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geeves posted:The title of the 11 minute Hurley and Ben short is The New Man in Charge - and I feel stupid for hiding this, but I know someone will bitch nihonniboku posted:It's 11 minutes? I could've sworn that it was 19. This makes me sad. It could be two seasons and I'd still be sad. Hurley is my favorite, and Ben's in the top 5. I like "sharing a candy bar with Hurley" Ben but hate "if you don't hear from me in one minute kill them all" Ben. Basically creepy and manipulative is fine; outright bad guy not fine. I'm not even bothering to speculate lately. I'm just waiting on my pre-order Lost Encyclopedia to flat-out tell me.
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Jun 27, 2010 02:04
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mobn posted:Threats are not the same as doing. And he can't leave unless the island is destroyed. That's not conjecture. So: Island = source of life. Island gone = death. (that's why it's underwater in purgatory  )Smokey knew what the island was, so yes, he attempted murder on the entire human race. In fact ignore my opening list cause it doesn't really matter after the whole attempted human genocide.
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Jun 27, 2010 03:05
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mobn posted:Threats are not the same as doing. Well first of MIB had knowledge of how the island worked probably more than anyone, he was "special". hence him understanding how to use the donkey wheel. Also the amount the writes drove into the audience how it would be bad if he left should be enough. Whether or not there were consequences of MIB leaving the Island was not left as an ambiguous question, they made it clear that it was bad. Also MIB doesn't make threats, he would of done it. If you don't see that then you need to re watch season 6.
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Jun 27, 2010 03:43
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I thought that the MiB never represented evil, but more faithlessness. The Science vs. Faith theme I thought was split early on by obviously Jack v. Locke, where later on I thought of it as being split further: The MiB, screwed over by the faith side of the house for however long, basically forever. I imagined him as being so fed up with being forced to remain on the island that he was driven mad. He was so disenchanted with humanity and spirituality that he wanted to destroy it. Meanwhile, Jack forms the good side of that split. Hes a man of science who essentially accepts the premise of the show: science can go very far, but it may not be able to provide the answers we want, even if it provides answers. Jack respects the supernatural aspect of the island and is willing to coexist with it, so the final battle isn't between Jack and Locke, science and faith, its really a question of how humanity can choose to deal with it. Coexistence vs. giving up and going for broke. The MiB I think is supposed to be a tragic figure, which is why they gave him a sympathy episode.
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Jun 27, 2010 04:42
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Red Crown posted:I thought that the MiB never represented evil, but more faithlessness. The Science vs. Faith theme I thought was split early on by obviously Jack v. Locke, where later on I thought of it as being split further: The MiB, screwed over by the faith side of the house for however long, basically forever. I imagined him as being so fed up with being forced to remain on the island that he was driven mad. He was so disenchanted with humanity and spirituality that he wanted to destroy it. Yes but it's how he handled the tragedy that makes him evil. Sorry but no matter how much bad poo poo had been done to him validates the awful things he did and would of done if he succeed. It's not like he turning into the Smoke monster caused him t o lose a sense of wrong or right. He know what he was doing and just didn't care. Again it's his lack of remorse or guilt that makes him evil.
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Jun 27, 2010 04:51
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asari posted:Yes but it's how he handled the tragedy that makes him evil. Sorry but no matter how much bad poo poo had been done to him validates the awful things he did and would of done if he succeed. It's not like he turning into the Smoke monster caused him t o lose a sense of wrong or right. He know what he was doing and just didn't care. Again it's his lack of remorse or guilt that makes him evil. I mostly agree with you, but it's hard to put a human perspective of good and evil on a shape-shifting immortal demigod who is trapped in his own living hell.
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Jun 27, 2010 04:59
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Mike the TV posted:I mostly agree with you, but it's hard to put a human perspective of good and evil on a shape-shifting immortal demigod who is trapped in his own living hell. But his motivation is the same as it was before, which is to get of the island and he was willing to kill to do it then too. Once Mother got in his way he offed her too. He wasn't pissed she killed his friends he was pissed she killed the people helping him leave.
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Jun 27, 2010 05:02
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asari posted:But his motivation is the same as it was before, which is to get of the island and he was willing to kill to do it then too. Once Mother got in his way he offed her too. He wasn't pissed she killed his friends he was pissed she killed the people helping him leave. You didn't sympathize with him killing mom? He was seriously upset and confused as to why she was being so obsessively controlling. AFTER she lied for years about who he was and what the island was and everything.
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Jun 27, 2010 05:08
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asari posted:Yes but it's how he handled the tragedy that makes him evil. Sorry but no matter how much bad poo poo had been done to him validates the awful things he did and would of done if he succeed. It's not like he turning into the Smoke monster caused him t o lose a sense of wrong or right. He know what he was doing and just didn't care. Again it's his lack of remorse or guilt that makes him evil. What is it that he would have done? I really don't remember anyone ever explaining convincingly why it would be so bad for him to leave.
