MovieChat Forums > Cube 2: Hypercube (2003) Discussion > Something that bugged me

Something that bugged me

posted 14 years ago by crooky-3
4 replies | jump to latest

So the movie was interesting to say the least. I don't think I liked it THAT much, but nonetheless I like the discussions here and it's opened my mind up a bit about the movie. This is the only Cube movie I've seen thus far - should be getting the 1st DVD from Netflix next week. :P

The one thing I can't get past is 60659...if it's referring to a TIME, why not WRITE IT as a TIME instead of just a #? I mean obviously it's being written for reference sake, so why not refer to it as it actually is and not as a number that could easily be misconstrued as something else? Does anyone have an explanation of this?

[–] toflz 14 years ago

numbers= solvable
time= insolvable

Pretty straight forward. If there only clue was TIME they would NEVER know when. But being that 60659 was a number that COULD be a time it can be solved in a way.

[–] ratimir2 14 years ago

Either you misunderstood the OP or I am misunderstanding you. They said "write it as A time" (with different emphasis) ie 6:06:59, but you seem to have read it as a suggestion that it should have just said "TIME".

I would ask why not use both? Why not write "TIME 6:06:59"?

Then again, I have no idea who is supposed to have written it, when or why [edit: wait, I remember now, it was the mostly dead guy]. Or whether there's any supposed significance to that particular time (as far as I can tell, it's just an arbitrary point in time chosen by the whim of the scriptwriter). Or why multiple watches carried by multiple alternate versions of the same character on vastly different paths through a maze that is shown to make a mockery of the concept of time would somehow end up perfectly synchronised both with each other and with the surprise deadline.

Which to me is symptomatic of one of the major problems with this film. In the original, the WHY of the cube was an unresolved mystery (with a couple of hypothetical answers suggested), but the HOW was abundantly clear.We as the audience could empathise with the characters. We could feel the same shock and fear when we saw (semi)plausible horrors like being sliced up with razor wire or having your face dissolved with acid. We could share their hope of deciphering the clue of the numbers both to avoid traps and to find an exit. We could emotionally engage.

Here, there are more hints to WHY, but HOW has been reduced to 'the fourth dimension makes weird stuff happen'. Here we just see a bunch of people being killed at random either by a nutcase with a knife or by bad CGI. There is no pattern to either the killings or the rooms, so there is no puzzle to be solved. The deaths are so ridiculously fake that we don't feel fear. We are emotionally distant from the characters not because of their behaviour or their acting, as some reviews and comments suggest, but because of the situation they are in. Since the situation they are in is pretty much the entire concept of the film, I would describe this sequel as a complete and utter failure.

[–] scarletminded 14 years ago

You should definitely watch the first Cube. It's a lot better than the sequels.

[–] lokis_angels 11 years ago

there is only 1 LONELY person that figured out 60659 is significant. Because he knows what it means he doesn't need to write it any different.

For instance the hint on one of my passwords is "sportsyear". This makes no sense to anyone not knowing the password, but to me it makes perfect sense. In fact, even if someone would go and try to find the password with that hint, it most likely gets wrong answers. I could write it down differently so anybody could get the right format and eventually the right password, but what's the purpose for that?