Talk:Cube (1997 film)

Portal

Anyone else reminded of Portal with this movie or vice-versa? Obviously there's no portals in it but they both feature people kidnapped and put through some kind of mysterious test underground against their will. May or may not factor into the article, but I wouldn't be suprised if The Cube didn't influence Portal in some way.75.141.234.236 (talk) 07:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Comic Reference.

Nothing important but i belive [This] is a blatant reference to kazan. If somone could at it that would be great.

Merge summary of other movies

Added notes on the two sequels that they should be merged with this one. Cube Zero has an excellent synopsis of all three movies. Zerbey 19:00, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article has a synopsis of the first movie. Cube Zero perhaps should be moved to Cube (trilogy) or something, since the first movie was never called "Cube Zero". Dysprosia 00:44, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've created a new Cube series article that has the summaries of all three movies. I went with that name instead because of the naming of The Matrix series article. -- Bovineone 07:26, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Alderson

I have noticed that one of the mentioned cast members - "Julian Richings as Alderson" is not mentioned anywhere else on the page. Is this a minor character?--Brendan Hide 21:31, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

He never got a line, and died about twenty seconds into the film (in the "sushi machine" mentioned). Kinitawowi 13:00, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Alderson is not killed by the sushi machine, you'll notice that the sushi machine works and appears differently. It traps the victim within a circle of wires and then collapses towards the floor by tightening the wires. This should mean that instead of being cubed, the victim is sliced into "cake" pieces. --Gencoil 01:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

he's mentioned as "unnamed character" in the plot description though, not sure how to fix that (clem 23:16, 26 August 2005 (UTC))

I added a bit to the Alderson section--speculation on what his "function" in the group might have been had he survived. He is one of the most intriguing characters precisely because his presence in the Cube remains unexplained.(Smoky Topaz 8:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC))

Is he not "unnamed" because we can see his name tag on his jacket? Dikke poes 17:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of the Cube

No discussion of the allegorical significance that the Cube was deisgned by its victims, so added: "However, Worth's role as being a designer of the cube system albeit without any real knowledge of the task he had been working on, other than it was a 'good job' at the time, and his argument against the conspiracy theory of Holloway, argues for the film's allegorical point being that we are all trapped in a device of our own making, which was made in ignorance, and ultimately meaningless, however complex and intricate at may appear." User:User

• The character Worth claims he worked on the outer part and no one involved on the project knew anything about the overall purpose of the rooms in the cube. Of course he could simply have been driven mad as happened to Quentin in the course of the movie. The movie is a perfect analog of a bureaucracy gone amok. Franz Kafka would have been proud. There is no explained purpose in the movie, and it works best as a complete mystery: the explanations in the sequal and prequel fall flat. In Cube all we know is the people are in a maze, with traps and few clues, but must survive by their wits and grudging cooperation. To be encyclopediac, there is no real purpose given in the movie, but in the end it is ironic that only the idiot survives. For talk purposes, if I had to surmise, the cube started as a top secret secure weapons storage depot, automated; when the project was canceled, the cube went on automatically and no one outside knew enough about the project to have an overview of what they had created and abandoned (par for gov't work). It also reminds me of the Algis Budrys novel Rogue Moon. q.v. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Moon Naaman Brown (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Clean Up

This article needs some serious work, in almost every section. I think there should be a section about the Allegorical Meaning of the cube, as well as much more cohesive Maths section. I say this because I think Cube is a excellent film and it deserves a better article than this. Satchfan 08:14, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned a bit --dvorak.typist

rooms

I dont get how this person got that the rooms are 15.5 feet, and not 14 feet.

Rooms

You have to add the extra legnth from when you go into the door which is roughly a foot and a half. That is how the external dimensions are 15.5 feet.

But that's still wrong. That's an extra 1.5 feet on the other side of the cube. You forgot that each door has an opposite door on the other side, so that would add another 1.5 feet to the exterior lenght of one of cubes;

The Math: 14ft (interior) + 1.5ft (doorway) + 1.5ft (opposite doorway) = 17ft^3 (exterior)

That is, of course, assuming that the lenght of doorway on a cube is 1.5ft. I actually think it's 2ft, but that's just me.--24.89.215.104 04:22, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

You're more right than I am, but we are both wrong. It is said by Worth in the film that outter shell is 434ft on one side, and Leaven deduces after pacing off the room that the number of cubes on a side within the outter shell is 26. 26 cubes high, 26 cubes wide, and 26 cubes long.

So, some more math: 434ft / 26 = 16.69ft(rounded exterior dimensions) - 14ft(interior dimensions) = 2.69ft(rounded)

It's this 2.69ft left over that when divided in by 2 (for both sides of the cube) gives us 1.34ft(rounded). That 1.34ft is the lenght of half the "hallway" between one cube, since a "hallway" is created between any 2 cubes lining up to on another.

Math was never my best, so if anyone can point out what's wrong, then by all means...

--24.89.215.104 04:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

However, you have to account for the fact that two adjaccent rooms share their common "hallway", i.e. every room only contributes one half, making the hallway 2.69 ft long, which is, IMHO, not too different from the length perceived when watching the movie.

