The Cube.
Most people saw it as an average horror movie where a bunch of people try to get out of a giant torture box. But there was a pivotal scene that stuck with me where one of the prisoners realizes he helped build part of it. The whole thing wasn’t some intentional torture device but just a bunch of people doing their day jobs that were lost in a bureaucracy not ever questioning what their work was creating.
A stark reflection of society and the systems we create and the dangers of not ever looking at the bigger picture.Of course they proceeded to shit all over this idea in Cube2 where it ended up being just another evil government experiment.
I actually liked Cube Zero for the backstory and set styles. I don’t remember much else so I’m assuming it was shit, but you can give it a try if you want.
I think OP pretty much summed up Cube Zero. The first installment is really just a horror fiction also depicting the structure of human society.
Yeah, Cube 2 is shit. It’s a scientific concept show.
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Yeah it’s not a bad film at all really, but even just within the horror/scifi genre it can’t compete with higher budget films for popularity.
Just to ask, nobody understood the full picture of what they were making? Or was there someone who created the concept but intentional obfuscated it from everyone else via bureaucracy?
Granted it’s just the viewpoint of one of the prisoners but it’s the one I found most intriguing. To quote the movie: “Nobody knew what it was, nobody cared…there is no conspiracy, nobody is in charge. It’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan…somebody might have known sometime before they got fired, voted out, or sold it…this is an accident, a forgotten perpetual public works project. You think anybody asked questions? All they want is a clear conscience and a fat paycheck.”
Ok the last time I watched it was well before being exposed to corporate culture. That’s awesome.
That’s awesome sci-fi right there. It’s a bit campy, but it’s campy in the same way that all great social commentary is, until it isn’t and it’s too late.
The thing that stuck with me was: “TWO!”
Yeah, I even think Cube² was better.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Amazing world building and visuals that was destroyed by terrible casting and wooden acting.
It’s based on a comic series so we can read that at least
The box art put me off thisnone, but skimming the plot and it reads like an amazing visual spectacle. Might watch this one
The film opening is the best part, and honestly one of the best openings to a movie ever. It’s such a shame the rest of the movie is hindered by the awful writing and casting.
This was the movie I immediately thought of.
It’s a terrific LOOKING movie, but the two leads had absolutely no chemistry. At first I couldn’t figure out if they were partners, spouses, dating, brother & sister, etc.
The production design was spectacular, though.
Still definitely worth watching if you ask me, but yeah those main characters are… Not amazing.
There was this movie I saw once called Time Trap. I definitely would not call it good, but the premise was interesting.
Archaeology professor goes missing while exploring a cave which was once thought to be the location of the fountain of youth. His grad students go looking for him, find the cave, weird things start happening when they enter.
Spoilers below:
The cave is revealed to cause some sort of time distortion which grows in intensity the further in you go. The professor who had been missing for days was only in the cave for a few hours. By the time everyone realizes what is happening, months go by, then years. They exit the cave at one point only to find an apocalypse has occurred, with the cave becoming the only safe haven for them to exist in at this point. Without spoiling the rest of the movie, the story plays in to the fountain of youth legend by including a group of Spanish Conquistadors and a tribe of paleolithic cavemen living in a deeper part of the cave, all living as if only days have passed, but in reality centuries/millennia had gone by outside.
Time trap was awesome. The scene when they realize the flickering lights are time passing and then they poke their heads out of the cave to see a complete departure of the old world.
The end got a lil weird tho.
Nonetheless it’s a movie that will stick with you for a few days of conceptualizing.
*Time Trap was directed by Ben Foster, which I just discovered. It’s also streaming for free (w ads of course) on YouTube.
So I just watched it on YouTube. What the hell was that ending?
