Cube (Pacific Rim?!)

[BlackoutCreature2]

I believe Natali himself said there was extra footage revealing what the Cube was, or scripted scenes hinted at aliens (I think they were supposed to come across alien food left for them, but that was never filmed) but cut it out because he wanted to keep it a mystery.

[url]https://lostmediawiki.com/Cube_-_alternate_ending_(lost_deleted_scene_from_science-fiction_horror_film;_1997)[/url]

A scene was filmed for the ending after Kazan leaves the Cube that very clearly shows he and the Cube are not on Earth, with him exiting onto a beach showing a purple sky with visible planetary bodies. The Lost Media Wiki link goes into more detail.

Natali claims the scene was one of the first things he removed in editing and supposedly had all copies of it destroyed, so it seems unlikely it will ever be seen.

Also, while I've never seen the Red-Green Show, I think the character of Gonzo has hinted he doesn't really care for Miss Piggy all that much in an interview.

Gonzo's personal opinion of Miss Piggy doesn't matter. What matters is that he is too much of a gentleman to ever refer to her in such a manner.

[hammerofglass]

Chuck used the example of innocent people being thrown in prison because nobody wanted to admit at any level that some sort of mistake had been made, but the Cube would be an example where the people who designed the prison must have been crazy or evil, and the people putting in the death traps at least would have to be exceptionally dumb to not wonder "hey, wait a minute- are we the bad guys?"

Honestly I think that was an intentional part of the horror in the movie. Sort of a "banality of evil" thing. As Pratchett put it in Small Gods:

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

[Beelzquill]

Chuck used the example of innocent people being thrown in prison because nobody wanted to admit at any level that some sort of mistake had been made, but the Cube would be an example where the people who designed the prison must have been crazy or evil, and the people putting in the death traps at least would have to be exceptionally dumb to not wonder "hey, wait a minute- are we the bad guys?"

Honestly I think that was an intentional part of the horror in the movie. Sort of a "banality of evil" thing. As Pratchett put it in Small Gods:

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

Whenever I see quotes like that I always think the only scenarios where this extreme amount of evil to be "banal" is for some dystopian orwellian type government to already change society and government drastically. I kinda wish the movie could have honestly shown more of that type of government in order for me to believe that could be the reason. Which I guess is why the sequel shows that type of government in order to justify this movie's events. I don't know I guess I'd rather aliens than "slightly abnormal" government bureaucratic screwup.

I think I've been spoiled by media with extensive worldbuilding.

[Jonathan101]

Chuck used the example of innocent people being thrown in prison because nobody wanted to admit at any level that some sort of mistake had been made, but the Cube would be an example where the people who designed the prison must have been crazy or evil, and the people putting in the death traps at least would have to be exceptionally dumb to not wonder "hey, wait a minute- are we the bad guys?"

Honestly I think that was an intentional part of the horror in the movie. Sort of a "banality of evil" thing. As Pratchett put it in Small Gods:

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

They may have been going for that, but that doesn't mean it is true or makes sense.

The term "banality of evil" was coined by journalist and philosopher Hannah Ardent, and it is frequently misunderstood. Ardent didn't argue that normal people are as capable of great evil as any psychopath, rather she argued that psychopaths have as much chance of being otherwise ordinary people on the surface as they have to be crazed lunatics; if only one in a hundred office drones is an amoral jerk who would casually consign innocent people to the grave because that was their job and nothing else, that is often all that is needed to make death machines like the Holocaust run, but that doesn't mean that every other office drone is equally capable of murder.

Basically she would argue that the guys who built the Cube were indeed mostly psychopaths or at least unusually "morally flexible" even if they saw themselves otherwise, and they were likely selected for the job precisely because they would go along with it without kicking up a fuss, not because any random Bob the Builder would have built it all the same. That "normal, kind family man" might actually be a crazy psychopath; they just hide it better than most.

The other issue is that she used the Nazi Adolf Eichmann as her prime example of "banality of evil" because that's how he presented himself in court- as a cog in the machine who was just doing his job. Except...he really wasn't, and the historical record and other testimonies at court proved it, not to mention he let the mask slip occasionally and the real Adolf Eichmann came out- the narcissistic, psychopathic, smug racist asshole who greatly enjoyed his work, took a great deal of pride I his contribution of the Nazi cause (he loved telling stories about his misdeeds to fellow Nazi's in Argentina for instance), actually ignored orders to cut back on the mass killings at one point, and in the later stages of the war requested- and got- a transfer to a commando unit because al this bureaucratic mass murder stuff was getting rather boring and he wanted some more excitement in his life. The guy she thought epitomised the concept of ordinary, regular evil was actually a cartoonishly evil bastard playing at normalcy.

