Cloverfield Paradox

[BmorePat87]

Anyone watch this yet?

Lots of hype during the Super Bowl with the surprise trailer and dropping it hours later, but it does not live up to it. With promises of explaining Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, they quickly have Donal Logue cameo 5 minutes in with a brief explanation of the fact that the plot device (A giant accelerator that is trying to create unlimited energy) will cause dimension rips across space and time, opening up holes for things from other places/dimensions to get into ours (called the cloverfield paradox).

So the baby monster in Cloverfield is explained as something that comes through in the past after this hole is ripped open and the aliens in 10 Cloverfield Lane are explained in a similar sense but that's left open as a potential alternate Earth.

After these first 5 minutes, we're left with a very generic and cheesy psychological thriller in space. We've seen this movie before but better written. Awesome cast reading terrible lines.

Strange things happen after the accelerator works. They're sent to another universe, the test worms get inside one guy, one guy loses an arm in the wall, and a new crew member is found inside the ship. They find out she was on the ship in this new universe, one where they fail and crashed to Earth. The "cloverfield paradox" is demonstrated not as dimensions opening with Monsters but things simultaneously trying to exist in the same universe and not following the same rules, so funky things occur.

How does this relate to monsters on Earth then? This was originally filmed as not being related to Cloverfield at all, just about the space stuff, and was changed with reshoots to include all Cloverfield references. Throughout the movie some newly rewritten scenes occur on Earth where mysterious things are wrecking havoc in a city. We can't just have a crappy space thriller, we need to be reminded that this explains how a monster attacked NYC 20 years prior.

With 20 minutes left, I fast forward through the very obvious betrayal scene involving a person who comes through from another dimension and watch as the main girl and the guy from Goodbye Lenin (and Capt America 3) make it back to Earth. As their pod enters the atmosphere, a very giant version of the Cloverfield monster sticks its head up through the clouds and roars.

I appreciate how they use this to explain the other movies, because it does work, but they all stood on their own, related only because they were fun sci fi thrillers produced by the same production company. There was months of viral marketing for Cloverfield in which it was explained as a creature that woke under water due to a satellite crash and some off shore drilling. Now it just came through a portal...