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Ok, I wanted to wait an appropriate time before making a response to the Lost finalle because I didn't want people to think I was speaking on emotion, or to actually be speaking on emotion. First off, I want to say the writers did a great job creating the show, a show of interesting if not frustrating mysteries and characters that all of us who watched invested in. In truth, sadly enough, the interpretations that can be made in the finale really taints a lot of that, because it shows what exactly the writers were doing and it is amazingly worse than I feared as I watched!
The one thing I ask is those who enjoyed the finale to read with an open mind. Most people I've spoken to who enjoyed it don't want to hear or accept any that might be wrong with it. My opinion on this is not just anger that the show didn't go how I wanted, this is my honest interpretation as a writer, of the what the writers did. Even if you throw out my attachment to the show, I believe impartially that the writers made a classic mistake of ripping off viewers by caring more about their own message, than the essence and being of the STORY they had been telling. (See Joss wheadon and whoever the writer of the Sopranos is)
The purgatory plot not over completely overshadowed the island plot, but it had nothing to do with it besides the fact it involved the same characters. We spent the whole last season watching half purgatory wondering how they would connect and the only connection is "this is where they all went when they died". The climax of the story centered around this, it WAS the climax of the finale. The climax of the finale...had nothing to do with the island or the plot they had developed over the last 5 years. Those of you who played final fantasy IX should understand this, and for those of you who didn't let me explain. The game creates a full plot, interesting etc deep, you play for many many hours. In the end, while you have this in depth story and everything a "final boss" appears out of nowhere and basically tells you they created everything as a science experiment and you have to fight him to win. The final boss has nothing to do with the rest of the game, it could have been the final boss to ANY game, they could have pulled that with any game ending because it had no actual connection to the plot. This is exactly what happened in Lost. They created an interesting plot, island mysteries, and in the end the big ending climax had nothing to do with any of it. And I'm going on record saying "bullshit" to everyone's argument of "This is a show about the characters!!!" Yeah, name me a show NOT about the characters? They all are. The show was about the characters being alive, and struggling with the bad things they've done in the past and coming to terms with them while learning to live better lives. The ending completely just forgot about the characters escaping and who survived. I've had someone say to me "Who cares what they went to do?" ????? That was what the whole show was about!!!!!!! How these characters were living their lives and what they would go on to do is what the show was!! The end just completely ignores that and RUSHES through the island climax, leaving plenty of plot holes and confusion in its wake.
Now, the worst part. What this ending says about the writers. They've gone on record claiming this is the ending J.J. wanted in season 1. Now I am sorry, but I refuse to believe that a show that was setup to look like purgatory and everyone thought was purgatory..wasn't about purgatory......but that just "coincidentally" was where they were going with it anyway. (Wow what are the odds!?) Yeah, no. That was supposed to be purgatory, and everyone figured it out so they said "No! No! They're not dead...." and then created all the island mysteries as a means to get to their purgatory ending. Here's why in the end this is so messed up...
The mysteries that were one of the cores of the show, the things that kept people wondering and honestly coming back to have answered and kept people interested...had no answers. It's not that the writers didn't tell us, they never came up with any. They didn't need answers, they just needed mysteries to keep people watching. They just came up with a series of events that seemed like mysteries with big secret answers to keep people watching long enough so they could get to their ending that had nothing to do with any of it. They came up with these things that seemed so interesting and made people wonder, but these things were so weird and fantastic and mysterious because they really had no explanation to them, nothing behind them besides events that happened. Letting the fans finally know the answers would have been exciting and rewarding and shocking even, but that was not their goal, their goal was the purgatory ending. There were so many mysteries and questions and crazy plot twists and confusion, and it just kept people coming and coming and that was the objective, keep people coming and wondering and interested. These mysteries for the most part had no answers though because their message wasn't about the island, it wasn't about the mysteries, which GREATLY taints the whole story because you can't wonder about an answer that doesn't exist, it's pointless.
In all seriousness, you could watch season 1, and the purgatory plot and more or less get their meaning... Everything in the middle...was nothing but filler. Mysteries with no answers.
