Cube Zero

[AndyC]

Just saw this last night. My opinion has generally been that Cube was one of those movies that should not have had sequels, mainly because it's one of those stories that could not be retold or expanded upon without losing something. There is a point where more information just spoils the mystery.

Hypercube was an interesting movie, but ultimately, I think it still diminished the story, rather than adding to it.

But Cube Zero surprised me. For a start, it looked good. It's a prequel, and the cube itself really looks like an earlier version. The construction looks a lot more like something fabricated out of ordinary metal. It's older-looking, less refined, has rivets and pipes showing, but still has the right look and feel. Then there is the brilliant way they took us outside the cube, where we find out that the operators monitoring the thing also don't really know what it's for or who controls it.

Spoilers follow:

It was a great surprise (and the clues were there, in hindsight) that the operators were, themselves, test subjects in another level of the experiment.

Not sure that I liked it being clearly in the not-too-distant future. I preferred the impression in the original that it could be happening right now, and anyone could wake up inside.

But the really brilliant thing was that the hero, the genius technician, through a little brain surgery, is turned into an autistic savant like "Telethon Boy" from the original. I thought he was the same guy at first, but his name was different, the people he met were different, and he was still in the same cube. Would have been much cooler if they had set it up so that he was in the cube from the original movie, and really was the same character.

Altogether, a very good movie.

[Mr_Vindictive]

You know, I almost rented this a few nights ago in Blockbuster.  My wife was actually the one to point it out on the shelf.  She refused watching it though after seeing Hypercube.

[AndyC]

It really does manage to recapture some of the mystery and tension that was lost in Hypercube. Part of me still says they should have left well enough alone, and let the original Cube stand on its own, but Hypercube kind of blew that anyway. This one, while still eliminating some of the cooler ideas of the first (like the cube really having no purpose), was a pretty worthy prequel that largely makes  up for the first sequel. They've expanded on the story without sacrificing too much of the mystery, and much of what we do lose, I think we get back by uncovering a whole other layer of mystery.

[Cheecky-Monkey]

I liked it, but at the same time I was kinda let down.
What worked?
 Nice atmosphere, good acting (for the most part), good writing, stylish direction, a fun bad guy, lots of gore, great homage to the original cube at the end, faithful to the original cube as well.

What didn't work?
the silly plot-twist with the terminator-like super-soldiers, the explenation behind the cube itself (government conspiracies are so corny...), last 20 minutes ridiclious.

[DaveMunger]

Probably said this before, but there's probably only one good story to be rung out of the premise of a tesseract, or hypercube: Heinlien's "And He Built A Crooked House"

[DaveMunger]

I should have linked to this before:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/heinlein/heinlein1.html

I think it's the complete text of the story I just mentioned.

[AndyC]

Yeah, they could have done without the supersoldier thing. That was the main thing that pulled it out of our time, and into a near future, which I think detracted from it. And they really did little with the hidden abilities of the soldier in the cube (can't remember the name at the moment) except to provide a little last-minute action. Kind of liked that he was always sort of a hidden threat though, and mind control was better than having somebody just crack and turn homicidal again. However, they could have done it a bit differently, or not at all. The thing that really bugged me was that he's pumped full of pain inhibitors and stimulants that give him superhuman abilities, he can take a whack with a pipe, but a kick in the nuts takes him down.

That said, it's a very very small part of the movie - kind of a last-minute surprise.

I don't think I would go as far as to say that the last twenty minutes were ridiculous though. And the ending itself was quite good.

As for the government conspiracy, maybe and maybe not. It's strongly suggested in places, but it's still not really stated who is behind the cube or why. Yes, they can take control of soldiers, and they are involved in politics. But it's still far from clear. Could be the military, could be one government agency, could be a corporation, could be independent researchers, could still be some twisted Bond villain type, could still be aliens, not to mention the possibility that the whole thing (maybe even the outdoor parts) is taking place in virtual reality. The supernatural isn't even completely ruled out. And, come to think of it, it could still be an endless chain of people all answering to somebody higher and doing their jobs without asking why. I thought that possibility was gone, but when I think back, it was, in fact, reinforced by this movie. Really, we don't know who's at the other end of the phone, or whether they are in control or just another link in the chain.



Post Edited (03-10-05 12:51)

[AndyC]

Thinking more about it, even what we do know is suspect, because we don't know any more than the technicians who were test subjects themselves. We think the woman is a political prisoner because of a newspaper that is undoubtedly a fake. The files could presumably also be misinformation for their benefit. We know that subjects can be modified before going in, so was the soldier even really a soldier in the outside world? Would Bionic Eye Guy even know what's really happening? It's suggested that he doesn't. Even the assumption that it's not taking place in the present day is not necesarily a given. In the end, the movie succeeds very well at creating a situation in which you can second-guess yourself until the cows come home. The deeper you look, the smarter it gets.

That was where Hypercube failed, by trying to give us a bigger and fancier cube, while neglecting the little head games that made the first story interesting.



Post Edited (03-10-05 07:13)

[Mr Hockstatter]

Wild stuff.  Check this out:  http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/outreach/4-cube/

I can't figure it out.  Pretty cool though.

[DaveMunger]

That's a cool link Mr H, I'm going to check that out again later with my mom's computer, it's better for movies. I hope no one objects to turning this thread into a cool link contest, because here's a Dali painting that I thought was called "Christus Tesseractus", but apparently it's just "Crucifiction" or something:

http://pages.zdnet.com/rkc/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/scan0001_edit_a.jpg.w300h477.jpg

The cross in it is an unfolded tesseract, kind of like the way you can unfold a cube into a flat cross made of six squares. Like if there's a project for a kid to make where they cut a peice of paper that's like a 2d shape, and fold it in a direction that's perpendicular to the 2d directions that the unfolded paper spreads out in. The cross is the 3d version of that, if you took 8 cubes that were connected that way and folded them in a direction perpendicular to ALL of the ones we exist in, then it'd be a hypercube.

Here's an animation of kind of an easy way to picture it all folded together:

http://www.emlen.com/subether/images/tesseractus.gif

One way this would be different in the actual 4th dimention is that each segment would still be perfectly cubical. Come to think of it, it seems like one cube's not accounted for? Anyway, this is pretty much how I pictured the house in the Heinlein story, kind of a freindly approach to the 4th dimention for us non-math-majors.