In which Nome watches Cube Zero
Apr. 11th, 2011 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomi_jayTo set the scene for why me watching Cube Zero is a big deal, you should understand that I hate Cube with a violent, unreasonable passion. I think it's a ridiculous, poorly-acted, poorly-directed, poorly-concieved piece of nonsense, and the attempts to give it some kind of symbology (oh, you named all your characters after prisons, did you? How deep) just make me angry. You will never convince me this is a good film, or even a so-bad-it's-good-film, and throwing around words like "psychological exploration" and "Kafka-esque" will not help your cause because at the end of the day, it's about a giant killer Rubix cube that eats people, and that's no better a film concept than sewing people together mouth-to-anus.
With that in mind, I had long ago resolved never to watch the sequels, Hypercube or Cube Zero, because my blood pressure probably couldn't take it, and I've been assured that the sequels are even worse than the original. However, yesterday I finally caved in to Kyle's insistent nagging and watched Cube Zero. I don't know why he wanted me to watch it so much as he thinks it's absolute pap. Presumably he finds my incredulous anger amusing.
So anyway. Yeah, I watched it.
Now, one of the reasons Cube doesn't work for me is because there's no context for the cube. Sure, Worth tells us it's a government project spun out of control, existing only to justify it's continued existence, but I never bought that. As crazy goverment projects go, I suppose it's not unfeasible, but why should we believe anything Worth says? He doesn't even know who contracted him to build the stupid thing. What Cube Zero attempts to do is give the cube context and answer all those questions viewers had at the end of Cube. Questions like, how will I ever get this time back? and WTF was that all about?
The problem is that the only thing worse than a giant killer Rubix cube without context is a giant killer Rubix cube with context, because what sort of society thinks building this thing is a good idea? Well, Cube Zero attempts to explain that.
The film starts just like Cube - a man identified as Ryjkin is trying to escape the Cube when he's sprayed with a liquid he assumes is water. but turns out to be some sort of acid that disintegrates him. Bloodily. So in case you were wondering at all, the cube is a bad place. We cut to see two people, Wynn and Dodd watching this in an observation room. They seem cheerily unconcerned with what they've seen, suggesting either over-familiary and desensitization with horrible, acidic violence, or sociopathy. I don't know. Wynn asks Dodd how come they haven't seen their colleages, Owen and Chiklis for a while, and Dodd speculates that they're either on holiday or off sick. When Wynn persists, Dodd makes ominous refences to "upstairs" and how Wynn should probably STFU, okay?
So, we have people observing the cube and the people inside, and they don't seem to have any problems with the function of the cube. Okay.
Orders come in from Upstairs to observe the dreams of Cassandra Rains, a woman recently placed into the cube. So we have dream-stealing technology. So this is a futuristic film? Okay. Anyway, Wynn watches Rains' dreams and gleans she was captured by what appear to be ninjas whilst walking in the forest with her daughter. We then cut to Rains waking up and being all "where am I? Amnesia!" and then meeting Haskell (an angry soldier), an incredibly annoying woman who whines incessantly and I hated, and a comedy fat guy, and another guy. None of them remember how they got there or who they were before, but they've already cottoned on to the fact that the cube is a giant death trap, and are making their way through it by testing rooms for traps using boots.
(If you've seen the first film, you know this is a lame and unreliable way of testing for traps, but I guess it's all they have at their disposal. It's also a source of great continuity fail, as we frequently see characters toss their boots into rooms, without any way of retrieving them afterwards, only for them to have somehow reclaimed them in the next scene.)
Anyway. So our hardy and forgetful heroes start attempting to traverse the cube. They find each doorway has a sequence of three letters on it, which they suspect is some kind of code for which rooms are trapped. Remember this, it will be important later. On their way, they find out a little about themselves and each other, which in any other film would mean they had some charming and heartwarming experiences, but in this film means they all get paranoid and angry. Someone dies. I don't know his name; he was pretty much just there to demonstrate how nasty it would be to be sliced up by razor wire.
Back to Wynn. In the observation room, he and Dodd discuss the plight of the people in the cube, and it transpires that these people are (allegedly) death row inmates who have chosen to enter the cube instead of taking the lethal injection. Right. Because being sliced up by razor wire is a far more dignified way to end your life than lethal injection. Okay. So this is some kind of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers?
