Anathema-

16 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

I know I was just watching the news. My question is why on earth do they need to provide the public with this footage?

 

Forgive me if there is a simple answer to this.

would you believe it otherwise

I'm not burnt out on super hero films but I'll be glad when they don't suck up all the oxygen. This post brought to you by Top Gun Maverick. 

5 hours ago, mclumber1 said:

You know what's good?  Putting peanut butter on pancakes.  Slather a thick layer of creamy peanut butter on your pancake, and then pour syrup over that.  Delicious. 

you know what's really good is peanut butter on chicken

Case in point: James Bond

MCU films will definitely slow down but they definitely won't go away. If there was a "cowboy film" production house we'd still be seeing those too. 

it's about time

When you watch The Leftovers and Watchmen you can see in LOST where his hand is and where Carlton Cuses' was. It's obvious one of them wanted to scatter mystery boxes around and the other wanted clear character directions and motivations. Thankfully both are written in to the show and the extraneous parts truly don't matter. I don't even remember half the shit we thought about the show that just doesn't matter. 

The Hurley bird was a crazy thing designed to make Michael shoot at it to discover he had no bullets in his gun. It doesn't have to be anything more than that and it wasn't. Only the obsessive watching made it into something more than it was. 

6 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

I think I watched the series on Blu-ray and IIRC a bunch of the menus and stuff had questions about the mysteries of the show that... the show didn't end up addressing or were red herrings. So yeah I suppose the fans did it to themselves but it's also something the marketing team ran with and encouraged, it didn't come out of nowhere. 

The writers responded to the Internet for better and worse. 

The sideways place isn't purgatory but it serves as a place similar to what people think about purgatory is for. It's not only a place where they could meet each other again it gives every character who failed the moral test their opportunity.

John died tragically after being completely unable to get past his demons. The sideways place gives him a happier life but many of the same challenges. The moment John wakes up, the moment they all wake up, is the moment where their souls truly let go and are ready to move on. Contrast that to Hurley, who was completely aware of where they were the entire time and had no need to wake up. 

While I'm on the subject, watching Hurley from the beginning... It was always him. You can see it. You can literally see him grow in to the role over the course of the show. 

I remember it being such a huge controversy over whether John blew up the sub in s3 and what it would mean if someone else did it but there was all this proof yadda yadda people picking apart insane detail when the dialog is literally almost thirty minutes of Ben asking John not to blow up the sub and John saying he's definitely going to blow up the sub, then he says I'm going outside to blow up the sub and then he goes outside and blows up the sub and then apologizes for blowing up the sub. Sawyer gives him crap for blowing up the sub a few episodes later. We 100% did it to ourselves. 

It's kind of insane how little importance many things have watching it straight through in '23. Even stuff that I thought was greatly important was truly an inconsequential blip. 

4 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Meh, it seemed like a HUGE retcon that he was the Smoke Monster, especially after that one episode where it showed that Ben was able to “call” the Smoke Monster to attack the soldiers from the boat.

There's plenty in LOST that's retconning, but the thing is that they're really good at making everything line up and make sense. You can believe Charles Widmore is who he turned out to be even if it's kind of obvious it wasn't strictly planned to that level of detail when they introduced him.

The writers have even been open with doing that at times as well, where Michael Emerson famously was hired for a short 2-3 episode arc and was ultimately not only extended but written in to the existing plans for the leader of the others. But just because it's a retcon in some sense it's ultimately not an abuse of the audience because they're careful so that nothing significantly contradicts itself. They had plans and adapted things to fit. That's not wrong. 

As far as the monster goes .. the writers were also open with the overall pacing of their show. It began open ended and changed halfway through. They outlined the full back half of the show after they were done with the third. The point where Ben summons the monster is after the point where they would have clearly decided what it was and what it was doing. It can't be retroactive.

Of course if you look closely enough not every detail of the man in black being the monster holds up to strict scrutiny when you go back to the beginning. But what is clear is there's a malevolent force on the island that kills some of the survivors and tries to get the other ones to kill themselves indirectly. The outlines of the game and the trap are there. The monster being made of smoke is even there. Enough pieces are there that don't contradict so it's easy to read as a clear narrative.

What's more important for demonstrating consistency though are examples like a John episode followed immediately by a Jack episode where John fails the moral test of the island and Jack passes it. It doesn't hurt that it very cleanly reads as the monster running his con on Locke and he just falls for it. Retroactive? Maybe. But you really have to look for it, it's much more fun and honestly easier to just let it pretend that it was all meant like that from the beginning (even the parts they admit weren't that way).

she didn't know she couldn't do that

5 hours ago, MarSolo said:

Once the show focused on “protecting the island from the Man in Black, this new villain we JUST introduced in the fifth season finale”, it lost me.

