Common Man's View: 'The Cloverfield Paradox'

I call it a common man's review because I have no experience as a critic, no mastery of language to make me a great wordsmith, and no power over my own mind to break through my own opinions. These are really becoming less like reviews though and more like rants about things within movies in general. With that said, J.J Abrams is a genius and the Cloverfield series of movies is something I hope never comes to an end...and after this movie, I suspect it won't.

J.J. Abrams's Bad Robot has produced another masterpiece in the way of a brilliant fusion between science fiction and horror...is what I would say if the Cloverfield Paradox perfectly imitated what I expected from it. That does not mean that the movie is bad or poorly executed, it simply means that I expected a movie with the word “Cloverfield” in its name and a space station as its setting to have more of a Ridley Scott feel to it.

With that out of the way, we'll say what the movie is actually about. The Cloverfield Paradox, unlike its two predecessors, Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane is not set in the year of release, but rather is set ten years in the future in 2028. Earth faces an energy crisis that threatens to plunge the world's nations into another great world war. The only hope for peace is the potential infinite energy expected to be produced by the particle accelerator called the Shephard Cannon. This is, of course, code named the Cloverfield Project and is met with some criticism in the general religious nut category. Someone caught wind of this potential source of infinite power and started warning the world about the Cloverfield Paradox, an event in which the process our main characters are furiously struggling to facilitate will ultimately rip the fabric of space and time asunder, allowing aliens, monsters, and yes, even demons, to enter our home world. Anyone sitting down to watch this movie can no doubt predict that this is, in fact, what happens.

During the process of accelerating particles, the party aboard the Shephard satellite manages to destroy a Higgs-Boson particle; the resulting distortion in space and time fires the station across dimensions and removes them from the orbit of their own Earth while also placing them in a world with an alternate version of Earth. The resulting scenario begins with a very unexpected new member of the crew (who was a member of this universe's Shephard crew) waking up inside a wall with tubes and wires shoved all throughout her, follows through with a crew member losing his arm in what is probably the most horrific part of the movie; some body horror where he begins to meld with the ship temporarily and then some infighting caused by two different universes meshing together.

Ultimately I have to say that, if anything, the main character of Ava Hamilton is an idiot. I do not care about her struggle with the loss of her children before the movie and I do not care whether she gets home to her husband. That's not why we watch Cloverfield movies. I can confirm, however, that Ava does not have good judgement. Having entered a parallel version of her own universe where the interloping member of the other station confirms that, on her version of Earth, Ava is still alive with her children and husband, Ava's first real decision (aside from to go onto the station in the first place) is to stay in this universe when the crew of the Shephard returns, leaving her husband alone so that she can go and be with a different version of her husband and children. Nevermind the fact that there is no way of knowing what happens when you meet yourself, nevermind that there's no reason for the other her to let her just waltz right in and take up residence.

Body Horror: A+

Setup: A+

J.J's ridiculous plot to take over all of science fiction using a single movie: A+++

Wait, you say, what does that mean? Well, it's simple, really. Abrams's movie, The Cloverfield Paradox, establishes a scenario in which a single event sets up a series of alien attacks across multiple universes. Two of these have already been confirmed in Cloverfield (the original found-footage Godzilla-esque monster movie) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (which is basically just a kidnapping and survival story until the end where it's unveiled that the main character is not crazy and there are, in fact, aliens attacking) and a third happens within The Cloverfield Paradox, when the Clover monster is teleported to Ava's Earth when the particle accelerator successfully fires. This explanation for alien invasions of Earth essentially means that Abrams's latest movie could literally claim it is the cause of every other alien and probably demon film in existence. If nothing else, Abrams already established that the Cloverfield series does not have to be told as a found-footage story (again, see 10 Cloverfield Lane and the manga series the movies spawned), now he has established that the Cloverfield movies could literally be anything. Because the Cloverfield Paradox allows for anything to be possible.

In all seriousness though, I really enjoyed TCP. I wish there had been some aliens aboard the ship, as was teased a handful of times, but I can come to terms with this as an origin story for Cloverfield (also Star Wars, Star Trek and Super 8).