Anyway, for some reason Wynn gets a bit fixated on Rains and looks up her file only to discover there is no consent form for her entry to the cube. Shock! He also discovers she was a political activist of some sort. So this is some kind of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers and an Orwellian goverment that deals harshly and not-especially cost-effectively with its dissidents. Because you can't tell me the cube is cheap to maintain.
So Wynn wants to inform the people Upstairs about the missing consent form, but Dodd just tells him to STFU OMG and then an old-fashioned rotary telephone rings. So this is some kind of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers and an Orwellian goverment that deals harshly and not-especially cost-effectively with its dissidents that favours vintage telephones. Fine.
Anyway, the phone rings and Dodd answers and recieves word that they are to perform the "exit procedure." Yes, it turns out someone has made it to one of the cube's exits. Huzzahs! So Wynn and Dodd go to the observation screen and see their missing colleage, Owen wandering around in the darkness crying, which is fair enough. No, Owen was not on holiday! He was in the cube! And now he's pinned down by some ... contraption and Dodd, via loudspeaker, asks him if he believes in God. Owen cries some more and says no, so Dodd sets him on fire. Apparently atheism is also frowned upon in this totalitarian, vintage-loving futuristic world.
Wynn is horrified to learn the cube is inhumane (because watching people get eaten by acid, chopped up by wires, infected with flesh-eating diseases, and frozen with liquid nitrogen is fine, but being incinerated when you're supposed to be on holiday is one step too far). An argument ensues between Wynn and Dodd, which ends with Wynn deciding to enter the cube and help Rains escape.
Good for him.
Back to Rains and co. The annoying woman is dead - she got hit by the flesh-eating virus and infected the comedy fat guy. Rains jokes about cannibalism. Ha ha funny, but not really under the circumstances. Haskell, because he's angry, wants to dump the infected comedy fat guy, but Rains is all "compassion! Decency!" and Haskell agrees comedy fat guy can stay if he agrees to test the rooms for them. And then he pushes him into a trapped room and comedy fat guy explodes. That happens, okay? Rains is all ??!!?? and then Wynn gets there and is all "you're all going to die!!!" just in case Rains and Haskell didn't get it.
He tells them there's an auxiliary exit from the cube that he knows of but doesn't know how to get to, and there's some yelling and paranoia, and then they decide to find the auxiliary exit and set off in a seemingly random direction. which will of course turn out to be the right direction. With Wynn on board, knowing how to interpret the codes that indicate trapped rooms, they can't fail to escape, right?
Wrong. Back in the observation room, Dodd is panicking over Wynn's defection and what will happen with Them Upstairs. Now, at this point in the film, I was just annoyed that this was basically a re-hashing of Cube with some My Little Eye elements thrown in. The traps were pretty much the same as the first film, the characterisation was just as banal (was it a studio requirement to have the only black characters in these films be angry and violent or what?), and the plot was just ... well, barely there, really. So the idea that we might see some of the authority behind the cube was, whilst not exciting, at least interesting. It might at least confirm my theory that the director was going for some sort of 1984-esque approach, which at the very least would have been better than "the cube exists because it exists, you know?"
Enter Jax.
Let me be very clear here. This character does not belong in this film. Or any film that is attempting to present itself as a serious sci-fi thriller. You can't see it in this picture, but he does actually carry a pimp cane and wear a bowler hat. And act like he wandered onto the set by mistake from a Victorian-era gothic schlock-horror, but was too embarrassed to admit he was lost, so just picked up the script and rolled with it.
Jax is, apparently, an authority figure of some sort. I assume the directors thought his campy weirdness would be sinister rather than baffling. I guess he has a robot eye to help strengthen the dystopian, Orwellian futuristic theme, but any effect that might have had is negated by his pimp cane and general utterly confusing presence in the film. I mean, I just ... I don't even know. I cannot imagine who thought it was a good idea to introduce a character who clearly belongs in a vaudeville sideshow presenting two-headed dogs and mermaids to gawping cockneys into a film that really, really wants to be taken seriously as a sci-fi thriller than purports to have Things To Say About Society.
Anyway, so that's Jax. I hate him. But he comes to the observation room with two cronies and they chide Dodd for being a very bad boy and decide the only thing to do now is A) reset the cube (which means incinerating everyone inside) and B) make life harder for Raines and Co by getting rid of the letters on the doors. The letters that indicate whether a room is trapped or not, remember? Remember those letters? Sure? Okay.
