The movie begins with an elderly gentleman hurrying along a corridor clutching a metal box.
He enters a room of people of advancing years wearing identical blue jackets.
Together they place a paper document and a clear plastic key in the box and close it,
setting a timer on it for 200 hundred years. This, they say, should be long enough for the remaining
humans to live below the ground. The box is passed to the current mayor and then from mayor to mayor
over many years until. Finally, with 47 years remaining, the person holding it collapses and
the box is tucked away and forgotten about. What exactly is the box about? This is Movie Shortens.
Follow us today to the movie titled: City of Ember 2008. Be aware: there are spoilers!
Next we arrive at the house of Doon Harrow and his father Loris.
Doon is getting ready for his graduation ceremony, known in Ember as an assignment day.
As he does so there is an outage of power. Doon tells his father the city is on the brink
of collapse and that he wishes to get in and see the generator no matter what it takes.
Out in the town Lina Mayfleet rushes from her granny’s house to the same ceremony,
arriving after it has begun. However, she creeps in late, with the help of her friend Lizzie as the
other graduates recite an oath to their city. Ember, they say, is the only beacon of light in a
world of darkness. The mayor then carries a velvet bag along each line of graduates, from which they
all select their future jobs. These range from an electrician’s assistant to potato peeler.
Lina secures a job as a pipe works laborer, while Doon is to become a messenger. As the youngsters
exit the building Doon pleads with Lina to swap positions, to which she agrees. She is delighted,
while he is one step closer to the generator. Next Lina returns home to tell her granny, while
Doon receives a lecture from his father about how to make the most of his new position. His father
is tinkering with a number of electric devices he’s built in the kitchen. Doon heads out and pets
an enormous bug at the fountain in the centre of town, while Lina kisses her younger sister
Poppy goodnight. She then uses a set of pedals to power an electric light, which also activates an
answer machine allowing her to listen to her late father’s voice. Once Poppy is asleep she colors in
a picture with a blue sky, clearly dreaming of an outside world she has never seen.
The next day, the two new recruits report for their respective duties.
Lina arrives early and gets to work immediately, running at speed to deliver her messages.
Doon is, meanwhile, greeted by Sul - an old man who has been working the pipes for years.
He kits Doon out with some old boots with just enough traction.
He also gives him a helmet and tells him to carve his name into its side.
Its previous owner had drowned and this was the only way to identify him.
Lina’s first message is delivered to the kindly Clary, a friend of Lina’s late father who tends to
the town’s greenhouses. Her potatoes have received complaints. As they talk, they are distracted by
a noise outside. An aging man dressed in rags is arrested for trying to escape Ember via the river,
making Lina question why anyone would risk this, when it is against the law.
Over in the tunnels, Sul is showing Doon around. He is able to navigate the network
via a map he keeps in his breast pocket. Doon is full of questions, but Sul is only able to
answer those directly relating to his job. As he monitors a gauge, Sul falls asleep. Doon
takes this opportunity to steal his map in an attempt to find his way into the generator.
Eventually he finds a tunnel which is not shown on the map. He follows this to a mysterious door
marked Room 351. However, it is locked. On his way back, he spots a cable and a hook hanging
from a trapdoor. The curious Doon climbs up and into the room above. It is a storeroom.
Within it he finds some shelves stocked with cans of food. He is intercepted by
the brother of one of his classmates, Looper, who aggressively throws him out of the stockroom.
As Doon lands in the street, another power cut hits. During this he talks with Lina.
She mentions that something isn’t right, because it is lasting longer than usual. She also tells
him about the man who was trying to escape. They question whether the generator can truly be fixed.
At this point Doon is summoned back to work, while Lina runs back to check on her granny.
As she does so, she warns everyone that another outage is due in 7 minutes.
As a fire rages in the generator, Lina’s granny tries to warn Lina of a message from her great
great grandfather. In another room Poppy has located the metal box from the opening scene
of the film. It is open and the young girl is chewing on the paper she has found inside.
The old woman recognizes the box as being key to what she was trying to remember,
but she cannot recall the details. In the next significant scene, Lina is sent
to the mayor with a message from Looper. After telling the mayor, “his ship is in”
she asks him about the metal boxes seen in pictures of former mayors. He is, however,
evasive. Then, on her way home, she hears Looper say, the city is going to go black for good.
Back home, Lina attempts to reassemble the paper document from the metal box,
but various pieces are missing. She also finds a translucent key housed
within another drawer. Having gone out to find food, she returns home to find her granny sick.
