The Cloverfield movie-verse has now officially expanded into some wild new territory.
Netflix surprised fans of the sci-fi film series by dropping the third installment,
The Cloverfield Paradox, on Super Bowl Sunday without warning.
Like the first two films, Cloverfield 3 offers a new perspective on why all of those giant
monsters have appeared on Earth.
If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to click away now because we're about to take
a deep dive into outer space.
Still with us?
Good.
The film centers on an international space station crew who are tasked with trying to
solve the world's ongoing energy crisis by testing a particle accelerator known as the
Shepard.
The mission is critical, as widespread starvation and world wars threaten to break out on Earth.
The crew's miracle machine launch doesn't quite go as planned, though, as it sends the
whole ship to another dimension.
So, how does the film tie everything together, and what Easter eggs can be found floating
throughout the space module?
Let's take a look.
The obligatory Kelvin nod
As the biggest-named producer of all three films, J.J. Abrams was free to sprinkle in
tons of in-references to his own life and previous works.
Fans of Abrams may recognize the name of the gas station that Ava Hamilton and her husband
Michael are waiting on line for at the beginning of the movie.
It's called Kelvin, which is a brand that's appeared in a ton of Abrams' prior projects.
It was the name of the man who occupied the hatch in Lost; it was the name of a spaceship
in Star Trek; and even Star Wars: The Force Awakens included a place called Kelvin Ridge.
The name is a nod to Abrams' grandfather Henry Kelvin, who was very influential to his interest
in movies.
The Kelvin gas station logo previously appeared in a scene from 10 Cloverfield Lane, so it
also makes sense to include it here for continuity's sake.
And that's not the only bit of brand loyalty Abrams snuck into the pic, either.
The Slusho connection
Another common thread found in most J.J. Abrams projects is Slusho, a fictional brand of iced
drinks that seems to pop up everywhere in Abrams' universe, from his hit small screen
series Alias and Fringe to Star Trek.
It also appears in the first Cloverfield film: Jason Hawkins sports a shirt with the logo
as an homage to his brother Rob's new gig with the company.
But their hand in the havoc that levels the planet might be heavier than fans anticipated.
According to the in-universe lore, the brand is owned by a Japanese mining company called
Tagruato which is heavily featured in the Cloverfield Alternate Reality Game, and is
said to have set up offshore oil rigs throughout the world.
The company name is also listed on a letter sent to Howard Stambler in 10 Cloverfield
Lane, which led some Easter egg hunters to believe their drilling platforms might've
opened up some kind of conduit for the original monsters to emerge through.
Digital materials later revealed during the run-up for 10 Cloverfield Lane offered details
of Stambler's job working with satellites and the company's satellite launch — which
detail-oriented fans suspected had gone south and opened up the floodgates of monsters.
However, the events of The Cloverfield Paradox seem to challenge the long-held notion that
a satellite failure started this whole thing.
Alternatively, the presence of a Slusho bobble head doll in the spaceship, along with a sighting
of the actual company logo on-board, suggests that Tagruato has also been funding the Shepard
project.
So that means, yes, they're still totally responsible for all of this, just not in the
way people thought.
In the last shot of Cloverfield - the original movie - there appears to be a falling... something.
Perhaps that's the escape pod seen at the end of The Cloverfield Paradox?
A brotherly bond?
Another common thread The Cloverfield Paradox weaves with the previous sequel is the last
name of another prescient conspiracy theorist showcased in the movie, Mark Stambler.
Yes, Stambler is the last name of John Goodman's character in 10 Cloverfield Lane, and he,
too, seems to have some advanced knowledge of the hellfire that would rain down on Earth.
Mark Stambler is seen giving a news interview about his book, which shares a title with
this movie, and promoting his Twitter handle "Paradox is Real" -- which is also real, albeit
inactive.
"This experiment could unleash chaos."
Some suspect the two characters might be related, or even brothers, as it's certainly no coincidence
that they are equally impassioned about their beliefs in this end-of-days event.
Howard Stambler's bunker guest-slash-prisoner Emmett even makes fun of him in 10 Cloverfield
Lane by poking fun at his theory about "mutant space worms."
That joke becomes all too real in Paradox when our Russian comrade Volkov gets eaten
from the inside out after the ship's earthworms are teleported into his body during the accidental
dimensional hop.
A familiar face
If the connection between the Stamblers wasn't clear enough, there's an even closer connection
drawn between them by way of actress Suzanne Cryer.
In The Cloverfield Paradox, she portrays the broadcast journalist who's seen interviewing
Mark Stambler, and if she looks familiar, there's a reason.
She also appears briefly in 10 Cloverfield Lane as the injured woman who's desperately
trying to gain entry into Howard Stambler's bunker.
"To clarify, you believe the effort to solve the world's energy crisis might unleash demons?"
"She's begging me."
"Let me in."
"Do not let her in!"
Too bad she didn't listen to her special guest that day, huh?
A mama monster?
In unearthed production notes for the first film, J.J. Abrams, director Matt Reeves and
screenwriter Drew Goddard talked about the theories and themes that went into the film,
and Abrams made an interesting comment about the monster:
"He's 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."
Given that Clover could level a skyscraper without even flexing, it might've been hard
for fans to conceive of this creature as anything even remotely resembling a baby, but the final
shot of The Cloverfield Paradox makes that very possible now.
Whereas Cloverfield's Manhattan-shredding monster was as big as any building on the
island, the monster that's shown ripping through the clouds in the final scene looks to be
as big as some small countries.
Which means they've either opened another dimension of craziness with that second Shepard
overload...or Clover's mother has come out to play now, too.
Foreshadowing part four?
Mark Stambler's words during his on-air interview should've been more harrowing to everyone
who watched, especially those on the space station.
However, they tuned him out and got right to the job of doing exactly what he was warning
against because, in their minds, the mission of solving the world's energy crisis was far
more pressing than reading his promoted book to see if he was making any sense.
But one thing he did say that, in retrospect, seems important is how wide-reaching the interdimensional
warps of the Shepard would be.
He told the reporter:
"...they risk ripping open the membrane of space time.
Smashing together multiple dimensions, shattering reality."
"In the past, in the future, in other dimensions."
That certainly gives the Cloverfield movie universe unlimited room to grow, and movie
four, Overlord, is expected to center on a World War II-era encounter involving American
paratroopers and a Nazi-occupied village.
Stambler's suggestion that the past could be affected by their space flub seems like
a clever way of keeping the film in the Cloverfield universe, too, despite hopping back in time
a few decades.
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