Back in the Cube, Rains, Wynn, and Haskell find the letters literally melting away and some more paranoia and flapping occurs, and we're back to sending boots flying gracefully through the air to test for traps, and then pulling them back with telekinesis or something. Back in the observation room, Dodd grows a pair (of balls, not boots) and tries to sabotage Jax's attempts to kill Rains and Co. This ends unheroically with Jax performing keyhole surgery on him without anesthetic, or even surgical tools, really, and then Jax activates a chip in Haskell's brain than turns him into a super soldier programmed to kill who feels no pain. I'm guessing this is about the point where the script writers just gave up.
Haskell attacks Rains and Wynn, and then gets hit in the balls. Despite Jax specifically programming him to feel no pain, Haskell crumples like a girl and falls into a room below. It's a pretty big drop, and Wynn and Rains dust off their hands, declare him dead, and decide to move on.
But wait! Haskell is not dead! He recovers himself and makes a vertical leap from a standing start up through the hatch and back into the room where Rains and Wynn are still standing around dumbly, despite the previous scene quite clearly showing them climbing through another hatch.
This happens.
Luckily, Wynn reads the letters on the hatch of the room he and Rains are about to enter (you know, those letters that told you which rooms were trapped? The ones that Jax had melted off to make life harder for Rains and Co? Those letters? Yeah, he reads those letters), and before you can say "deus ex machina," Wynn and Rains have found the auxiliary exit. Huzzahs! They have to kill Haskell first, mind, because apparently black people just don't escape the cube, presumably because of how angry and violent they all are. For reasons unbeknowst to me (not that I was still trying to find logic at this point), this exit is not guarded at all, allowing Rains and Wynn to jump down a hole into some water just before Jax tries to kill them with fire.
They've escaped the cube! Now to run blindly throught the woods to freedom!
But wait, the ninjas are back! Wynn gets darted in the neck. Rains heroically leaves him to his fate.
Wynn wakes up in an operating theatre. Jax is campy and hammy at him. He implies that Rains has escaped, but tells Wynn he has been found guilty of high treason against country and God. He is sentenced to two lifetimes in the cube (because you'll last long in there), and Jax then shows Wynn a consent form that indicates Wynn has already agreed to enter the cube. Then Wynn gets a lobotomy, because why not, during which he dreams Rains is reunited with her daughter and apparently living wild in the woods. The woods which was crawling with cube ninjas, because why not?
We then cut to Wynn in the cube, acting like Kazan, the autistic savant from the first film, and being found by a new group of people. I don't know whether we're supposed to think Wynn is Kazan, or that Kazan was a technician like Wynn, or what. I suppose it could just have been a wink to fans of the first film, or I could be crediting the director with far too much self-awareness. I don't know.
Anyway, that's the end of the film.
So what did we learn, apart from the fact that this is a terrible film with a terrible plot and terrible actors?
Well, that's pretty much it. Cube Zero purports to answers questions raised by Cube, but it answers them with more questions. The attempts to show some kind of authority, or hint at the world outside the cube don't work because what we're shown is this:
And this doesn't make any sense. I mean, yeah, I guess maybe it is trying to depict some sort of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers and an Orwellian goverment that deals harshly and not-especially cost-effectively with its dissidents that favours vintage telephones. Maybe. Or maybe everyone was on crack. I don't know. I don't know about the quasi-religious overtones. They're never fully explored, so why introduce them?
I do know that my words alone are not enough to convey how pitiful this film is. I hate Cube because of it's shoddy acting, unsatisfying plot, and pseudo-psychological pretensions. I can't hate Cube Zero, despite it having all those elements plus pseudo-socio-political pretensions, but it's so fucking batshit whacked-out crazy that I'd feel bad about hating it. It's like hating the drunken hobo who stands on the corner and screams about goblins stealing his ideas.
With that in mind, I had long ago resolved never to watch the sequels, Hypercube or Cube Zero, because my blood pressure probably couldn't take it, and I've been assured that the sequels are even worse than the original. However, yesterday I finally caved in to Kyle's insistent nagging and watched Cube Zero. I don't know why he wanted me to watch it so much as he thinks it's absolute pap. Presumably he finds my incredulous anger amusing.
So anyway. Yeah, I watched it.