Sadly she passes during the next blackout, forcing Lina and Poppy to move in with Mrs. Murdo.
Having shown a scrap of the papery message to Doon, he recognizes it from a history book
he’d seen at school. The two of them break into the school to check on this.
It is identical and was written by the builders of Ember. Looking at the full message Lina had
attempted to stick back together one again, Doon hypothesizes that there must be an exit
from Ember. Remembering the curious door to room 351, they head there in an attempt to enter.
However, they are interrupted by a giant mole. Fortunately, the two of them get away,
with Doon providing a distraction at the very moment Lina appears in trouble.
Next Lina begins to speculate as to how her father could have drowned, when there is no water but the
irrigation pipes. Clary explains that her father had thought the end was coming and had decided to
try and escape. He was attempting to dig a tunnel, but hit the river he was following too early.
Although he was killed, those with him escaped. While the mayor is speaking in the square,
Lina sits on the ground still trying to figure out the meaning of the document. Lizzie brushes past,
but stumbles. A number of cans of food fall from her bag. These include pineapples which haven’t
been seen for nearly 2 generations. Lizzie claims they were given to her by a boy who likes her, who
explores the outer storerooms. It is Looper. Beginning to suspect there is a connection between
Looper and the door 351, the two return to it. This time they are able to break in. They enter
to find the mayor asleep in a chair, a can of food in his hand, surrounded by tins and bottles.
The mayor, it seems, has found a solution to the food shortages, but only for himself.
Back at Lina’s house, she uses the pedals to activate her light. Doon hears the audiotape and
recognizes his father’s voice. He hears something significant and rushes home to confront his Dad.
Doon accuses him of trying to leave the city. Clearly his father has lost hope, telling his son
that the builders of Ember abandoned them. Doon tells him otherwise and that he has proof.
Meanwhile, Lina enters the mayor’s office and reports what she saw to his assistant.
He thanks her for the information, but then forcibly drags her to the mayor. She is about
to be arrested and have her box seized by his guards when another power cut occurs.
Lina makes it out, but not before she grabs a key similar to the one
seen in her box’s drawer, which the mayor had been using to pick his teeth.
When the lights come back on the mayor sends his troops out to arrest Lina and Doon. Doon, however,
is able to get away due to the quick actions of his father, who delays them. Clary, meanwhile,
assists Lina by hiding her in a secret room within the greenhouse. Doon soon joins her. In the room
he finds a machine which he recognizes to be the handiwork of his dad. The two of them get
it up and running and use it to make a tunnel to get away. Here Lina shows Doon the key she took
from the mayor and they slip it together with the other found in the box to form a complete one.
Next Lina and Doon head to the town square to lure Poppy away from the event taking place.
They head to the control room of the piping system and ask Sul for help. He can’t provide any,
telling them it isn’t his job. But, using the map on the paper found in the box, the two of
them manage to start a mechanism. This turns the lockers into boats and begins automatically
ferrying them to the river. The first one to launch is crushed by a huge water wheel.
Using the instructions on the paper, the young friends clamber up a lengthy metal staircase to a
control room. Here they use the key to change the settings of two waterwheels. However, one jams and
it looks as if disaster is looming. Fortunately though, Sul comes to the rescue and gets the water
flowing again. This is, he exclaims, his job. While sparks rain down over the townsfolk,
Doon nearly slips from the waterwheel, but is saved by Sul. He is then rejoined by Lina and
Poppy and they set off in a boat. The water level still seems a little low, but at the last minute
Sul cranks on his lever extra hard, releasing a tidal wave which carries them away.
Meanwhile, having seen the sparks fly, the mayor has begun to flee in fear.
En route he encounters Looper, who begs him to take him along,
but the mayor beats him away. He makes it back to his secret room alone, relieved to have
found his safe haven. However, he is immediately confronted and slain by the enormous mole.
Back in the boat, the 3 youngsters are being ferried quickly down a series of tunnels.
Eventually the boat lands with a splash in a calmer lake, still deep below the ground. It
comes to rest at a pier. Here they see and follow signs advising caution up a staircase to a room.
Therein, they find and light some candles and finally make it to the outside world. It is,
as they had been taught, shrouded in darkness. The next morning though, they are greeted by a
glorious sunrise, revealing lush vegetation and birds flying in the sky. Peering into a hole,
they catch sight of Ember below them. They drop a message tied to a rock down to the
city and hope for the best. It lands at the feet of Doon’s father. As the
three escapees explore their new terrain, we know they’ll soon be joined by others.
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