Spoilers if someone is gonna watch it (I don’t really know an effective way to do spoiler tags so bear with me):
They’re in the cave until the sun just kinda “goes out” and is replaced by a bright green light. Some giant future human comes down and does battles with the cavemen and knocks them out with some weird shock collar thing. He takes a vial of super water before being jumped by some more cavemen and getting his mask taken off and bonked on the head a few times, which somehow kills him. Before he dies, he plays some holographic recording of a newscast about the five characters who went missing. In the final battle, they take his ladder and use it to try to escape the cave only to find some weird machine with water covering the hole where they try to climb out of. What I assume is another evolved human grabs them and outfits one girl in a weirdly sexy diving suit? To then rescue the rest of them. They all wake up in a spaceship and get reunited with their friends and the professor with his family, and presumably fly off to Mars.
My question(s) is A) what the hell is going on with future humanity B) why isn’t anyone upset that the world is dead and their families are gone forever and they passed into history as another unsolved disappearance, but it’s cool cause we’re in space in the future C) how did they not experience the heat death of the universe in the time dilation cave? Especially when the sun went out
The kind of spoiler tag you used is the kind that doesn’t work on every Lemmy app. Fortunately, that’s not a problem, as I’ve already seen Time Trap, and despite forgetting its name, do sometimes think about it.
Thanks, I actually went out of my way to look up the native Lemmy markdown format for spoilers because I was worried the one I was used to using wasn’t universal, but I guess the opposite ended up being the case. I’ll try to fix it.
I believe this is what you’re looking for:
::: spoiler Visible Text
hidden content goes here
:::Looks like:
Visible Text
hidden content
Thanks! Does that look any better now?
It doesn’t, it still has some exclamation point action that might be the issue. If it helps, you should be able to copy and paste my example markdown. I gave it a try and it still works.
There, third time’s the charm (or 10th, more accurately, since lemmy.world is shitting the bed right now).
I think I figured out what was going on, too. The app I use was automatically re-parsing spoiler formatting into its own syntax, but then was erroneously applying that same syntax to text when attempting to view source. So even the example you posted looked different to me when viewed in app versus on the actual site. I made the edit from the site this time and I think that should be good now.
Looks great, bravo!
might give this one a watch!
Imo it is way better than what OP made it sound to be, held my attention whole way through.
This was the first thing I thought of when seeing the prompt. I actually love this movie and have seen it several times, but the acting is abysmal.
Hey, I’m upvoting you and all but I gotta ask how do you do the spoiler thing? I’m using Apollo and it made me click to expand your comment so I could see the spoiler part. How did you format it?
It took me a few tries, but the format that was recommended to me by SoleInvictus in this comment appeared to work.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14390647
Ironically it doesn’t work as well in my own app because the app keeps trying to change the formatting to its own syntax, but it seems to work for the most people of all spoiler options.
I had a series of 3 stomach surgeries and I delved into some shows I wouldn’t watch. I stumbled on this one. I really loved the premise. It is one of those late night SyFy feeling movies. The end did get weird, but I like where they were going with it.
I’m surprised how many people in the comments have (A) seen this movie, and (B) liked it. I didn’t care for it, although I do like the basic premise.
The timing of your comment is a kind of a funny coincidence for me, because over the past few days I’ve been editing the next episode of my podcast, which will come out on Tuesday, and in it I mention Time Trap a couple times. Maybe the film is having a moment?
Jupiter Ascending
They seed the galaxy and harvest whole planets to create an immortality serum. Fantastic world concept … but a subpar story to make a movie about within that world.
oh yeah, I remember liking the genetic aspect of that too. But yeah, poor story, and not Mila Kunis’s best acting
I thought if they took out the werewolf thing, it would’ve been so much better.
And all the stuff about the genetic lottery, there being so many humans that eventually a perfect match gets born randomly is a cool premise.
I wish Jupiter Ascending could have some sequels to spend going full space soap opera.
I know! The idea that a perfect clone/cop could be born was amazing. If only they would make a movie about … oh yeah, I forgot. They did.
I was so hyped when I saw the trailers, because the visuals and ideas of the story they showcased were exactly my jam. But oh boy, what a dumpster fire the whole movie turned out to be.