Now, one of the reasons Cube doesn't work for me is because there's no context for the cube. Sure, Worth tells us it's a government project spun out of control, existing only to justify it's continued existence, but I never bought that. As crazy goverment projects go, I suppose it's not unfeasible, but why should we believe anything Worth says? He doesn't even know who contracted him to build the stupid thing. What Cube Zero attempts to do is give the cube context and answer all those questions viewers had at the end of Cube. Questions like, how will I ever get this time back? and WTF was that all about?
The problem is that the only thing worse than a giant killer Rubix cube without context is a giant killer Rubix cube with context, because what sort of society thinks building this thing is a good idea? Well, Cube Zero attempts to explain that.
The film starts just like Cube - a man identified as Ryjkin is trying to escape the Cube when he's sprayed with a liquid he assumes is water. but turns out to be some sort of acid that disintegrates him. Bloodily. So in case you were wondering at all, the cube is a bad place. We cut to see two people, Wynn and Dodd watching this in an observation room. They seem cheerily unconcerned with what they've seen, suggesting either over-familiary and desensitization with horrible, acidic violence, or sociopathy. I don't know. Wynn asks Dodd how come they haven't seen their colleages, Owen and Chiklis for a while, and Dodd speculates that they're either on holiday or off sick. When Wynn persists, Dodd makes ominous refences to "upstairs" and how Wynn should probably STFU, okay?
So, we have people observing the cube and the people inside, and they don't seem to have any problems with the function of the cube. Okay.
Orders come in from Upstairs to observe the dreams of Cassandra Rains, a woman recently placed into the cube. So we have dream-stealing technology. So this is a futuristic film? Okay. Anyway, Wynn watches Rains' dreams and gleans she was captured by what appear to be ninjas whilst walking in the forest with her daughter. We then cut to Rains waking up and being all "where am I? Amnesia!" and then meeting Haskell (an angry soldier), an incredibly annoying woman who whines incessantly and I hated, and a comedy fat guy, and another guy. None of them remember how they got there or who they were before, but they've already cottoned on to the fact that the cube is a giant death trap, and are making their way through it by testing rooms for traps using boots.
(If you've seen the first film, you know this is a lame and unreliable way of testing for traps, but I guess it's all they have at their disposal. It's also a source of great continuity fail, as we frequently see characters toss their boots into rooms, without any way of retrieving them afterwards, only for them to have somehow reclaimed them in the next scene.)
Anyway. So our hardy and forgetful heroes start attempting to traverse the cube. They find each doorway has a sequence of three letters on it, which they suspect is some kind of code for which rooms are trapped. Remember this, it will be important later. On their way, they find out a little about themselves and each other, which in any other film would mean they had some charming and heartwarming experiences, but in this film means they all get paranoid and angry. Someone dies. I don't know his name; he was pretty much just there to demonstrate how nasty it would be to be sliced up by razor wire.
Back to Wynn. In the observation room, he and Dodd discuss the plight of the people in the cube, and it transpires that these people are (allegedly) death row inmates who have chosen to enter the cube instead of taking the lethal injection. Right. Because being sliced up by razor wire is a far more dignified way to end your life than lethal injection. Okay. So this is some kind of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers?
Anyway, for some reason Wynn gets a bit fixated on Rains and looks up her file only to discover there is no consent form for her entry to the cube. Shock! He also discovers she was a political activist of some sort. So this is some kind of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers and an Orwellian goverment that deals harshly and not-especially cost-effectively with its dissidents. Because you can't tell me the cube is cheap to maintain.
So Wynn wants to inform the people Upstairs about the missing consent form, but Dodd just tells him to STFU OMG and then an old-fashioned rotary telephone rings. So this is some kind of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers and an Orwellian goverment that deals harshly and not-especially cost-effectively with its dissidents that favours vintage telephones. Fine.
Anyway, the phone rings and Dodd answers and recieves word that they are to perform the "exit procedure." Yes, it turns out someone has made it to one of the cube's exits. Huzzahs! So Wynn and Dodd go to the observation screen and see their missing colleage, Owen wandering around in the darkness crying, which is fair enough. No, Owen was not on holiday! He was in the cube! And now he's pinned down by some ... contraption and Dodd, via loudspeaker, asks him if he believes in God. Owen cries some more and says no, so Dodd sets him on fire. Apparently atheism is also frowned upon in this totalitarian, vintage-loving futuristic world.
