Cube 2: Hypercube

[Shawn]

This was played on Sci-Fi last Saturday... anyone catch it?

Cube was one of my favorite movies, and I'd heard from a lot of fans that Hypercube was really bad. But I was pleasantly surprised by it. In a way, it was the complete opposite of the first movie. But I found this refreshing, as it didn't attempt to rehash the story of the original.

In fact, Hypercube (as the name may imply, if anyone is actually familiar with the term) is largely about theoretical physics, which has always been an interest of mine. I was wondering if anyone else here had seen it so we could discuss some of the more ambiguous aspects of it. :)

[Figrin D'an]

Haven't seen it, but I'm big into theoretical physics. Is it going to be on again?

[Shawn]

I have no idea. Sci-Fi is notorious for showing things over and over again but I think this may have been a one-time thing. The movie comes out on DVD soon.

[Mu Satach]

there's an encore showing this thursday, April 10.

http://www.scifi.com/cube2/

[Figrin D'an]

Alrighty... I watched Hypercube Thursday evening.

Overall impression... it wasn't too bad. The dialogue wasn't stellar or anything, but I did feel that the lines for the engineer character (Jerry, I think is name was) were written well enough to get across some of the basic ideas behind a tesseract, without getting overly complex. Decent drama, and things were kept moving fairly well by finding out new little tidbits of info about each of the characters as the story progressed. The ending was a little odd... (but, to be fair, I missed the first 10 minutes of the film, so maybe that was important to ending).

They got most of the technical stuff right about the dimensional space of a hypercube, although they didn't go into a lot of detail (which is understandable). The "alternate reality" situation was not that accurate though... that was definately a sci-fi stretch. It was entertaining, just not really true.

I'd be up for a discussion about the film, or the tesseract concept itself. It is a rather intriguing subject. :)

[Shawn]

The first couple of minutes were kind of an homage to the first film and didn't really have an impact on the ending.

Reposted from another thread:

Kate worked for Izon. She was sent in to retrieve the necklace that Sasha was wearing. Presumably, Kate was told nothing about the Hypercube, since she seems just as lost as everyone else. It looks like they just told her "Go in there, get the necklace, get out." Then they shot her because she hard learned way too much about how it functions. Also, I think she genuinely cared about most of the other people and didn't want them to die; She probably would have gone to the police or something if they had allowed her to live.

This part is conjecture only:

I think that the necklace was the center of gravity, so to speak, for the Hypercube. From the G-Man's comments, it was obviously meant to record information while inside of the Hybercube. Since it wouldn't be very useful if it got destroyed, I can only assume that the device was some kind of "anchor" - that's why the entire thing just happened to collapse into the room Kate (and the necklace) was in.

What kind of information it was supposed to collect, I don't know. Perhaps just rudimentary data, like how large it was, how fast it moved, how long it took to decay, etc.

I think Sasha may have wanted to let the Cube kill her to prevent Izon from getting the necklace back.

I didn't like how they explained who made the Cube and came up with reasons why they were all connected to it (not spoilered, because they explain this pretty early on). It seemed cheesy and contrived, but... it was necessary to further the main plot point: After all, if they had just sent in Kate, Sasha might not have trusted her. By sending in other people that they needed to get rid of anyway, it allowed Kate to get close enough to find out which one was Alex and get the necklace. Also, the presence of people in the Hypercube probably helped it collect data.

The alternate reality thing sort of made sense. Someone wrote up a detailed explanation of it on the IMDB messageboard. But in short, it seemed that every new room they stepped through made a new reality. Also, this seemed to possibly hasten how fast it started to collapse on itself.

Assuming that my theory about Sasha's necklace is correct (that they'd need it to get out), the safest way for them to all survive would have been to all just sit down together in the same room until time ran out. I think that the physicist guy who wrote all over himself knew this... that's why it looked like he had just stayed in the same room the whole time.

Also, if you noticed, he didn't have that "mummified" look that all the other corpses had. I think that moving wall of energy that destroyed the military guy at the beginning was what caused the mummification (rapid aging). Since he stayed in the same room without moving, he hadn't triggered the expand/collapse routine... and so it didn't cause that effect - he simply starved to death before the expiration was up.

Mind you, I'm no theoretical physics major... just guessing based on what little I know and what I gathered from watching the movie.

I couldn't quite picture a Tesseract in my head, despite the description given in the movie and the numerous amounts of animated diagrams I found online. But I think I finally understand. When you try to draw a Tesseract 2-dimensionally (ie, on a sheet of paper), it basically looks like a cube inside of a cube, connected at the vertices. The cube that the movie took place in was not the Hypercube. In fact, it was probably just a very small cube inside of the real Hypercube.

The concept of a tesseract intrigues me. Since you seem to know a little bit about it, perhaps you could explain to me what uses it has in theoretical science?

[Figrin D'an]

Okay... lots to respond to... :)


Originally posted by Shawn
Reposted from another thread:

Kate worked for Izon. She was sent in to retrieve the necklace that Sasha was wearing. Presumably, Kate was told nothing about the Hypercube, since she seems just as lost as everyone else. It looks like they just told her "Go in there, get the necklace, get out." Then they shot her because she hard learned way too much about how it functions. Also, I think she genuinely cared about most of the other people and didn't want them to die; She probably would have gone to the police or something if they had allowed her to live.


Okay... that makes sense, and that's essentially what I figured. Seeing as how everyone was somehow tied to Izon directly or indirectly, and was either a liability or a nuisance, it made an effective way to kill a lot of birds with one stone. Although, one would think that, if the necklace was so valuable, they would have actually told Kate how to get out, rather than risk her not figuring it out and imploding with the cube. But, oh well...





