Monday, February 01, 2016

The Rubik's Cubes in the film Hal


HalAs a Rubik's cube connoisseur, stumbling across this film with a girl holding a 5x5 on the poster drew me in immediately. And to my surprise, cubes were a somewhat significant plot point in the movie, so it was only natural that I did an in-depth review of the cubes in the movie Hal.(Sorry for bad quality of the pictures and the shit crop, by the way)The movie mainly shows 5x5 cubes, and a good thing to know about 5x5 cubes is that center piece to each side cannot be moved. This makes it easier to locate problems with color orientation. It also means that whenever I say "the blue side" or whatever color, it means that color is in the center of that side.My first objective was to figure out if the cubes were in a Japanese or Western color scheme. The problem is that for most of the movie, a fully solved cube was never shown until here about 40ish minutes in (I forget exactly). The solved cube shown in the bottom left isn't a standard Japanese color scheme or Western scheme. In Western, the white side opposes the yellow, and in Japanese, the blue side opposes the white side. The orientation shown (with a yellow/blue/white corner) can't exist in either variation. However, one cube on the very right with the green and red sides solved, we can just barely make out that the left side is blue. This red/green/blue orientation is possible on a Japanese cube, so I will assume a Japanese color scheme from here on out. But, as of now, we've only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg of these cubes.The first shot of the cube immediately got off to a poor start. On the very right you can just barely see a blue/green/white corner, which can't exist. Soon after came this one which shows a blue/green/yellow corner which can't exist and directly next to it a green/green edge, which also obviously can't exist.In this shot, it is hard to make out, but it appears to have 2 orange centers. No 2 centers can be the same color on a cube. But let's suppose the center piece next to his finger is red and it's just hard to see. Well on a Japanese cube, the red face and orange face are supposed to oppose each other.I was actually somewhat impressed with this one. At this particular time on this cube the green side was solved, and from a different angle it shows no green pieces anywhere. Good job, I guess.Here's a weird one. It only shows 3 colors so it makes sense to assume those 3 sides shown are the last sides needed and the other ones are solved. It's hard to see, but it also looks like there are 2 red centers.This shot takes the shit cake. 3 different pieces that have the same color on them, as well as a green/blue/yellow (next to his hand on the right, hard to see) side combination that isn't possible. Despicable job, makes me want to puke.Here are some other random screenshots:No, old lady, I don't think you didSimply horrifying T_TThis one is just lazy. The front/right/up corner changes from blue/orange/white to blue/orange/yellow. Come the fuck on.I am sure that I also missed a few impossibly colored pieces but there's no point in pointing out all of them. And I am also sure that most of the scrambles shown aren't possible scrambles (a lot of combinations of colors aren't possible to make without taking apart and swapping pieces due to the limited ways the cube can be turned)Overall, I am very disappointed in the quality and effort put into drawing these cubes.C- http://ift.tt/1o0oBVP

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