Edit: yep, still goosebumps watching the trailer
Hot take, “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. The radio play, books and 80s bbc show were not represented very well at all. They missed well over 75% of the jokes, Mos Def and Zooey Deschanel added nothing to it, and they added plots and scenes, I think just to get more “blockbuster actors” in, that ruin the original story of the radio play. Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman/Warwick Davis and Bill Nightly were the highlights. One of the few movies I wish they would remake.
Sam Rockwell as Zaphod was spot on. He was the only one who actually read the books, and had to even tell the director to add “Froody” to the script. What a shitshow it must have been for the director not to know that…
That director doesn’t sound froody
Oh hey Zaphod, yeah he was not a frood indeed
Clearly did not know where his towel was.
Agreed, it was a big letdown unfortunately, compared to any of the other versions (including the text adventure!)
Shame, because Martin Freeman was perfect for Arthur, and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide was a great choice too. Though Mos Def was ok as Ford, although not on a par with David Dickson (TV) or Geoffrey McGivern (radio).
Zaphod and Trillian weren’t right at all though IMO.
I quite like the movie. I mean all your points make sense and i agree, but at the same time, it’s that movie that even introduced me to the books, and i now read them every year or two. The movie is far from perfect, but if you look at other things they try to convert into movies, this could’ve been so so much worse. Like imagine they made that movie now or somewhen in the past 5 or 10 years, it would basically be a disney marvel movie with marvel quips and: “he’s right behind me isn’t he’s?”
Reign of fire. Don’t know if that’s what you were referencing in the picture but it’s immediately what came to mind when I saw the drawing.
Wait, but Reign of Fire is the best dragon vs. helicopter movie ever made!
Dude yes, I was so hyped for it, but it really underdelivered
Bits of it were good. Seems like something went wrong in production or they ran out of money or something. Some of the effects were really good and there was a real mood to the post apocalypse world but it was very uneven especially the way the entire process of civilization ending was just a montage of newspaper headlines. It’s ok to be post apocalypse of you don’t want to show the apocalypse but that was just cheese. Also there were the odd shots that were of just such a lower standard than the rest of the film. Like this scene where a guy climbs up a watertower and stands atop it getting ready to throw a spear and for some reason after the effects extravaganza up until that point in the film it looked a cheap television blue screen that was super awkward. I guess they wanted it to look taller than in reality and show the desolate landscape but it’s so weird that after all the aerial dragon combat they’d pulled off pretty well for the most part that THAT was somehow difficult. I seem to recall storywise there was some very disappointing ending too but it’s been rather too long for me to recall it now anyway.
Dark City (1998) could definitely fit the bill, it has so many unique ideas for that time in film and you can see there’s of all sorts of future sci-fi movies in it from the matrix to inception, it’s a very visually ugly movie and the acting is subpar but as a premise it’s super interesting. Generally I think remakes are a waste of time and money but I’d love to see this movie with a proper budget and modern technology
The city itself was interesting as hell
I really like that movie. But watch the directors cut, for the love of all that’s good! It removed the narration at the beginning that gave away the whole plot. Much better that way.
I just watched this! It felt like the director wanted to go real big with it but technology just wasn’t there with effects. It also tried very hard to be a mindfuck movie but also kept spoiling the twists somehow lol. Overall solid 7+ movie.
Just joking. I really liked the movie for its style and the frightening bad guys in all sizes. Also Kiefer Sutherland with a mad scientist touch.Jennifer Connelly is the best part of the movie
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Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Nazis are in charge of the US government, yet there’s other Nazis on the run from the Nazis in charge? And they’re hiding bibles? I was left scratching my head wondering if there were any characters that weren’t Nazis. I guess it’s a story about how bad guys always turn on each other?
Also The Witcher season 1 tv show. I’ve never played the games before and knew nothing about it. I was hoping the tv series would be my introduction to the games, but… what in the actual fuck. Was the director drunk? Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?
