Off Topic: Is there a more cinematic space than the elevator? Eurogamer.net If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Off Topic: Is there a more cinematic space than the elevator? Ding! Feature by Christian Donlan Features Editor Updated on 13 Jan 2022 I watched Die Hard this Christmas - as ever, on Christmas Eve, wearing my Nakatomi Plaza T-shirt. It's a fantastic movie and, in this house at least, it's a Christmas movie - the best Christmas movie. It's also one of the most interesting architectural movies ever made - I am sure I have bored people with this before, but in Die Hard architecture is destiny. As the film unfolds you learn your way around the upper floors of Nakatomi Plaza. By the end of the film you know where everything is located - the final act kind of depends upon it. (That bit with the fire hose now reminds me of Dark Souls - you sort of know which room he's going to end up in.) When I went to a talk by BLDGBLOG's Geoff Manaugh a few years back - I am sure I have bored people with this before - so many of the questions in the post-talk Q&A were about Die Hard. Manaugh was in town to discuss his brilliant book A Burglar's Guide to the City - a book that truly contains multitudes. Please buy it. Anyway, every time I watch Die Hard I end up thinking about elevators and how much I love them. More specifically I end up thinking about cinematic elevators. It's made me wonder: is there a more cinematic object than an elevator? Why do they go together so well? There are any number of reasons, I think, but a few of them are both obvious and interesting. The first is that elevators are such a great cinematic object because they are, on the surface of it, so utterly resistant to cinema. Where do you put the camera? There's no room! So you have to be creative - stick it up high or down below. Or maybe you mess around with the walls - maybe you shoot through a wall but leave the button pad visible. Maybe you rotate around the elevator and we all revel in the magic of this impossible shot? (Shoot face-on, incidentally, and you get a cool moment of theatre in your film - where is the line and is it being broken? You get to study faces, actors when they're listening as well as speaking. It's all strangely illicit.) Subscribe to Eurogamer to read this article Get your first month for £1 (normally £3.99) when you buy a Standard Eurogamer subscription. Enjoy ad-free browsing, merch discounts, our monthly letter from the editor, and show your support with a supporter-exclusive comment flair! Support us View supporter archive More Features Feature What games get wrong about horses And what they could do about it. 27 Feature Shout out to all the Overwatch supports - where would we be without you? Merci. 55 Feature From abandoned board game to birthing a genre: Football Manager at 40 Kick off. 21 Feature How I became an Elden Ring detective It started with a save game... 26 Latest Articles Atari will hold RollerCoaster Tycoon rights for another decade Ups and downs. 7 Jelly Deals Logitech's G Pro X gaming headset is its lowest-ever price during Amazon's Early Access sale Prime Members can get it for just £52. Jelly Deals Save over £500 off the retail price on this beefy ASUS TUF Dash gaming laptop from Amazon Under £1080 for an RTX 3070 laptop. Lady Dimitrescu will be a tad smaller in Resident Evil Village's Mercenaries DLC Level the playing field. 1 Supporters Only Premium only Off Topic: Take a minute to appreciate Cookin' with Coolio's incredible scallops recipe. What a great book. Premium only Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form "Where exactly am I going?" Premium only Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole Underlands. Off-Topic Netflix handled Sandman brilliantly It was Dreamy. 9 Buy things with globes on them And other lovely Eurogamer merch in our official store! Explore our store