Also for the record the purgatory plot clearly changed the paths they set for some characters. Jin and Sun for example, the writers seemed to FORGET about their child at home. They killed them so to have a meaningful and surprising reunion in purgatory. Because of the fact that what the characters went on to do after they escaped seemed meaningless, they didn't see any reason to have them make it. But there were so many plots, so many REAL WORLD plots with the characters that just would never get resolved because they virtually all died in order to have meaningful awakenings in the purgatory plot. In fact, virtually every major character whose not named Jack does NOTHING in the climax to the island plot because it's so focused on the purgatory plot. The characters on the island all got basically forgotten to where they didn't really do anything. So the conclusion to the plot you've been watching for 5 years was rushed and pushed to the side so they could do this dramatic "after you die" ending that does not directly connect to the island at all. No island, no jabob, no MIB, no mysteries. A great quote I heard in reference to this was something along the lines of (Paraphrasing)
"It's like a grandfather telling his grandson an enthralling story for 6 hours, only to finish by saying, 'well in the end they killed the bad guy, some lived some died but it's ok...they all went to heaven...THE END."
I will close saying this. The writer crafts the story, but a well written story becomes much more than its author. It grows, inspires and captivates people in amazing ways in which they become dedicated to and invested in the story as if their own. When an author betrays the story by altering it from what it is for their own goals, they in turn betray every fan of the story. The story lives long after the author is gone, it is alive, it is powerful, it can be life changing... but the author is just a person, just a man or a woman, who was talented or lucky enough to bring creation to the story itself. Once the story is alive, once it has captured the hearts of millions of people, to take it and change it and alter its heart especially at it's climax is wrong to the story and wrong to the fans. |
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It's interesting to note common themes in entertainment (movies, tv, books) because I believe typically it means something more than just an idea that writers like to reuse. I think with a lot of common themes there is a statement there about the way we are as people, desires, fears, beliefs. When the same lesson is learned over and over again in movies and tv there is a reason for that. What got me particularly thinking about this is the concept of time in movies, dealing with the concept of changing it, particluarly in the past and especially with the idea of preventing the future.
First, think of a movie or tv where someone is told of their own impending death, for example the final destination series, Charlie on Lost, the asian guy on Flash Forward (Only seen the previews), the guy from Time Traveler's wife and many others. What happens in all of these plots (Flash Forward hasn't gotten there yet so that remains to be seen) in the end the people in fact die. None of them escape the death that is predicted for them! Why is this? Are we as a culture so obsessed with fate that we cannot allow a character to escape its grasp? Possibly so. I believe it may also be intertwined with our own fear of death as a race. I think it's a manifestation of something that the human race has been obsessed with for milleniums; the acceptance of death.
For example, we'll go as far back as the famous Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China (alive 259 BCE - 210 BCE) who later on in his life was so afraid of death that he had people working on an "elixer of life" to live forever. This fear eventually helped to drive him mad and if anything just attributed to his death in the end. This fear of death has always been with us since we understood what death was. I believe movies and television shows mentioned along with others try to capture this fear and eventual acceptance of the fact that as humans we MUST die and we CANNOT escape that fact. The twist that writers try to do though is rather than have older people dealing with their life running out, they make it so its young to middle aged people who must grasp the idea that they cannot cheat death. It is so that we the viewers typically similar in age to those on screen, will relate to those people and emotionally connect to this desire not to die. But, like Qin Shi Huang, and like all of us eventually, these characters cannot escape their "fate" they cannot escape that they will die. To have it happen otherwise would break the rules of life, and writers seem like they refuse to ever send that message.
On to the idea of not being able to change the past, as is one of the messages in H.G. Wells "The Time Machine". This idea also springs up in many different genre's involving time travel. It is amazing that so strong is the moral message that we cannot change our pasts that movies, books and televisions shows that involve TIME TRAVEL won't even allow their characters to change the past (At least not typically without horrible reprocussions). There is always a loop hole or something that gets in the way so that in the end, their characters EVEN with the ability to go to the past, are stuck like us, unable to change what happened. |
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Sorry for the spamming of comics just want to update the site to all the new ones since it's kicking back up again. |
| » Mind Those Behind you... |
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Photobucket only allows for these to be so big, sorry it's so tiny, you may have to squint a bit...
Nov. 30th, 2009 @ 07:17 pm
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This is the official first comic back of Anything But Something!
Nov. 30th, 2009 @ 07:16 pm
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| » Who's in the what now? |
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Nov. 30th, 2009 @ 07:13 pm
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Nov. 30th, 2009 @ 07:11 pm
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