Cloverfield Timeline: How The Movies Connect

The Cloverfield timeline cements it as one of the most unusual movie franchises out there. 2008’s Cloverfield kicks the series off with a found-footage version of a monster movie. Despite its success, there was no word of a sequel until the first trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane dropped and confirmed its connection. This was then followed by the third film, The Cloverfield Paradox, adding a little more connection between the movies beyond just the titles. While “Cloverfield” is in each movie title, none of the sequels were promoted as sequels, and they were simply marketed as standalone films.

As a franchise, Cloverfield is nothing if not unpredictable, which is what many fans find so endearing. The Cloverfield Paradox offers some interesting connections to the previous films through alternate dimensions, time travel, and the titular phenomenon of the film, showing the three movies may actually be more connected than anyone previously thought. Watching the Cloverfield movies in order isn’t as hard as it first appears, and neither is deciphering the Cloverfield timeline.

What Is The Cloverfield Paradox?

The Third Movie In The Franchise Suggests Alternate Realities Can Connect The Movies

Each movie in the timeline started life as a stand-alone story, with the Cloverfield moniker added later for them to be brought into the franchise fold. There isn’t necessarily a right way to watch the Cloverfield movies in order. Each movie tells its own isolated story, and what connects them is the root cause of the specific weirdness, be it the Kaiju in Cloverfield or the arrival of genuine aliens at the end of 10 Cloverfield Lane.

The Cloverfield Paradox then theoretically unifies the disparate situations of the various movies with its namesake reality-warping event, with the premise leaving plenty of room for more loosely connected Cloverfield movies. The Cloverfield Paradox explains that the franchise is, at its core, rooted in Cosmic Horror. A single plot element links all three films, and it feels more like something from Event Horizon than the Godzilla-esque Kaiju action of Cloverfield.

In an early scene in The CloverfieldParadox, author Mark Stambler appears on a television, warning of the titular Cloverfield Paradox. The character explains that the particle accelerator science experiment in outer space has the potential to destroy the very fabric of space-time. In the Cloverfield continuity, a space-time collapse is explained as having the potential to cause bleeds between alternate universes — changing the past, present, and future, completely upending reality itself.

Sure enough, the experiment and effort to create a new energy source to end the current oil crisis on Earth sends the Cloverfield Station into another dimension, where normal rules of nature no longer apply. The main plot, set on the Cloverfield space station, has the crew fighting a losing battle against an alternate dimension to which they do not belong, victims of warped reality struggling to right itself but that’s only part of the story.

On Earth, The Cloverfield Paradox has caused widespread destruction in the form of at least two gigantic Cloverfield monsters, witnessed by Michael (Roger Davies). The first, obscured by a thick cloud of smoke and ash, vaguely resembles the iconic monster from the original Cloverfield. In the final shot of the film, however, a super-sized version of that legendary beast makes a terrifying and glorious appearance above the clouds, indicating that Cloverfield and The Cloverfield Paradox do share more than just a franchise.

The Cloverfield Paradox Is A Cloverfield Prequel And Sequel

The Alternate Timelines Make For A Unique Chronology For The Franchise

When Stambler talks about The Cloverfield Paradox, he is diving deep into quantum physics and unknown fields of science that may not even be theoretically possible. It’s Stambler’s paradox that ultimately links Cloverfield to 10 Cloverfield Lane, as well as connects both to The CloverfieldParadox itself. To that end, The Cloverfield Paradox is both a prequel and a sequel to the original Cloverfield. It’s set in the future in 2028, but its energy experiment events directly influence the past, rippling across infinite dimensions and completely obliterating the conventional understanding of time as a linear construct.

The particle accelerator causes distortions in time and space, bringing creatures from alternate dimensions, including the original Cloverfield monster, to this reality but at different points in time; chronology is not linear but a flat surface that can fold in on itself, with all possible points on a timeline existing simultaneously. The events of 2028 in The Cloverfield Paradox caused the events of Cloverfield, which then ripple through time and space in another dimension before taking effect at the moment of the modern-day incident. It’s a spatially-locked time travel mind game.

Because the logic is only delivered in theory by Stambler, it’s hard to draw resolute conclusions about how the Cloverfield movies’ timeline is rewritten. It’s also worth noting that the science is deliberately a little confusing — this is Cosmic Horror inspired by movies like Event Horizon and 2001: A Space Odyssey, after all. Fear of the unknown is an important thematic element of the Cloverfield movies.

While some viewers might wish for an explanation that makes everything click into place, this would ultimately ruin the suspense and position the sci-fi franchise a little too close to the science and a little too far from the fiction.