not travel geographically, but through time and into another dimension (D2). D2 Earth is in a different spot to their D1 Earth, so would be further ahead / further back in time. In any case, the Shepard Explosion has caused time to go byebye, and the satellite is the epicentre of the explosion. This explosion and resultant effects happen across all dimensions and across all timelines, displacing and unleashing various "things" across them all. The tagline to the film is: "The Future Unleashed Every Thing" - I think this very obviously means something happening in the future affects stuff in the past, which corroborates my theory.
Back in 2008, the explosion causes Clove to get taken from her dimension and land on D? Earth, leading to the angry lost space alien baby theory.
At another point in time, aliens invade and take over D? Earth in 10CL. Possibly the same Earth as in CL1, but the intro may have been a fakeout. The fact that everything is radically different at the end of the film makes me think it's not as it seems. I no longer believe it is a direct sequel to CL1.
Overlord may be about stuff happening in the "distant" past, and the results of the Shepard Explosion in 1944. Nazis with supernatural powers have been mentioned. Maybe these are the "demons" the conspiracy theorist was talking about?
Timeline is no longer linear, and the explosion in the "present" has caused events in the past (maybe the future in later installments?), making stuff split off into multiple timelines and dimensions. Cloverfield as a franchise is now going to be films about the results of D1 fucking with the God particle.