Sunday Night
Nov. 2nd, 2003 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingandySINCE LAST WE SPOKE, I went into Manchester in search of flight suits. The army place was closed but I picked up some skipants in TKMaxx for far too much money, especially considering that, best case scenario, I won't ever use them. But what the hell.
Then I went to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
icklejo and arwel's house because I was bored and they were in. We watched Blackadder's Christmas Carol (because I've not watched it since I got it on DVD last Christmas), and then Cube (because I've never seen it before).
Many spoilers involving characters and events. Particularly the last five minutes of the movie. I'm sure most people have seen it by now but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
Cube was better and worse than I imagined. I had heard tales that the cast die off one by one in grisly manner and that nothing is ever explained. This is true as far as it goes. However, the majority of the cast make it to the last 5 minutes - the filmmakers obviously realised that the suspense is what you're going for, and too many grisly deaths aren't usually worth the trouble of creating characters to walk into them. So there's a lot of narrow escapes. Very few cliches - I found myself going "Oh, she's going to die now" and actually being wrong.
The plot was basically irrelevant, as it was primarily a "pressure cooker" movie - take a bunch of disparate characters, lock them in a box and apply heat, as perfected by Hitchcock. Here, of course, there was the added incentive of possible escape dangled in front of the players. The characterisations were largely consistent throughout, with the possible exception of Quentin the Cop's (apparently sudden) descent into insanity. It's almost believable, he's reliant on structures and determined to do whatever it takes to get out. I'd believe it a little more if I could be sure that they wrote it that way because that's how they decided the character would react, rather than deciding the character reacted that way because it would make a good movie. That said, I'm not sure there's a difference.
Some things I had heard (or at least gathered) that were wrong, and would have been cool: Futility was not the message, since there was a way out, there was a solution. I had heard that it was an experiment in futility, that the rules kept changing as they figured them out, that they couldn't stay still. I'd expected that the Twist Ending was, having found their way out of the Cube, they found themselves in another, larger cube. Or that they were only clone people running around mazes like rats, which is why the scientists felt fine about killing them off to see how they reacted. or that they woke up again in the rooms that they started in, the first time they went to sleep, either with or without a memory of it. Something that left you with a feeling of desolation and eternity. Or something.
As I say, the movie fell down at the end, I think. Primarily because of the way the two survivors just sat down for a chat after Kazan got out. The door was there. They knew the bridge wouldn't stay there for long. Even if the man thought he had nothing to return to (and given he was in a safe room, he was essentially choosing death by starvation over a mundane and pointless life), he should have realised the girl was staying to talk him out of it and told her to go before the room left. Also one of them should have heard (and seen) the door opening behind her. They weren't that involved, and the doors were quite loud. I heard it. I suppose you could argue that upon reaching the exit they'd let their guards down, but really, they should have been out and through that exit before that happened.
Oh, yes ... and Quentin finding them was a bit convenient. They'd just been in a moving room, after leaving him behind. With 17576 rooms to choose from, it's awfully coincidental that he happened across the bridge (without passing through any other trap rooms). And I would have liked to see what the Cube looked like from outside, where it was, just something apart from a white light. Probably part of the point is that the cube is disconnected from the rest of the world - you don't even know for sure that they remember what they think they remember, see clones theory - but given that they've successfully escaped it would have been nice to see something. Even a final trap, slicing Kazan in two. It just felt a bit of a let-down, an anticlimax.
Good film overall though. Nicely made; the effects were subtle enough to be convincing. Particularly liked the Sound Room. (Oh, but I'm disappointed there was no room featuring mind control as the Trap - get everybody angry or whatever.)
Oh, I thought that the girl was Nightbird from The Specials. I was wrong, she's Ezri Dax.
And now to bed.
Then I went to
icklejo and arwel's house because I was bored and they were in. We watched Blackadder's Christmas Carol (because I've not watched it since I got it on DVD last Christmas), and then Cube (because I've never seen it before).Many spoilers involving characters and events. Particularly the last five minutes of the movie. I'm sure most people have seen it by now but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
Cube was better and worse than I imagined. I had heard tales that the cast die off one by one in grisly manner and that nothing is ever explained. This is true as far as it goes. However, the majority of the cast make it to the last 5 minutes - the filmmakers obviously realised that the suspense is what you're going for, and too many grisly deaths aren't usually worth the trouble of creating characters to walk into them. So there's a lot of narrow escapes. Very few cliches - I found myself going "Oh, she's going to die now" and actually being wrong.
The plot was basically irrelevant, as it was primarily a "pressure cooker" movie - take a bunch of disparate characters, lock them in a box and apply heat, as perfected by Hitchcock. Here, of course, there was the added incentive of possible escape dangled in front of the players. The characterisations were largely consistent throughout, with the possible exception of Quentin the Cop's (apparently sudden) descent into insanity. It's almost believable, he's reliant on structures and determined to do whatever it takes to get out. I'd believe it a little more if I could be sure that they wrote it that way because that's how they decided the character would react, rather than deciding the character reacted that way because it would make a good movie. That said, I'm not sure there's a difference.
Some things I had heard (or at least gathered) that were wrong, and would have been cool: Futility was not the message, since there was a way out, there was a solution. I had heard that it was an experiment in futility, that the rules kept changing as they figured them out, that they couldn't stay still. I'd expected that the Twist Ending was, having found their way out of the Cube, they found themselves in another, larger cube. Or that they were only clone people running around mazes like rats, which is why the scientists felt fine about killing them off to see how they reacted. or that they woke up again in the rooms that they started in, the first time they went to sleep, either with or without a memory of it. Something that left you with a feeling of desolation and eternity. Or something.
As I say, the movie fell down at the end, I think. Primarily because of the way the two survivors just sat down for a chat after Kazan got out. The door was there. They knew the bridge wouldn't stay there for long. Even if the man thought he had nothing to return to (and given he was in a safe room, he was essentially choosing death by starvation over a mundane and pointless life), he should have realised the girl was staying to talk him out of it and told her to go before the room left. Also one of them should have heard (and seen) the door opening behind her. They weren't that involved, and the doors were quite loud. I heard it. I suppose you could argue that upon reaching the exit they'd let their guards down, but really, they should have been out and through that exit before that happened.
Oh, yes ... and Quentin finding them was a bit convenient. They'd just been in a moving room, after leaving him behind. With 17576 rooms to choose from, it's awfully coincidental that he happened across the bridge (without passing through any other trap rooms). And I would have liked to see what the Cube looked like from outside, where it was, just something apart from a white light. Probably part of the point is that the cube is disconnected from the rest of the world - you don't even know for sure that they remember what they think they remember, see clones theory - but given that they've successfully escaped it would have been nice to see something. Even a final trap, slicing Kazan in two. It just felt a bit of a let-down, an anticlimax.
Good film overall though. Nicely made; the effects were subtle enough to be convincing. Particularly liked the Sound Room. (Oh, but I'm disappointed there was no room featuring mind control as the Trap - get everybody angry or whatever.)
Oh, I thought that the girl was Nightbird from The Specials. I was wrong, she's Ezri Dax.
And now to bed.
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Re: The Cube
Date: 2003-11-04 09:46 am (UTC)Imagine if Rennes came back without his face? Eeeeeugh!! I wish I hadn't...