Cube (Pacific Rim?!)

[Jonathan101]

Another big issue is what happens to Kazan. If this is just a government needlessly torturing people for shits and giggles, then later to justify why they built the damn thing in the first place, what happens to him once he escapes? I'm not picturing a few caretakers waiting outside with hot chocolate and blankets to help him deal with any potential trauma he must have gone through, I'm picturing either study, more torture, incarceration, or a blank shooting in the head to silence him ,which underwrites any sort of 'innocence survives' theme that they have.

In the sequel the last person to escape was a government agent who was sent in to retrieve something or whatever.

She is murdered as soon as she leaves as she has outlived her usefulness.

Different Cube, but probably the same idea.

[TheNewTeddy]

I remember watching this when I was younger on TV. I live in Canada. It must have been when it was fairly new. I remember liking it, quite a lot, if not loving it. I've not seen it since, however, so it was interesting to watch the review and see the little bits I remember vs all the things I don't, vs things my imagination has added over the years whenever I'd re-think about the movie (such as Quentin looking behind him to make sure no one is watching before he drops the doctor, and more than just one person being cut in half by the moving cubes)

I also remember it being the first time "fridge logic" hit me. Who was cleaning all this up after? Who was putting the people in? I was 12 at the time so meh.

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

Who else wants to bet this is really a giant Rubik's Cube that some outside force can't solve?

I really enjoy this movie. It's a creepy, thought provoking work that really stuck with me. I haven't seen any of the other films, and maybe I will give them a watch one day, but I personally prefer not really knowing what's up with The Cube, be it evil government or aliens.

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.

It brings to mind another Canadian property, Ed, Edd, n Eddy, where the character of Double D (Edd) had this mystery about what was under his hat, hinted at being bad scar or something like that but it was never seen, and the show's creator stated in an interview that it would be revealed in the movie...and once the movie was released, there was a scene where the hat comes off but they cover it Austin Powers style. Apparently he decided not to show it, as he felt that after 10 Years of the show's (surprisingly large) fanbase guessing, nothing he did would satisfy everyone, so he elected to keep it a mystery.

I like the idea that fear, paranoia, desperation, and suspicion can drive people to do horrible things or revert them to reveal that deep down they're pretty shitty people, like Quinton, or turn someone like Worth, who at first comes off like an asshole, into someone more noble.

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.

That Elevated short sounds interesting, and anything that gives a shout-out to Pumpkinhead is okay in my book.

[Mickey_Rat15]

This is another good movie, for what it is trying to do. Unfortunately, what it is trying to do is an unpleasant experience. I was glad to have seen it, but I had little desire to see it again.

As others have said, it is difficult to imagine that the Cube could have been started with a benevolent or least not intentially cruel purpose that morphed into something malevolent due to bureaucratic inertia and sloth.

Also, killing Nicole DeBoer within sight of the exit? Boo and hiss.

[Durandal_1707]

Allemeraine!

[Fianna]

I think the key problem of the Cube as needless bureaucracy argument for a theme is, well, most bureaucracies serve some sort of positive purpose, and it's when things are warped by other purposes, such as greed or power, that things get bent and twisted out of shape needing correction.

Throwing a lot of money into building a torture cube, where the people outside can't even monitor the results, makes you wonder why such a thing even got approved in the first place.

In the prequel it is shown that they can and do monitor what is happening inside the Cube, but we just don't see that in this film.

And yeah. A regular bloated or incompetent bureaucracy will likely have some evil and harm done in consequence of itself, but a massive death torture-chamber where people are abducted and thrown into...that's far too extreme, and implies at least some level of conscious malevolence. The alternative is an unbelievably extreme level of stupidity beyond that which exists in real life bureaucracies.

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?"

I think you can read the film as intentionally ambiguous on that front at least- yes, the characters and script argue that the Cube is just an accident that got out of hand, but the choice of victims doesn't seem random when it includes an anti-government conspiracy theorist, an expert on prison escapes, one of the engineers who worked on the Cube, a math genius (perhaps she and the escape artist were put in there to test how inescapable the Cube was), and an imbalanced cop (I could easily see him actually being responsible for arresting some of these guys and not admitting to it, only to get thrown in himself for being unreliable or just knowing too much). It really does look more like a list of people an evil government might want rid of than people who are victims of random chance.

Granted, something like the Cube is an especially cruel and convoluted way of getting rid of your enemies- this could easily be the same evil government that comes up with the Purge to be honest- but it still makes more sense than just red tape taken to a bloody extreme.

Basically...Chuck is looking at this through the eyes of a Libertarian.

We're told in the movie that the Cube may have had a purpose behind it at some point, but whoever came up with it has since been fired or replaced or what-have-you, and the original purpose has been lost or miscommunicated since then.