This part is conjecture only:

I think that the necklace was the center of gravity, so to speak, for the Hypercube. From the G-Man's comments, it was obviously meant to record information while inside of the Hybercube. Since it wouldn't be very useful if it got destroyed, I can only assume that the device was some kind of "anchor" - that's why the entire thing just happened to collapse into the room Kate (and the necklace) was in.

What kind of information it was supposed to collect, I don't know. Perhaps just rudimentary data, like how large it was, how fast it moved, how long it took to decay, etc. I think Sasha may have wanted to let the Cube kill her to prevent Izon from getting the necklace back.


I guess I'm willing to accept that explanation, although Sasha's reactions during the first part of the film kind of indicate that she wanted to get out. Perhaps it was only after the realization that she wouldn't find the answer in time, that she decided dying inside was better than giving Izon the information. The whole "cube decaying, then the exit suddenly becoming available" was rather convienent. Either Izon provided the exit right at that moment to ensure that everyone except for Kate and necklace was destroyed, or a theoretical 5th dimensional being decided to manipulate the tesseract. ;)





I didn't like how they explained who made the Cube and came up with reasons why they were all connected to it (not spoilered, because they explain this pretty early on). It seemed cheesy and contrived, but... it was necessary to further the main plot point: After all, if they had just sent in Kate, Sasha might not have trusted her. By sending in other people that they needed to get rid of anyway, it allowed Kate to get close enough to find out which one was Alex and get the necklace. Also, the presence of people in the Hypercube probably helped it collect data.


I agree... having a group of people made it more Kate's story more believable, Sasha more willing to trust her, and provided more info on how people perceived what was happening to them.





The alternate reality thing sort of made sense. Someone wrote up a detailed explanation of it on the IMDB messageboard. But in short, it seemed that every new room they stepped through made a new reality. Also, this seemed to possibly hasten how fast it started to collapse on itself.

It worked for the purposes of the film... it gave it more variety than simply moving from room to room... really, though, the 4th dimension of a tesseract is spacial, not time-driven. They explained that early on, but then kind of let it slip... so, I think some viewers may start to think of time being the 4th dimension of the hypercube, which isn't true. Time is, more or less, the resultant effect of our three dimensional universe passing through 4 dimensional space. Now, of course it would be possible to begin in Room 1, head away from it in a straight path, and eventually find yourself back at Room 1 (this is where non-Euclidian geometry come into play). But, to see yourself in a different time frame during this process, indicated some kind of warping of time... it makes for better entertainment, but it's a pretty dubious. It's even more unlikely given the relative nature of time, which can be experimentally demonstrated with Einstein's famous theory.




I couldn't quite picture a Tesseract in my head, despite the description given in the movie and the numerous amounts of animated diagrams I found online. But I think I finally understand. When you try to draw a Tesseract 2-dimensionally (ie, on a sheet of paper), it basically looks like a cube inside of a cube, connected at the vertices. The cube that the movie took place in was not the Hypercube. In fact, it was probably just a very small cube inside of the real Hypercube.

The concept of a tesseract intrigues me. Since you seem to know a little bit about it, perhaps you could explain to me what uses it has in theoretical science?


That's the problem inherent to trying to draw it on a 2D surface. Even attempting to render it 3D space doesn't really have the full effect, and unfortunately, we will never really be able to truely visualize it. We're limited by our own spacial physics. I guess, for me, the best way to think of a tesseract is to take 3-dimensional slices of it... like a how a cube can be thought of as an integrated series of 2D squares, think of a 4D hypercube as a series of integrated 3D cubes... the visual is kind of strange at first, but it makes sense, and is probably the best possible way to describe it in a 3 spacial dimension manner.

The film itself... it could have very well been in a hypercube, but because we can't perceive the 4th dimension in true spacial terms, we can never be sure. A 2-dimensional being, upon seeing a sphere approaching him, would see a dot, then a circle that would appear to expand to 2*pi*r circumference at it's widest point (the sphere having passed halfway though the 2D realm), then see the circle shrink back to a point and eventually, nothing. The same holds true for us, 3-dimensional beings, viewing a 4D "hypersphere". We would first see a sphere appear seemingly from nowhere, watch it grow to a maximum size, then shrink back to nothing and vanish. Our limited perception would allow for that interpretation of a 4D object passing through the 3D realm. If you have a cube, and you unfold the the sides to lay flat on a 2D surface, you get a bunch of connected squares arranged like a cross. Similarly, if you could unfold a hypercube, you would have a series of connected cubes arranged like a cross. For a 2D being, trapped inside a cube, the 3D spacial orientation of the cube could be manipulated (rotated, folded, unfolded) and he wouldn't really realize it, beyond a potential change in gravity and the passage of time. He could travel along, what appeared to be a 2D plane to him, and eventually end back right where he started having traveled in a straight path. The same would hold true for 3D beings, us, trapped in a 4D hyperspace. It could be manipulated, and we wouldn't really be able to perceive it, beyond gravity and relative time.

It's kind of bizzare to think about at first... but it makes sense if you employ the analogies that we can understand (ie. examining a 2D person from our 3D perspective.)


Application... well, the hyper-object idea kind of evolved out of non-Euclidian geometry, and the idea of treating time as an effect rather than a dimension unto itself. The concept of a 4th spacial dimension helped to develop aspects of quantum theory, eventually leading the concept of even more spacial dimensions beyond four, all in an effort to develop a unified field theory. The current result... superstring theory, which makes a pretty reasonable attempt to explain how the GUT (grand unified theory) and Einstein's Theory of Gravity can be made to agree. It's a continual trial and error process, but the strides that have been made in the past 50 years are pretty amazing.