 

It’s a shame, because I loved the fifth season and all the time travel stuff.

The man in black is the monster and was there since the beginning.  

Kids today don't have to figure out how to make computers work so of course they seem less inherently capable. You don't pop out knowing how to google, we have to teach them and just like teaching anything else it often has to be intentional and it takes a while to stick. It's not a "kids out of touch" situation.

16 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I just don't understand why people care if it was "made up as they went" or "all planned out". Most of the best shows in history were made up as they went, even if the show runners had some idea about where they were headed.

Right, what matters is whether/how it's all narratively consistent from beginning to end and how readily apparent it is. I think you can just use examples from the show to demonstrate the consistency rather than saying a friend of mine knows people and told me. 

People want to trust that the writers won't pull any tricks with the drama and LOST never does. Watching it with someone who doesn't weirdly obsess over every detail she didn't even remember or recognize a need to answer anything about a polar bear, a bird, or even whispers. The things that don't really matter didn't actually matter and still don't. The show is about people, not geegaws. 

19 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

Those are the same people that way "Oh by the way, which one's Pink?"

they should write a song

55 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

There was something going on there... 

 

That's not the only other alternative. What happened according to writers who worked on the show the first two seasons was that because this was the early days of the internet and online discussion of a show like this, inevietably some online posters got a little too close to what the island was ultimately supposed to be in their speculations which rattled the shit out of Lindelof. At the time he was very involved in the online reaction and it spooked him so much that he lost faith in his original ending and decided to change it. He was encouraged by certain folks, "cough Abrams cough", that the resolution to the mystery wouldn't matter as much as the journey (Abrams own approach to storytelling) Couple that with Lindelof's initial plan for the show to end after four seasons and the network's desire to keep it on for as long as possible, along with all of the mishaps and production delays they experienced because of destroyed sets and actor misconduct and you did indeed have a show that ultimately floundered for several seasons and TOTALLY flew by the seat of their pants.

 

Lost is a show that is basically three different shows... there's the first two and a half seasons that were more or less building towards Lindelof's original ending that he conceived, then there's the middle part where the show is kind of treading water, then there's the last part that starts to build towards the ending we got. The problem is those three parts don't line up properly and whole plot threads and stoylines were straight up abanadoned (what happened with Walt and his psychic abilitles that were alluded to in the first season?) The show is a hodgepodge of ideas and characters and for some, the journey DID overshadow the destination and that's fine. But this show did anything BUT stick the landing. Lindelof learned a valuable lesson after this and one of the things he did was get off social media I believe because it was causing him too much anxiety. Ultimately I think that's a good thing. 

I'm going to very gently say you have many details wrong here and I think you've mixed up a lot with something else. A lot is right or similar but a lot is off.

As far as Jack originally dying in the pilot that's not significant (and well known, did you think I forgot?). Damon and Carlton were extremely open and explicit the entire time that they knew where they were going even though they had to change how they got there more than once. So what if Jack wasn't originally supposed to survive? It wasn't a last minute decision. They adjusted their plans.

Bottom line is that the narrative bears out the consistency. Too many coincidences pile up to believe otherwise, it's also a bit cranky.

1 hour ago, MarSolo said:

Am I crazy or do I remember reading that Mr. Eko was supposed to be on the show till the very end but the actor hated being on the show so much that he asked to be killed off?

His father died and he asked to be written off but yes you can see the basic outline of his character with what we saw. I think his end was the one they had planned for him just early. 

based biden 

You all never stood a chance vs Ohioguy. 

4 hours ago, Slug said:

The Woman and I watched the hell out of Lost when it originally aired.  Loved it.  If I had any gripe it would be WALT!  WALT?!  WAAAAAAAAAAALT!!!!  WALT??? WAAAAAAAAAALT!!!!

Oh god yeah that annoyance never fades and the wife definitely picked up on it too. 

I would peg the s3 slog as more like 1/3 the season but yeah it gets rough there. Glad they didn't have to tread water long. 

5 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

We should all be better about sharing and distributing resources in a nation as wealthy as this one. Maybe you can pipe them water and they can airlift some awesome taquerias to Michigan. 

Living in a way that demands many extra resources is the opposite of being better about sharing and distribution. 

I wish I could find a clip online but John Locke literally describes the whole plan in the first season talking about mouse trap.

That's just superficial though. The parallel journeys of John and Jack are clear and consistent through the entire show. The idea that someone could have done all that by the seat of their pants is frankly far more difficult to believe than knowing their characters and where they want them to go ahead of time.