Like, maybe someone wanted to test the problem solving skills of autonomous military drones, and proposed building the Cube as an ultra-elaborate obstacle course. At some point the drone project is scrapped, but because the obstacle course was technically under the purview of a different department, it never gets cancelled, and construction on it continues, despite the people working on it having never been given a clear idea what it's for. And no one ever sticks their neck out to stop it, because if the Cube project is shut down, so is all the funding that comes with it.

[TheStarWarsTrek]

I think the key problem of the Cube as needless bureaucracy argument for a theme is, well, most bureaucracies serve some sort of positive purpose, and it's when things are warped by other purposes, such as greed or power, that things get bent and twisted out of shape needing correction.

Throwing a lot of money into building a torture cube, where the people outside can't even monitor the results, makes you wonder why such a thing even got approved in the first place.

In the prequel it is shown that they can and do monitor what is happening inside the Cube, but we just don't see that in this film.

And yeah. A regular bloated or incompetent bureaucracy will likely have some evil and harm done in consequence of itself, but a massive death torture-chamber where people are abducted and thrown into...that's far too extreme, and implies at least some level of conscious malevolence. The alternative is an unbelievably extreme level of stupidity beyond that which exists in real life bureaucracies.

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?"

I think you can read the film as intentionally ambiguous on that front at least- yes, the characters and script argue that the Cube is just an accident that got out of hand, but the choice of victims doesn't seem random when it includes an anti-government conspiracy theorist, an expert on prison escapes, one of the engineers who worked on the Cube, a math genius (perhaps she and the escape artist were put in there to test how inescapable the Cube was), and an imbalanced cop (I could easily see him actually being responsible for arresting some of these guys and not admitting to it, only to get thrown in himself for being unreliable or just knowing too much). It really does look more like a list of people an evil government might want rid of than people who are victims of random chance.

Granted, something like the Cube is an especially cruel and convoluted way of getting rid of your enemies- this could easily be the same evil government that comes up with the Purge to be honest- but it still makes more sense than just red tape taken to a bloody extreme.

Basically...Chuck is looking at this through the eyes of a Libertarian.

We're told in the movie that the Cube may have had a purpose behind it at some point, but whoever came up with it has since been fired or replaced or what-have-you, and the original purpose has been lost or miscommunicated since then.

Like, maybe someone wanted to test the problem solving skills of autonomous military drones, and proposed building the Cube as an ultra-elaborate obstacle course. At some point the drone project is scrapped, but because the obstacle course was technically under the purview of a different department, it never gets cancelled, and construction on it continues, despite the people working on it having never been given a clear idea what it's for. And no one ever sticks their neck out to stop it, because if the Cube project is shut down, so is all the funding that comes with it.

It can't have been THAT long ago if one of the guys designed the thing. Also this was 1997, before drones where a thing. And unless these are futuristic sci fi drones, the obstacles seem designed for people. (Drones can't open doors, and where's the challenge of a computer figuring out what numbers are prime?)

But lets say you're right and the cube was made for benevolent, drone testing purposes. There's a huge leap between "accidentally building something because we didn't receive word the project was canceled" and "ordering the simultaneous kidnapping of several people". No one ever accidentally orchestrates a mass kidnapping. And even if the kidnappers are "just following orders" types who will do anything unsavory without question, someone at the top had to give the order. That's not the apathy of bureaucracy, that's malevolence.

Speaking of kidnapping victims, it seems like they were chosen on purpose. If they were picked at random, it's a hell of a coincidence it includes a conspiracy nut who deals with mental patients, a savant mental patient, a guy who helped design it, an escape artist, and a math student who was allowed to keep her glasses.

We're told that this cube came about due to people mindlessly doing what they're told and not thinking about the big picture . . . but then looking at the thing clearly a lot of thought and a lot of considering the big picture went into it. Despite them mocking the idea, it really can only be either a government conspiracy or a rich sadist.

[JL_Stinger]

Good review, but this is an incredibly depressing movie.

[Fianna]

Cube is implicitly set in a more technologically advanced world than our own. While you could maybe, theoretically build the Cube using 1997 technology, it seems like a bit of a stretch (especially since it seems to have been built by the Canadian government, not one of the world's financial and technological superpowers).

As for the kidnappings, it's explicitly said that this was done because, otherwise, everyone would have to admit that building the Cube had been a complete waste of time and money. So, yes, at some point someone had to make the decision to put people in the Cube, and someone (not necessarily the same someone) had to decide who to put in. However, these people were not the masterminds behind the Cube. They were just more middle-management types, commissioned to build and operate the Cube, without ever being filled in on what purpose, if any, it was meant to serve. Turning it into a deadly and elaborate testing ground is simply them making their best inference of what they're supposed to be doing with it.

[Admiral X]

Which would still mean they would know they're the bad guys in all this since they knew they were sticking people into a thing that would probably kill them. At best it's like getting offed by some mobster hitman, who would basically just say, "nothing personal" before offing their victim, because it honestly wasn't.