The Cloverfield Paradox has a relatively simple plot: a space station crew is tasked with
activating a particle accelerator called the Shepard, which will create a clean and renewable
source of energy for a resource-deprived Earth.
Things start to get complicated, however, when the machine creates a rift in space-time,
propelling the crew into a parallel dimension.
Little do they know, this also sets into motion the events of the first and second Cloverfield
movies.
So, how does the movie get from simple a energy experiment story to an all-out monster invasion
movie?
Let's walk through the last bits of The Cloverfield Paradox and break it down.
Monster madness
Cloverfield fans have long speculated about where the monsters from the first movie came
from, but Paradox finally offers a definitive answer: they came from another dimension.
Oddly enough, we find this out thanks to an on-screen interview with a conspiracy theorist,
who warns the world that launching the Shepard could have devastating consequences.
"They risk ripping open the membrane of space-time."
"This experiment could unleash chaos."
His words are unfortunately ignored, of course, but he's ultimately proven right once an overload
of the Shepard system thrusts the crew into an alternate reality while introducing untold
numbers of hellbeasts to run roughshod over Earth.
The film's closing moments reveal that by 2028, there's been a full-on invasion of monsters
all over the planet.
"You're having her come back to these things?"
Judging from the size of the one we do see pop through the clouds in the last shot, if
there's a significant number of these things roaming about the place, humans don't stand
a chance.
World War What?
Before the extra-dimensional chaos breaks out, it's very clear that Earthlings are already
having a lot of trouble sustaining their way of life.
A global energy crisis has put several nations -- Germany and Russia in particular -- at
the brink of war.
And that sense of desperation and paranoia trickles into the dynamics of the international
space station's crew, which features both a German and a Russian scientist working on
different aspects of the mission.
"I don't have a problem with you" (in Russian) "but your little German boyfriend here I do."
Once we journey with the crew to the parallel dimension, we discover that on that Earth,
war has already broken out, and that timeline's Schmidt actually was a German agent who'd
been sabotaging their mission to stoke the flames of war.
So, chances are, even if the monsters hadn't shown up, the human race might have gone over
the edge all by itself anyway.
The God Particle
Like its franchise predecessor, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Cloverfield Paradox was written
as an entirely separate project at first.
Lane was based on a script called The Cellar, while Paradox was developed as The God Particle
for reasons that aren't altogether clear from the movie itself.
In scientific terms, a "god particle" is a name for what is properly called a Higgs boson,
a particle effectively responsible for the origin of mass.
They're also theorized to have the ability to overlap and occupy the same points in space-time
— unlike other particles, like electrons or protons.
In theory, god particles may have played a part in the fictional function of the Shepard
particle accelerator in earlier cuts of the film.
Or perhaps it just served as a cool title to a weird sci-fi movie that dabbled in particle
physics, but either way, there aren't any god particles in The Cloverfield Paradox,
so it's a good thing they changed the name.
One world saved
It's easy to chalk up the efforts of the film's protagonists to a zero-sum game.
They go through all of the effort to get back to their home dimension and figure out how
to make the particle accelerator work, only to realize as soon as they do that Earth is
now facing a problem the accelerator can't fix.
It's a bitter twist, but there is one silver lining: The crew does save Earth.
It's just not their Earth.
Right before activating the accelerator and heading back to their Earth during the film's
climax, Hamilton and Schmidt send the schematics for the Shepard particle accelerator to the
parallel Earth, the one at war over energy resources.
It might take some time, but this planet now has the means to access clean, renewable energy
and save itself … hopefully without inviting a bunch of massive monsters into this dimension.
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