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The Cloverfield timelines cements it as one of the most unusual movie franchises out there. The 2008 Cloverfield kick things off with a found-footage version of a monster movie. Despite its success, there was no word of a sequel until the firsat trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane dropped and confirmed its connection. This was then followed by the third movie The Cloverfield Paradox, adding a little more connection between the movies beyond just the titles.
As a franchise, Cloverfield is nothing if not unpredictable, which is what many fans find so endearing. The Cloverfield Paradox offers some interesting connections to the previous films. Through alternate dimensions, time travel, and the titular phenomenon of The Cloverfield Paradox, the three movies may actually be more connected than anyone previously thought. Watching the Cloverfield movies in order isn’t as hard as it first appears, and neither is deciphering the Cloverfield timeline. Here’s the Cloverfield timeline explained and how all the Cloverfield movies connect.
What Is The Cloverfield Paradox?
Since 2008’s Cloverfield, each of the movies in the Cloverfield timeline started life as stand-alone stories, with the Cloverfield moniker added later for them to be brought into the franchise fold. There isn’t necessarily a right way to watch the Cloverfield movies in order. Each movie tells its own isolated story, and what connects them is the root cause of the specific weirdness, be it the Kaiju in Cloverfield or the arrival of genuine aliens at the end of 10 Cloverfield Lane. The Cloverfield Paradox then theoretically unifies the disparate situations of the various movies with its namesake reality-warping event, with the premise leaving plenty of room for more connected-but-not Cloverfield franchise entries in the future.
The Cloverfield Paradox explains that the franchise is, at its core, rooted in Cosmic Horror. A single plot element links all three Cloverfield movies, and it feels more like something from Event Horizon than the Godzilla-esque Kaiju action of Cloverield. In an early scene Paradox, author Mark Stambler (who shares a surname with Howard, John Goodman’s character in 10 Cloverfield Lane) appears on a television, warning of the titular Cloverfield Paradox. The character, played by Donal Logue, explains that the particle accelerator science experiment in outer space has the potential to destroy the very fabric of space-time.
In the Cloverfield continuity, a space-time collapse is explained as having the potential to cause bleeds between alternate universes — changing the past, present, and future, completely upending reality itself. Sure enough, the experiment an effort to create a new energy source to end the current oil crisis on Earth sends the Cloverfield Station into another dimension, where normal rules of nature no longer apply. The main plot, set on the Cloverfield space station, has the crew fighting a losing battle against an alternate dimension to which they do not belong, victims of warped reality struggling to right itself.
However, that’s only part of the story. On Earth, The Cloverfield Paradox has caused widespread destruction in the form of at least two gigantic Cloverfield monsters, witnessed by Michael (Roger Davies). The first, obscured by a thick cloud of smoke and ash, vaguely resembles the iconic monster from the original Cloverfield. In the final shot of the film, however, a super-sized version of that legendary beast makes a terrifying and glorious appearance, indicating that Cloverfield and Paradox do share more than just a franchise.
The Cloverfield Paradox Is A Cloverfield Prequel And Sequel
When Stambler talks about The Cloverfield Paradox, he is diving deep into quantum physics and unknown fields of science that may not even be theoretically possible. It’s Stambler’s paradox that ultimately links Cloverfield to 10 Cloverfield Lane, as well as connecting both to Paradox itself. To that end, Paradox is both a prequel and a sequel to the original Cloverfield. It’s set in the future in 2028, but its energy experiment events directly influence the past, rippling across infinite dimensions and completely obliterating conventional understanding of time as a linear construct.
The particle accelerator causes distortions in time and space, bringing creatures from alternate dimensions (of which the Cloverfield monster is one) to this reality but at different points in time; chronology is not linear but a flat surface that can fold in on itself, with all possible points on a timeline existing simultaneously. The events of 2028 in Paradox caused the events of 2008’s Cloverfield, which then ripple through time and space in another dimension before taking effect at the moment of the modern-day incident. It’s a spatially-locked time travel mind game, and because the logic is only delivered in theory by Stambler it’s hard to draw resolute conclusions about how the timeline is rewritten.
It’s also worth noting that the science is deliberately a little confusing — this is Cosmic Horror inspired by movies like Event Horizon and 2001: A Space Odyssey, after all. Fear of the unknown is an important thematic element of the Cloverfield franchise. While some viewers might wish for an explanation that makes everything click into place, this would ultimately ruin the suspense and position the Sci-Fi franchise a little too close to the science and a little too far from the fiction.
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