MovieChat Forums > Last Night (1998) Discussion > The Last Night is incorrect in it's titl...

The Last Night is incorrect in it's title

posted 11 years ago by wswofsey
4 replies | jump to latest

Others have noticed that it is daylight throughout this film. It should not be called "The Last Night" If the World has changed & the sun shines throughout the day & evening, it isn't night. The definition of the word "night" is the period of darkness between sunset & sunrise. They could call it "The Last Day" perhaps, but it bothered me that I kept seeing light shooting into rooms & daylight & yet it was supposed to be Night.

Overall it was an interesting concept, but this flaw ruined the entire story for me.

[–] Prince_of_IMDb 11 years ago

It's not a flaw, it's just a cleverly done Metonym device in the title. The concept of the 'night' is more symbolic than literal. The night as depicted in the film is artificially daytime, literally speaking. Due to an unknown calamity from Space. The symbolic representation of 'night' would be the fact that it is their actual last night on Earth until 12:00 AM where "every living soul is going to evaporate".

So regurgitating what I had said above; in the end it was their both symbolic and literal Last Night till the very end.

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[–] kya1 8 years ago

Overall it was an interesting concept, but this flaw ruined the entire story for me.

It seems a fairly small point to me, the film is still very good, it isn't that hard to overlook.

(I'm not sure if I should point out the irony of you criticising the title being incorrect, when you have a mistake in your own title.)

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[–] ciocio-2 8 years ago

It's pretty simple to remember that the apostrophe in "it's" indicates that it's expressing two words, not a possessive. Then again, English is so twisted and rebellious against any kind of consistent rules, it's not hard to see why this mistake is so common, especially since an apostrophe with an "s" after it DOES sometimes indicate possession. Oy--English!

Just make a movie that makes me care, one way or another. I'm open.

[–] thingmaker (32) 7 years ago

Well, I just saw it... I didn't notice that any dialog suggested that the sun was in fact shining during the night. It was light on this last night, but the brightness may not have been coming directly from the sun. The cause of the world ending was never mentioned but as it had been known for months and it could be predicted to the minute, it seems to be some astronomical phenomenon.
In the real world, I doubt anything could be timed so accurately, but in the film we are to assume it is true. So... Maybe it's something like our sun going supernova. In this case the brightly glowing body in the night sky could be the moon, reflecting the, suddenly vastly brighter, sun and the timed event could be the arrival of the shockwave in the atmosphere at the peak of the event as the earth begins to boil away on the opposite side, facing the sun. The effect wouldn't be simultaneous worldwide, nor instantaneous... but pretty close.
Of course, this supernova-like effect may have caused the sun to "flicker" or brighten previously, but I don't recall anybody mentioning that it had been shining brightly enough to put an end to night for the whole period during which the end of the world was anticipated.
I'm not saying that a scientific(ish) explanation is required to enjoy the movie, but maybe it will fix the problem for anyone who actually is concerned that the title is somehow inaccurate.