As far as the witcher and time travel kind of. At some point in the future there was a disaster and Earth was destroyed. However some humans and lots of monsters from alternate realities ended up in the world of the Witcher. Elves and dwarves were the original inhabitants.
Humans used a mix of genetic engineering they had and magic taught to them by the elves to make the Witchers. The Witchers helped solve the massive monster problem and the world ended up with humans mostly on top.
Witchers age very slowly and if not killed can live a very long time. Powerful magic users are basically the same. So the stories from session 1 are spread over about 80 years with some long lived characters.
The first book that season 1 is primarily based on is also different from the other books. It’s a bunch of short stories that are based on classic stories. So there is Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, etc.
I own the Witcher 3. Should I start there? Cause you just made me very interested.
Witcher 3 the game is a fine place to start. I’d say you can start in any of the games and Book 1 the Last Wish, Book 2 Sword of Destiny, or Book 3 Sword of Destiny. The games were in line with the books cannon but telling there own story. The popularity of the games made Sapkowski write more and they have now diverged somewhat. Here are some notes on all of them as far as a starting place.
Last Wish (book): Short stories based on classic stories. Good intro to the world and the writing style. No main plot so it can be skipped or read later without much problems. The Sleeping Beauty story is the opening cinematic of Game 1.
Sword of Destiny (Book): More short stories but we introduce a lot of the main characters in the rest of the books.
Blood of Elves (book): This is where the main story of the Witcher starts proper. After this you should read them in order.
Witcher 1 (game): Game play is ok but I think has the most interesting ideas and storytelling. It has the choose between two bad choices and find out later what the effect is. It doesn’t spoon feed you the lore and there are lots of hints about what is going on you can catch if you are paying attention. For example echinops grow where terrible crimes were committed if the crime wasn’t atoned for. Every place you find a echinops growing is a clue as to the nature of what happened there.
There is another great non obvious story element that I love. I think it’s more fun to know this and see how it plays out in the game. I recommend reading the spoiler but it’s up to you.
Main Villain
Alvin the boy who almost dies in the barghest attack in part 1 is also the main villain Jacques de Aldersberg. Towards the end of the game Alvin goes back in time and grows into the adult Jacques de Aldersberg. The various things you say to Alvin will change what Jacques says during the game. And when you kill Jacques at the end you use your silver blade. He looks so upset saying “That sword is for monsters.”
Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings (game): Improved gameplay with much more focus on combat and combat mechanics. Better graphics. Ok story but nothing compared to 1. The combat is very hard early and is required so that can be a drawback.
Witcher 3 Wild Hunt (game): The best game as far as gameplay. Fun lots different things to do and a solid story. It’s a very Ciri focused story and thus can spoil some of the books somewhat. As far as a starting place you are going to have a lot of fun but it does throw a fair amount of characters at you and expect you to know them. Also the spoiler from 1 is specifically confirmed at one point so if you don’t want that beware.
The witcher Netflix series was a mess behind the scenes. I think some of the writers were taking it as opportunity to show off their ‘abilities’ and were writing OC instead of the witcher.
If you didn’t actually finish high castle, it just keeps getting good weirder.
ahhh yeah Man in the High Castle, that’s one where you oughta just read the book
i’m ditto w/u on how annoying constant time displacement is in television YES EVEN ANDOR DAMMIT
Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Unfortunately the case for a good portion of Philip K. Dick’s work… Schizophrenia, amphetamines, and misogyny can do that I guess.
But when he was good… He was the best of his genre. Literally imo…
Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?
The three main perspectives it follows take place at different points in and over different amounts of time but each one is internally completely linear and then they all end the season at the same point as each other. Basically, the less you’re making an effort to follow the plot the easier it is to follow because keeping track of the interconnectedness distracts you from the straightforward character stories.
This isn’t me trying to convince you to go back, to be clear, I’m just hoping this will give you some closure.
