If you were a bit confused after watching The Cloverfield Paradox, then you were not alone. The movie had a messy narrative that bordered confusing at times. If you look at the entire trilogy though, you will notice that big twists and misdirects are the forté of this franchise. In a recent interview, executive producer, J.J. Abrams attempts to explain what the hell was happening at the end of the film.
I’ll go on record to say that any film that deals with time travel runs a big risk of messing things up a bit. There are so many things that can go wrong and get lost in translation when you delve into these types of scenarios. It is a plot device that comes with its fair share of problems. The thing that ties The Cloverfield Paradox back to its predecessors is a stretch, at its best.
In the film, a group of engineers aboard the Cloverfield Space Station accidentally travel through time and space. They end up in an alternate dimension that is close to our own, if the whole world was in global conflict over the few remaining resources left. So, where is the tie-back into the other films in the series minus the name of the space station? Well, apparently, the engineers ripped a hole in the space/time continuum when they jumped, which allowed the monsters to travel to Earth. Hmm. I know. I said it was messy.
In a recent interview with Empire, director Julius Onah and Abrams try to break down the meaning of the end of the film, especially the final scene of the film. If you have to explain your finale after the fact, then your story still needs a little work. According to Abrams:
“Now that we’ve had these multiple timelines have been opened and things are happening dimensionally, there’s many different ways for these things to play out. So there was a real fine connection to make with things dropping into the ocean that you see in the movie when they first realize they’ve landed in this other dimension. There’s still more possibilities that will come with more strands of the story.
It felt like a bit of an opportunity that was too good to pass up and kind of a catch-all. On the one hand you can say ‘well then anything anywhere could be a Cloverfield movie,’ but the intention has never been take a movie and then slap Cloverfield on it.”
It seems as though the film still needed work, but the director and producer knew that already. Abrams is known for weaving intricate stories together, where the audience is lost until the very end of the tale, so this is right up his alley.