Wynn is horrified to learn the cube is inhumane (because watching people get eaten by acid, chopped up by wires, infected with flesh-eating diseases, and frozen with liquid nitrogen is fine, but being incinerated when you're supposed to be on holiday is one step too far). An argument ensues between Wynn and Dodd, which ends with Wynn deciding to enter the cube and help Rains escape.
Good for him.
Back to Rains and co. The annoying woman is dead - she got hit by the flesh-eating virus and infected the comedy fat guy. Rains jokes about cannibalism. Ha ha funny, but not really under the circumstances. Haskell, because he's angry, wants to dump the infected comedy fat guy, but Rains is all "compassion! Decency!" and Haskell agrees comedy fat guy can stay if he agrees to test the rooms for them. And then he pushes him into a trapped room and comedy fat guy explodes. That happens, okay? Rains is all ??!!?? and then Wynn gets there and is all "you're all going to die!!!" just in case Rains and Haskell didn't get it.
He tells them there's an auxiliary exit from the cube that he knows of but doesn't know how to get to, and there's some yelling and paranoia, and then they decide to find the auxiliary exit and set off in a seemingly random direction. which will of course turn out to be the right direction. With Wynn on board, knowing how to interpret the codes that indicate trapped rooms, they can't fail to escape, right?
Wrong. Back in the observation room, Dodd is panicking over Wynn's defection and what will happen with Them Upstairs. Now, at this point in the film, I was just annoyed that this was basically a re-hashing of Cube with some My Little Eye elements thrown in. The traps were pretty much the same as the first film, the characterisation was just as banal (was it a studio requirement to have the only black characters in these films be angry and violent or what?), and the plot was just ... well, barely there, really. So the idea that we might see some of the authority behind the cube was, whilst not exciting, at least interesting. It might at least confirm my theory that the director was going for some sort of 1984-esque approach, which at the very least would have been better than "the cube exists because it exists, you know?"
Enter Jax.
Let me be very clear here. This character does not belong in this film. Or any film that is attempting to present itself as a serious sci-fi thriller. You can't see it in this picture, but he does actually carry a pimp cane and wear a bowler hat. And act like he wandered onto the set by mistake from a Victorian-era gothic schlock-horror, but was too embarrassed to admit he was lost, so just picked up the script and rolled with it.
Jax is, apparently, an authority figure of some sort. I assume the directors thought his campy weirdness would be sinister rather than baffling. I guess he has a robot eye to help strengthen the dystopian, Orwellian futuristic theme, but any effect that might have had is negated by his pimp cane and general utterly confusing presence in the film. I mean, I just ... I don't even know. I cannot imagine who thought it was a good idea to introduce a character who clearly belongs in a vaudeville sideshow presenting two-headed dogs and mermaids to gawping cockneys into a film that really, really wants to be taken seriously as a sci-fi thriller than purports to have Things To Say About Society.
Anyway, so that's Jax. I hate him. But he comes to the observation room with two cronies and they chide Dodd for being a very bad boy and decide the only thing to do now is A) reset the cube (which means incinerating everyone inside) and B) make life harder for Raines and Co by getting rid of the letters on the doors. The letters that indicate whether a room is trapped or not, remember? Remember those letters? Sure? Okay.
Back in the Cube, Rains, Wynn, and Haskell find the letters literally melting away and some more paranoia and flapping occurs, and we're back to sending boots flying gracefully through the air to test for traps, and then pulling them back with telekinesis or something. Back in the observation room, Dodd grows a pair (of balls, not boots) and tries to sabotage Jax's attempts to kill Rains and Co. This ends unheroically with Jax performing keyhole surgery on him without anesthetic, or even surgical tools, really, and then Jax activates a chip in Haskell's brain than turns him into a super soldier programmed to kill who feels no pain. I'm guessing this is about the point where the script writers just gave up.
Haskell attacks Rains and Wynn, and then gets hit in the balls. Despite Jax specifically programming him to feel no pain, Haskell crumples like a girl and falls into a room below. It's a pretty big drop, and Wynn and Rains dust off their hands, declare him dead, and decide to move on.
But wait! Haskell is not dead! He recovers himself and makes a vertical leap from a standing start up through the hatch and back into the room where Rains and Wynn are still standing around dumbly, despite the previous scene quite clearly showing them climbing through another hatch.
This happens.