Season 1 is based on the first book, which was made some a bunch of serials in a fiction magazine. It’s honestly pretty spot on with the book and the following books and seasons are fully linear.
Man in the High Castle
Although I liked the series, the “supernatural” elements in it really threw me off. I would still recommend the series but be clear that it is science fiction and doesn’t always adhere to physical limitations as we know them, without getting any more specific than that.
1st season had 2-3 timelines going at once, no time travel (this time) just poorly executed non-linear story telling
I felt like the story was amazing for season 1. Season 2 went downhill quickly because of the easy love triangle plot line. The main saving gave was the Rufus ‘Obergruppenführer Smith’ Sewell amd his son toryline. I couldn’t even tell you if I’ve seen/remember one episode of season 3.
Basically every Terminator movie after T2. They have some great “what if” premises that could add so much depth to the world, but then struggle to see the vision through is a satisfying way.
T3: Let’s actually show Judement Day
T4: Let’s show the turning point in the war against the machines (edit: and why people follow John Connor as leader of the resistance)
T5: Exists
T6: What if all this time travel actually branched the timeline? What would it look like if one of Skynet’s terminators succeeded?
The Sarah Connor chronicles was the only sequel media that ever made sense to me
I know, right? I was quite mad when l heard the show was cancelled after season two. I still want to know if she survived after taking a shotgun shot to this day.
The movie In Time (2011). The premise was interesting but I can’t even remember the plot because it was so meh.
I also think Idiocracy could have been better. It had good moments, and that’s what most people remember, but the overall cohesiveness falls flat. Great moments, iconic scenes, but could have been a better film.
In time, has such a awesome premise.
But what we got was a “poor little rich girl” story.
What we got was Bonnie and Clyde. I liked it though.
Came to the comments to say In Time. I always have to remind myself how bad it was, because I really like the concept, so the movie tends to be much better in my head than it actually is as I keep adding things that weren’t there.
At first I thought you meant there was a movie inside a movie called Time.
Not a movie, but a TV show. Revolution.
A sci-fi post-apocalypse show where the premise is that all of a sudden all technology (specifically anything that uses electricity) just stops working and nobody knows why. The show takes place 15 years into the apocalypse. The US has Balkanized into various regional states (although you don’t learn this until later). Some regions have devolved into chaos while others have basically reverted to a steam-punk type of society. Since all modern ships use electricity, they’ve begun to revive large ships from the age of sail. The remnants of the US military at Guantanamo Bay eventually return to the mainland and try to reestablish a much more explicitly authoritarian control over the US. You eventually learn that what caused the global blackout was the creation of a self-replication nanotech which rapidly spread across the planet and shut off all electricity.
Great premise, but it got too much into the soap-opera CW-style of writing and didn’t last more than 2 seasons.
Ah yes, the Lost-likes.
Manifest, Fast Forward, Continuum, Revolution, Terra Nova… loved them all. All of them canceled.
Yep. Sounds like what happened with Jericho. Mystery and intrigue in the starting seasons, and then just weird petty soap-opera style squabbles towards the end
If the writers want to tell a story focused on inter-personal relationships, that’s perfectly fine. There are PLENTY of people who enjoy that kind of thing. They just don’t tend to be the same type of people who enjoy post-apocalyptic sci-fi puzzle-box shows. I don’t know why you go through all the trouble of creating this expansive world and lore only to focus your show on character dynamics that aren’t centered around the conceit of the show.
If you’re going to build this complex world, let us explore that world!
Poor Jericho, I need to hunt down the graphic novels that supposedly gave it a proper ending.
Yeah really fun premise slathered in boring characters.
If I recall it devolved into some CW-flavor bullshit revolving around the girl, who is her real father, why is she special. Blah blah blah.
It was such a good show, but man did they just keep pushing it
As featured in the picture, Reign of Fire. I had forgotten about it. I truly don’t think there is a film out there that has represented dragons as I see them better.
