More recent Hollywood movies sometimes portray the subways as being less unpleasant, however. For example, in the 1998 romatic-comedy “You’ve Got Mail”, Kathleen has a pleasant experience of discovering a butterfly on the subway, and wonders if it is on its way to purchase a hat. This opposition might show a disconnect between old and recent views of the subway. It is argued in “subterranean Cities” that the subway served to reconcile the middle class with the underground, being in many cases, their first expense with it (30).

The subway is also a common place for action movies to have their fight scene. In “The Matrix” Neo proves himself through confrontation with an agent in an abandoned subway. Both the Subways in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” and “The Matrix” are abandoned. The Subway in the “Planet of the Apes” is destroyed. In “The Matrix,” no one is waiting for the train as it whizzes right by the empty platform without stopping.

The movie with the most similar characteristics to the sewer was “Kontroll.” The subway is dark, giving off a sense of grime and dirt. The inhabitants of this space were dirty, never changing their clothes and became progressively bloodier as the movie went on. The blood, sex, and eating within the subway made it seem very organic.

These aspects also characterized the subway as a lived space. Bulscu actually lives on a platform, and other people partake in activities that one usually would at home. For example when Bela eats dinner or the people attending the costume ball have sex in the subway. In “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” the subway is also seen as a lived space: the main character having a revelation that this was his “home.” The subway in Kontroll was also feminine, Bulscu having to crawl though a small tunnel during his dream, coming upon the shadow man in a fetal position.

Sewers are thought to be disgusting places infested with rats and poison. The sewers in many of the movies, however, were not very disgusting. They were places of hiding and forms of transportation. The main characters in “Underground” use the sewers to sneak into the mental hospital as well as the opera. The sewers in the third man, the concert of Les Miserables and the movie version of Les Miserables from 1998 did not seem very disgusting. This is very different from "Kanal", where the people seemed to be neck-high in disgusting matter.

All of these movies had a sense of danger. Neo is pinned down on the tracks by a powerful agent as the train comes progressively nearer in “The Matrix.” Harry in “The Third Man,” and the main character in “Les Miserable” are both trapped, much like a rats, as the police close in from every angle. Death is constantly near in the sewers of “"Kanal",” either in the form of gas, suffocation or starvation.

The sewers in Underground are logical, and the main characters know the sewers very well. In Les Miserable even Javert, the anti-hero, is familiar with the sewers. In the Matrix the heroes know how the sewers work and they use it to hide from the machines, and the last human city of Zion is located in the sewers. In some of the movies the sewer is disorienting. In the concert of Les Miserable the sewer is represented by shadows, lights and dry-ice smoke. The intangibility of the sewer makes it appear even more like a very complex maze. Most of the characters in “"Kanal"” spend most of the movie hopelessly lost.

The sewers are feminine in Les Miserable, a place of rebirth. In the 1998 version he reemerges from the sewers sideways, very obviously reminiscent of birth. The exit Daisy tries to get her love to climb out of resembles a birth canal.

Most commonly, the sewers are the dwelling of rats, vermin, and all other things society cannot find a place for. In “The Matrix” Agent Smith remarks that humans are vermin, and Zion is actually located in the sewers. In “The Third Man,” Harry seems to have all the characteristics of vermin, and gets around the city via the sewers, finally retreating there as his last escape.