00:00Hello and welcome everyone. As you saw, I will be discussing the animated short film The Box,
00:06which I saw a couple years ago, and I can finally talk about it with this video.
00:11It is a story that touches upon creatives and how society can crush their creativity and
00:17imagination, and how others in society can pull others down to their level because they hate
00:23seeing someone succeed where they failed. So getting straight onto it? Let's get into it.
00:29We begin with a panning shot of what looks like a forest and mushrooms until we come upon a strange
00:36plant-slash-humanoid-looking embryo. We then cut to these plant men, which one of them is seemingly
00:44having a bad dream, waking up with us seeing that they are all in a box with only a light
00:50bulb as a
00:50light source. The embryo we saw has now grown into a child waking up into the world, and I'm just
00:57going
00:57to call him Joey. He gets acquainted with his body and starts looking at the other tree men next to
01:04him, which I will just call him The Caretaker. And one of Joey's first actions as he has gained sentience
01:12is to bite his caretaker.
01:21We do a timeskip of Joey being a bit older, scaring his caretaker for some entertainment until a moth
01:28catches his eye. He plays with it for a while until it lands on his caretaker, and he smacks it,
01:35killing it, with us ending on Joey cradling it in his hands. With another timeskip, he is now probably
01:43around the teenage stage of his development, with all the plant men hearing him play music by slapping
01:50himself and singing, and they really hate it with his caretaker finally snapping, yelling at him, which
01:57makes him stop. Joey then feigns going to sleep while the others do actually fall asleep, with him shooting
02:04right back up and plays their heads like bongos, going right back to his singing and making music as
02:11we have one final timeskip. As we have another shot of all the plant men sleeping, with us seeing the
02:19fully grown Joey, with him showing his caretaker that one of his legs are free, which makes the
02:26caretaker panic and start yelling as the other plant men begin to do the same. They do this until a
02:33hole opens up in their container, which a strange machine comes down looking at everyone. Joey is of
02:40course intrigued by this new development, until...
02:47It literally smashes him down so he is like all the others, where Joey is in obvious pain with the
02:56light in his eyes flickering until they fully go out, with his caretaker then laughing at his misfortune
03:04and pain, making fun of him with the other plant men in the box joining in. Feeling so much frustration
03:11and anger for what has happened, his eyes light back up, with him proceeding to rip himself out of the
03:18trunk and climbing out of the box before the hole closes up. With all the plant men stopping their
03:25laughter and staring up at the hole as it slowly closes, dumbfounded on what just happened, with the
03:32film ending with their light bulb going out. With a little mid-credits scene of another one of the
03:39plant men trying to follow in Joey's footsteps by singing his song. Alright, before I move on to the
03:45characters, I want to talk about some of the world building here. If I had to create some kind of
03:51bigger story here, it would be that the plant men are basically living batteries, and that whoever is
03:58outside, siphons energy out of them, and when one of them gets out of line, they send in the robot
04:05to
04:05squash them down, teaching them not to do anything to upset whatever order they have in the box. But now
04:12that I am done with that little speculation, we can move on to the two characters in the animation.
04:17The caretaker did not have that good of a first impression with Joey, getting bit while he was
04:24asleep. With him then trying to stop his singing by yelling at him, but he soon finds out that that
04:31will not work to silence him. And it seemed to be a regular thing for him to yell at Joey
04:37since he
04:38goes to do it again since he woke him up and realizes that he is now fully grown and bigger
04:45than him.
04:45And once he sees that Joey has one of his legs free, he gets scared and starts yelling to call
04:51the presser, with all the others following suit. And once it squashes Joey, we see what the story
04:59is starting to tell us. That every plant man was once like Joey, but got squashed down to size,
05:06losing the light in their eyes, and conformed to the rest of the plant men so they wouldn't get hurt
05:12again. With the caretaker laughing at Joey's misfortune, probably thinking it's what he deserved,
05:19and that now he will understand why he should have been more like them. With him now having to be
05:25like
05:25them by force. But what he didn't expect was Joey not being like him and the rest, regaining his light,
05:33and forcefully getting himself out of the box. With him just being slack-jawed seeing what just happened,
05:40and most likely just going back to his boring life afterwards. Now, let's move on to our main
05:47character, Joey. We see the start of his life and unlike the others, he has a round head and bright
05:54eyes.
05:54With him just having a natural curiosity for the world. With him being fascinated by life,
06:01that quickly gets snuffed out in front of him. But he does not let that get him down,
06:07so he starts to make music to express himself, not caring what the others think and gets constantly
06:13shouted down by his caretaker. With him finally being an adult, he finds out that the actual power
06:20that he has, seeing that he may be able to move around and not be stuck in one place,
06:26which causes everyone to want him to be smashed down to size, because they are afraid of what his
06:33actions might cause. And when the presser comes in, he is of course wondering what it is before it
06:40crushes him, causing him to lose a light in his eyes that I interpret as the light of creativity and
06:46free thought. And because of the laughter of everyone else, he pushes past his fear and pain
06:53to reignite that light going where none of them could have ever thunk of going. Outside.
07:01And I need to go back to the caretaker because we actually see at the beginning of the film
07:07that he still has the capacity to tap into that light, as we see him dreaming, but he is afraid
07:14of it.
07:14Afraid of having an imagination, because like all the others, he got smashed down and gave into the
07:21fear of never wanting that to happen again. Finding enjoyment in seeing others who did have it, lose it.
07:29And Joey's actions did show some results, seeing that the socially awkward one that couldn't read
07:35the room, regained his light for a moment while playing his song, but was then stopped by another
07:41plant man. But I am sure that guy probably won't let the others stop him eventually in the future.
07:48So overall, this was a great animation with it showing the metaphor of how society can
07:54push exceptional or creative individuals down because they don't like seeing others succeed
08:01where they failed. And showing us that even if you get hit hard in life, don't let it take away
08:08who you
08:09are, and that you should push past it, hopefully breaking into a new world that you couldn't
08:15have imagined for yourself. I do hope all of you enjoyed, and if you haven't yet, please like the
08:21video and subscribe if you like this kind of content. You can go check out a playlist I have for
08:28other
08:28short film animations here, and make sure to check out the channel itself, since there might be something
08:35you like. With all this done, I guess I will see you guys next time. Bye guys!