I really think about Quinn’s character a lot. How the world entirely changed for him on that pivotal day he discovered that male dragon, and the decades he spent running and surviving and living in fear of something that he inadvertently set in motion, and then the turning point as an adult as he confronts his fear and wields it to put an end to what he started.
What I like about him, is that he’s not actually that unique – anybody could have woken that dragon, and if Quinn hadn’t been there on that day, one of his mother’s coworkers would have. He’s not particularly heroic as an adult either, opting to hide and scrounge for survival, and openly admitting to everyone that he’s winging it on the leader front. And yet he inspires his community with fierce devotion to keeping them all alive. When he finally goes to confront the dragon, he does it almost alone, inspiring no one with his courage other than himself.
As a character I find him weirdly relatable as someone just coping with heavy trauma the best that they can
Not a film, but a TV series? It’s called Jericho, and the synopsis in the Wikipedia reads:
Jericho is an American post-apocalyptic action drama television series, which centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
But yeah, the execution is mediocre at best. Both the action and the drama are unbearably flimsy and cliche, even the argument flops as metal.
Nuts
I remember starting watching that. I have no idea how far I got, but I don’t remember a thing about it.
Same here. Aamof I just try watching it last year. Visually, it was cool to come back to those years, but I don’t think I finished season 1.
I love Jericho. On my third watch right now actually. Would agree that it’s frequently cliché, but overall I’d say it’s very good. Skeet Ulrich is transfixing.
Did you read the season 3 in comic books? I was surprised about the following they’ve got as I was reading that Wikipedia entry.
yeah but it’s been aaages, I forgot about what happened in those. I remember it was good.
Oh man I haven’t thought of Jericho in a minute. I used to watch that after The Unit.
Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about that show either.
Passengers had the possibility to be really creepy, I still liked it but without seeing Chris Pratts time alone first, we would have all been confused and on guard with Jennifer Lawrence.
I think it would have been a much better film if the audience had also been kept in the dark about him opening her pod as well. That way we can also go through the range of emotions with her at the same time when she finds out.
Just start the movie from her perspective. Pod opening and Pratt is already there. He tells her his pod just opened and he’s confused too. Then we get the whole “wandering the shipn for the first time” montage where they could drop subtle hints that it’s not actually his first time doing any of those things.
His character is absolutely a bad person, but it’s a situation we can sympathize with because being truly completely alone for any amount of time fucks with people badly. She has every right to hate him for the rest of their lives, but it turns out that if he hadn’t done what he did they all would have died because of the damaged engine or whatever it was (I can’t remember).
They could have made the movie much harder hitting and/or creepy for the first half, but they opted to try and make you sympathetic to his situation from the start.
It’s the movie that always pops into my head when thinking about wasted potential.
Pandorum is, to me, what Passengers was trying for. The claustrophobic horror of hurting through the void, other humans being both your salvation and your tormentors, all that.
The execs ruined it to make a vehicle for some big names.
I love Pandorum. I have a huge FanTheory on it on reddit from years back if you want to check it out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/gmlo53/pandorum_earth_took_serious_countermeasures/
Me, too.
Can you imagine the creation myths that would evolve in the society that developed from the survivors? There were just a handful who had survived and experienced that descent into hell. The others had blissfully slept.
I’ll check that out!
I feel like the last 30 years of Star Wars movies could qualify here
Disneys stance is to be middle of the ground on everything. Writers or source material bring in a ton of actually interesting stuff, only to be snubbed and half assed. It happens so consistently in all their shows. It’s maddening!
Have you tried Andor yet? That show is crazy good.
Oh yeah it’s awesome, definitely is able to commit to their ideas and ideals
I’ve always felt like Star Wars the original 3 (4,5 and 6) were a product of their time. They aren’t bad movies but they aren’t great movies either, but for whatever reason they struck a chord with the population in the late 70’s and early 80’s. George Lucas should have just let them be there really was no reason to make any more of them, but money.