Umm...the "hallway" lenght was already stated. --24.89.215.104 00:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

-The math on dimensions does not consider the 'border space', the empty space between the rooms of the cube and the outer shell. The assumption was made in the movie that either side of the rooms has a space equal to the size of one room. Therefore 26 rooms + 2 border space = 28 434ftt/28rooms=15.5ft/room That allows a 14 foot interior (as mentioned) and 0.75 feet for the thickness of the wall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.37.173 (talk) 20:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The comment prior to this is correct. The dimensions of the cube are 26 by 26 by 26 with a border of two rooms on each side. Each border space can be deduced to be the size of one side of a cube as in one of the last scenes, a 'bridge cube' connecting the outer shell to the cube is seen to be sliding along the perimeter of the cube. This also makes sense because 434 is perfectly divisible by 28 and Leaven's theory on the size of the cube was made before they reached the edge the first time round. Hence, no border was considered or she was more concerned with the internal size of the cube and felt that the 'border space' was not worth mentioning to the others. Therefore, the cube dimensions I worked out are as follows:

• External dimension of a cube room: 15.5 ft = 434 ft / (26+2)
• Internal dimension of a cube room: 14 ft
• One half of a doorway of a cube on both sides: 1.5 ft = 15.5 ft - 14 ft
• One half of a doorway (each cube contributes to one half): 1.5 ft / 2 = 0.75 ft
• Size of doorway between two cubes: 1.5 ft = 0.75 ft x 2
• Dimensions of the outer shell: 434 ft by 434 ft by 434 ft
• Dimensions of the cube: Maximum of 26 cube rooms by 26 cube rooms by 26 cube rooms (There are empty spaces within the cube and these are unable to be calculated given the limited details of the cube.)

The most convincing part of the figures (to me) above is that they are all exact and not rounded. Mysterial 15:22, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Post-apocalyptic science fiction film

is it? How do we know this?

--Charlesknight 22:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

No dialouge in the film suggests that there was any major global conflict outside the cube and the state of global affairs are never addressed. This leads the viewer to assume that the events in the film could have happen at anytime and are not hinged upon a post-apoc world. So...no; Cube is not a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film.

Changed where the "Spoilers End"

Spoliers End tag was after the synopsis, and then was followed by what happens at the very end of the film in the Character details. I moved the tag to the end of the Character section.

Sure

The Traps

There were some minor areas that needed better wording in the the trap explanation. The unknown trap was left out but is very important as this trap establishes that their are multiple types of sensors throughout the cube.

Kazan and Rennes

Holloway, San Quentin and Leavenworth are known to me, but Kazan and Rennes? The latter's known to me as one of the former national capital of Britanny, and the other for its university where Tolstoy went. Can someone provide ref.s for the prisons in these places and how notable they are please? --MacRusgail (talk) 19:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Surely it is 'Leaven deduces' & not 'Leaven deducts'? (82.22.162.83 (talk) 20:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC))

Math Corrections

The article claimed the math was all valid but it has some holes. Also, people think trapped rooms are marked by prime powers, they're not, Leaven was saying they're involved; the trapped rooms are those in which any of the number of prime factors of the marked numbers it not a power of a prime (check the film carefully). I believe Leaven's claim of using the subtractions to figure out how the rooms rearrange is impossible, but I'm not sure so I can't comment on it. 70 bags of gumdrops if you can figure out what the theory is!

I've checked the film carefully, and Leaven's exact words are, "they're identified by numbers that are the power of a prime." That means trapped rooms are identified by prime powers, so the article is correct in its current form. Tiggerdude (talk) 15:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I've put a detailed page up with everything I examined; click my name (user page), main site, cube, if you're bored.

Squish7 (talk) 08:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Someone corrected me with what I'm pretty sure were two incorrect statements. The point made that may have made sense is that if we're talking about the number of unique prime factors, then this number is limited to four (2*3*5*7, because *9 is over 999), but I believe that we're not talking about unique, only the number (3*3*3 is three factors). If you think I may be wrong please skim my cube page (above) and we can talk here or via email. Thanx.

Squish7 (talk) 06:37, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the comment below that Wikipedia isn't the place for this original research. However, it would be easy to resolve this issue: someone list the numbers that actually occur in the film and whether the room is trapped or not. Then just list all the prime factors, and work out which hypothesis is correct!

The "original math research" in this article...

As noted by this article's "tags" (as of August 2008), there sure does seem to be a lot of "original research" and "unverifiability" going on here!
I'm not sure right now how best to try to clean some of that up, but clearly much of the "math" discussion needs some attention.

The problem is how much speculation is involved in that discussion (eg., "Although not stated in the film, her calculations seem to be based..." ), and also that at least some of that speculation does not even seem to be valid (eg., "...Leaven claims to be able to navigate the maze, but could not do so without knowing what to use as the origin (0,0,0)..." ).
The discussion of the math in this film should really be limited to stating or summarizing that "math" as it is presented in the film itself (except maybe in the "Trivia" section -- but, then again, that whole section should probably go, too...;).
In this case, though, given the central relevance of "math" to plot-development, etc., I think the article should try to have at least some general discussion of what is relevant to the story (especially that which is left vague, or ambiguous, or even misleading in the film!).

So, I thought I'd try to start doing some of that sometime soon -- please feel free to discuss with me here any changes I might end up making to that end!
Wikiscient 01:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)