Luckily, Wynn reads the letters on the hatch of the room he and Rains are about to enter (you know, those letters that told you which rooms were trapped? The ones that Jax had melted off to make life harder for Rains and Co? Those letters? Yeah, he reads those letters), and before you can say "deus ex machina," Wynn and Rains have found the auxiliary exit. Huzzahs! They have to kill Haskell first, mind, because apparently black people just don't escape the cube, presumably because of how angry and violent they all are. For reasons unbeknowst to me (not that I was still trying to find logic at this point), this exit is not guarded at all, allowing Rains and Wynn to jump down a hole into some water just before Jax tries to kill them with fire.
They've escaped the cube! Now to run blindly throught the woods to freedom!
But wait, the ninjas are back! Wynn gets darted in the neck. Rains heroically leaves him to his fate.
Wynn wakes up in an operating theatre. Jax is campy and hammy at him. He implies that Rains has escaped, but tells Wynn he has been found guilty of high treason against country and God. He is sentenced to two lifetimes in the cube (because you'll last long in there), and Jax then shows Wynn a consent form that indicates Wynn has already agreed to enter the cube. Then Wynn gets a lobotomy, because why not, during which he dreams Rains is reunited with her daughter and apparently living wild in the woods. The woods which was crawling with cube ninjas, because why not?
We then cut to Wynn in the cube, acting like Kazan, the autistic savant from the first film, and being found by a new group of people. I don't know whether we're supposed to think Wynn is Kazan, or that Kazan was a technician like Wynn, or what. I suppose it could just have been a wink to fans of the first film, or I could be crediting the director with far too much self-awareness. I don't know.
Anyway, that's the end of the film.
So what did we learn, apart from the fact that this is a terrible film with a terrible plot and terrible actors?
Well, that's pretty much it. Cube Zero purports to answers questions raised by Cube, but it answers them with more questions. The attempts to show some kind of authority, or hint at the world outside the cube don't work because what we're shown is this:
And this doesn't make any sense. I mean, yeah, I guess maybe it is trying to depict some sort of futuristic society with dream-stealing technology and a Battle Royale-style approach to trouble-makers and an Orwellian goverment that deals harshly and not-especially cost-effectively with its dissidents that favours vintage telephones. Maybe. Or maybe everyone was on crack. I don't know. I don't know about the quasi-religious overtones. They're never fully explored, so why introduce them?
I do know that my words alone are not enough to convey how pitiful this film is. I hate Cube because of it's shoddy acting, unsatisfying plot, and pseudo-psychological pretensions. I can't hate Cube Zero, despite it having all those elements plus pseudo-socio-political pretensions, but it's so fucking batshit whacked-out crazy that I'd feel bad about hating it. It's like hating the drunken hobo who stands on the corner and screams about goblins stealing his ideas.
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no subject
on 2011-04-11 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-04-12 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-04-11 11:59 am (UTC)But why are there sequels to this thing. Why.
no subject
on 2011-04-11 12:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, the boots... they showed plenty of shots of boots free-falling dramatically into traps, then cut to them being hauled back by the shoelaces, so it's just bad editing, I think. Which definitely backs up the idea that this should not be.
no subject
on 2011-04-11 01:14 pm (UTC)I'm now boggling about what was even the point of having Cube Zero other than MOAR EVIL CUBE!
Oh, I missed the answer on twitter last night, but re: Cargo and the "space is cold" tagline, no that's not an indicator of the dialogue. It's a reference to the ship, because most of the crew spends time in frozen slushie goo baths while one person is awake and they rotate shifts during their journey. Our heroine spends a lot of time wearing thermals and shivering before the plot kicks in. Also it gives the director an excuse to have snow falling in the cargo bay and later, a snowball fight. It's not a great movie or even an original one (GUESS WHAT THE CARGO IS! GUESS!!!) but it was well made and ridiculously pretty.
no subject
on 2011-04-11 01:45 pm (UTC)And the original cube people (cubists?) were not shown through the admittedly limited dialogue to have been political dissidents or activists of any kind, or really being any kind of threat to society. So trying to establish the 1984 stuff in Cube Zero means ignoring whatever information we did get in Cube.
Argh! Why am I trying to make sense out of this when I know for a fact that Hypercube goes in a different direction completely and blows it all apart anyway?
no subject
on 2011-04-12 01:44 am (UTC)Thanks for the warning. I differently will not be wasting my time on this one!
no subject
on 2011-04-12 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-04-12 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-04-13 08:18 am (UTC)