"Magic Box" is adapted from the short story "Button, Button" , which should be known to many people.
The original author of "Button, Button" is Richard Matheson , who has worked as a screenwriter for films such as "I Am A Legend" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man" . The novel was first published in the 1970 "Playboy" magazine. Very short and powerful.
Later, it was adapted as a scene in the twentieth episode of the first season of "Misted Time" in 1986. In 2009, it was adapted from "Button" to "Magic Box" by Richard Kelly.
So let’s review what the original "Button, Button" looks like.
The English PDF I downloaded is only 7 and a half pages long if the illustrations are removed. The protagonist is the same as the movie-wife Norma and husband Arthur.
The scene of the story is completely confined to Norma's home. The author vividly shows how a morally weak person can be completely corrupted under temptation . From the beginning, Norma was disapproving, and began to care more and more about the button. She desperately wanted $50,000 for nothing (the three versions have different settings for remuneration), no matter who would be killed.
So much so that in her conversation, she began to say that people she didn't know were killed, and she had nothing to do with her. She kept hypnotizing her own evil thoughts such as absurd self-justification such as ignorance equals innocence. On the contrary, Arthur is a person with very firm moral will. Facing the temptation of a huge sum of 50,000 dollars, and the temptation of his wife's murderous innocence, he is a righteous veto, and he will not waver.
The two protagonists with extremely facial makeup form a clever contrast , one believes in integrity, and the other follows the former vacillatingly.
The shaker is bound to overturn the bottom of the valley-Norma and her husband returned the button together, and the business card was torn to pieces by Arthur.
When Norma was alone, the button was sent back again. She hid the button in the cabinet in the kitchen, and then persuaded her husband again, but Arthur's angry hands trembled. Regardless of support, Norma pressed the button after all, because she was for the money and the good words for the two. She fully believed that the deceased would be a stranger thousands of miles away, or that no one would die at all.
The phone rang, and when Arthur arrived on the subway, he was squeezed off the platform by the crowd. Unfortunately, he died. He got fifty thousand dollars and Arthur's insurance money .
Stewart also called. Hearing Norma's tearful complaint about the "stranger" rule, he asked: Do you really know your husband?
The story ends, and the core of "Button, Button" is also innocent. The first is the depravity and indulge in the face of temptation for the weak in morals , the second is the difficulty of being Shendu (Norma alone presses the button), the noble sentimental difficulty, and the third is the concept of strangers played at the end. Strangers are not always The fate of one side of the meeting is the ideology and morality that the person next to the pillow can't know the bottom line .
Norma doesn't know her husband, because she doesn't bother with her husband's integrity and doesn't understand her husband's morals.
If Arthur presses the button, of course it will be Norma who will die. Arthur is completely unaware of her viciousness and greed .
After talking about the key points of "Button, Button", let's take a look at the "Blurred Time and Space".
Actually, there is no need to say more about this, the story is basically the same, except for the ending and Arthur's character.
In the series, Arthur and Norma are morally weak, unable to give up the temptation of 200,000 dollars, and finally watched Norma press the button at home.
In the ending, a stranger died, but Stewart's words were modified to focus-absolutely a stranger died, and this button will be handed over to someone else, someone you absolutely don't know. This is actually an extremely open and threatening ending, because Norma will become a stranger to the next button holder, and the next time the button is pressed, she and her husband may die.
Because the episode is only 20 minutes long and the time is no longer in the 1970s, director Peter Medak used a lot of scenes to shape the moral dilemma of the couple. Obviously fragile middle-class families are easily disintegrated by huge sums of money. The two messy hair and ashtrays full of cigarette butts each day create a crumbling moral abyss .
It's just that the core of the ending is not too deep, but transferred to a simple thriller and horror atmosphere .
The original book cares about moral vacillation and unfamiliarity, and the series cares about horror and open ending, so what does "Magic Box" pay attention to.
With the same characters as the series, the buttons that run through the third edition will inevitably be stretched to expand to two hours.
Richard Kelly added a rich background to the story, and answered questions after pressing the button, and changed the name from the button to the overall magic box.
The whole event is a low-end version of Kohlberg's dilemma test set by the Martians for humans , in order to test whether humans' moral standards require genocide.
Compared with the original work and drama series, the character background and answers of "Magic Box" have everything you need.
But at the same time, the original mysticism is destroyed, and the sense of preaching is permeated in the added part.
The self-consistency of the ethics test is not optimistic, and the unknown button is placed in a family whose economic situation is precarious. It is completely the act of letting wolves herd sheep and then kill wolves . In the original book, Norma intends to get money to travel and buy a villa, greedy and enjoy one after another, but save herself in the rushing water? This is not a test of general morality, but a serious moral corruption in extreme environments .
The way the Martians took advantage of the fire to stab people's weaknesses and then wipe out all mankind is incomprehensible.
Take "Space Traveler" as an example, will you judge the entire ship for the male protagonist's extraordinary behavior? No way.
It's not that human beings are absolutely upright in ordinary moral tests. I also don't believe that human morals will not bend, but forcing a few negative effects , on the contrary, makes persuasiveness and shocking degree child's play.
The most intriguing thing about the movie is Stewart's explanation of Box. People live forever in the box and are gradually broken down .
People's vacillation in ordinary moral dilemmas/ Horror/ Moral collapse in extreme environments
Personally, "Button, Button" is an outstanding novel, profound and mysterious. It can only be said that the series and the movie have their own merits, and they are not satisfactory compared with the original.
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