So, the "banality of evil" is a falsehood more often than not, particularly in the way it is commonly understood. Office drones also have the advantage of not having to deal with much more than paperwork, while the people who built the Cube must have noticed that they just built a room full of spikes that shoot out the moment someone so much as whispers.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Why does the title say pacific rim?

[Madner Kami]

Because the original poster wrote it into the thread's topic line.

[Fianna]

The thing with the Cube is, no one building/operating it ever has to personally kill someone. And the average person's sense of moral responsibility and outrage is reduced significantly if the violence being done is kept remote and only relayed to them in abstract terms.

Some people built the Cube, knowing it's a death trap, but tons of people build deadly machinery (bombs, guns, tanks, etc.) for the government all the time without feeling much guilt. They can tell themselves the government must have a good reason for wanting this built, and as long as they don't have to see it in action, or know for sure that it's actually been used on people, that should be good enough for most of them.

Some people had to kidnap the folks who are put in the Cube. For that you do need people who have a very low appreciation for things like civil liberties, and are willing to abduct seemingly innocent people because the government ordered them to. But there's no need for the kidnappers to be told anything about elaborate and purposeless death mazes, so they can take comfort in the idea that the people they've kidnapped might still be alive and relatively unharmed.

Now, the overseers of the project can't claim ignorance, obviously, but they also never have to view their handiwork first hand. They don't need to see the people they're condemning to death, or the gruesome corpses they leave behind. For them it's all just abstract ideas; there's no visceral component to drive home the horror of what they're doing. Like, there's tons of people who will vote in favor of going to war with Country X, but if you actually put a gun in their hand and tell them to shoot a soldier from Country X, they'll completely balk, because agreeing to the idea of something has a very different psychological effect from carrying it out yourself.

The people likely to have the most moral reservations are the ones who have to put the unconscious people in the Cube and clear out the dead bodies afterwards (though, if the overseers are smart, they'd make sure those tasks are carried out by different people who have no contact with each other). But these people are essentially janitors. While they can't take comfort in ignorance, they can take comfort in thinking that their actions don't really contribute anything meaningful to the horrors going on. They're just moving objects from Spot A to Spot B; anyone can do that, and if they resign in moral protest, then someone else will come right in and do it instead. You can justify being party to all sorts of horrible things so long as you believe your actions won't affect the outcome one way or the other.

[Madner Kami]

The thing with the Cube is, no one building/operating it ever has to personally kill someone. And the average person's sense of moral responsibility and outrage is reduced significantly if the violence being done is kept remote and only relayed to them in abstract terms.

Case in point: Milgram Experiment [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment[/url]
Case in point, 2: Stanford Prison Experiment [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment[/url]

It doesn't take much to justify the "cog in the machine angle", because... it's true and we see that all day and night everywhere around us. The most normal people can do the most horrifying things, if you detach them far enough or if they don't consider their own position in a complex of power, either out of complacency, fear or stupidity.

Now as for keeping the cube a secret, is moon-landing-hoax levels of ridiculous. There's just too much involved in the making and maintaining to not at least let something slip to the public at large, so there needs to be either a public that is ok with the Cube and it's function itself (which clearly is not the case, as even the conspiracy nut has never heard of the Cube, obviously) or a story-breaking level of secrecy involved. But really, this is thinking too much about a very basic message and there is such a thing as overthinking.

[Admiral X]

Putting someone into a trap you know will likely kill or maim them is really no different from doing it yourself fro ma moral standpoint. That's why I scoff at Saw-logic where the bad guy insisted he never killed anyone in spite of kidnapping all those people and putting them in traps that went on to kill them.

ETA: From what I've read of the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment is their validity has been called into question more recently. As in, there are questions as to whether the experiments actually took place as described. From the wiki article:

In 2012 Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".[22][23] She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation."[24]

[hammerofglass]

Chuck used the example of innocent people being thrown in prison because nobody wanted to admit at any level that some sort of mistake had been made, but the Cube would be an example where the people who designed the prison must have been crazy or evil, and the people putting in the death traps at least would have to be exceptionally dumb to not wonder "hey, wait a minute- are we the bad guys?"

Honestly I think that was an intentional part of the horror in the movie. Sort of a "banality of evil" thing. As Pratchett put it in Small Gods:

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

(...)

So, the "banality of evil" is a falsehood more often than not, particularly in the way it is commonly understood. Office drones also have the advantage of not having to deal with much more than paperwork, while the people who built the Cube must have noticed that they just built a room full of spikes that shoot out the moment someone so much as whispers.

The character who brought up the idea was literally one of the people who built the cube. That's pretty much the purpose of Worth as a character; he's directly complicit but he's just... some guy.