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Jun 27, 2010 17:33
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Mike the TV posted:You didn't sympathize with him killing mom? He was seriously upset and confused as to why she was being so obsessively controlling. AFTER she lied for years about who he was and what the island was and everything. I didn't say I don't sympathize but it clearly shows he was capable of these things before he was made into the smoke monster.
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Jun 27, 2010 18:04
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qa6 posted:What is it that he would have done? I really don't remember anyone ever explaining convincingly why it would be so bad for him to leave. Well if you buy the argument that the source is where souls come from then Smokey neutralising its power so he could leave could kill everyone, or at least prevent new people being born. This isn't outright stated in the show, but there is support for it. The source being corrupted in the incident seems to have a bad effect on unborn children- perhaps these children don't have souls yet? The incident hosed up the source so that if you were too close to it then the soul issuing process didn't work so well. That would explain Aaron- he was old enough that he already had a soul by the time he got to the island. Or Boone's death at the same time evened things out so he was ok. I like to assume that everything is ok regarding childbirth on the island after Des hit the failsafe. Mother says something about every man having some of the light within them. And also the big statue of Tawaret, goddess of fertility and childbirth does suggest the island has something to do with making babies. People healed by the source water, like Ben and Sayid, seem to lose some of their humanity (though this could just be superstition from Jacob's followers based on jungle ghost stories about what happened to Smokey), so it's not just a simple healing energy. So nothing definitive, but enough for me to think that the source has something very important to do with the whole life/death cycle. Also if this is true then our castaways killed a bunch of babies all round the world in the finale by leaving the plug pulled for a while.
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Jun 27, 2010 19:18
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marktheando posted:So nothing definitive, but enough for me to think that the source has something very important to do with the whole life/death cycle. Also if this is true then our castaways killed a bunch of babies all round the world in the finale by leaving the plug pulled for a while. As much as I'm anticipating the Hurley/Ben short, I'd really like to know how the people who left on the plane explained themselves to the rest of the world.
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Jun 27, 2010 19:36
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LooseChanj posted:As much as I'm anticipating the Hurley/Ben short, I'd really like to know how the people who left on the plane explained themselves to the rest of the world. Jack: We have to lie. We have to tell them... that we went out for a pack of smokes and Lapedus was there and was like "Hey dudes I just dropped off my plane full of people at Disneyland. They said they didn't want to ever come back!"
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Jun 27, 2010 19:47
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There's no reason why Smokey needed to be kept on that island other than conjecture from a centuries old game of telephone powered by misinterpretation and lies along the way. And if that's all the evidence you need that he should be enslaved for thousands of years, I'm going to have to caution you against drowning local witches in your neighborhood. As I fully explained earlier, Smokey was no more "truly evil", than we can suspect that Locke and Jack would be "truly evil" if placed in that exact same situation. So many characters use the ends to justify the means often with less certainty in methods, justification, and results. You're too blinded by the fact that they're protagonists and he's the antagonist to objectively evaluate the scenario beyond "what we saw" and "what we were told". I explained all of this on the last page.
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Jun 27, 2010 19:59
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:There's no reason why Smokey needed to be kept on that island other than conjecture from a centuries old game of telephone powered by misinterpretation and lies along the way. And if that's all the evidence you need that he should be enslaved for thousands of years, I'm going to have to caution you against drowning local witches in your neighborhood. Gonna have to agree here. He is no more evil than Jacob who, by the way, made him the smoke monster in a fit of angsty rage. Granted immortality and loosing your physical humanity would change your morals and your priorities, but I can't say that put in that situation anyone else would have possibly acted any other way.
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Jun 27, 2010 21:10
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:There's no reason why Smokey needed to be kept on that island other than conjecture from a centuries old game of telephone powered by misinterpretation and lies along the way. And if that's all the evidence you need that he should be enslaved for thousands of years, I'm going to have to caution you against drowning local witches in your neighborhood. That's why it's a leap of faith... Jack's storyline really wouldn't work if he had definitive proof that stopping Smokey was the correct thing to do. Besides Smokey was a bad enough dude that letting him leave, even as a mortal, would be bad news even if it had no disastrous planet killing consequences. Sure he was a product of his upbringing and environment, but so was Ted Bundy. If you see him as man unjustly imprisoned, killing his guards to escape would be understandable (if really unfair to the poor guards who are just doing their job). But this prisoner has been so brutalised by the prison system that he is a danger to the public. Killing is so easy to him now that he kills not just those in his way, but anyone else he feels like. People who he thinks are bad, people he has no use for.. Also he laughed at Locke's dying memories, that gently caress. It obviously isn't completely black and white, but Smokey is definitely the dark part of the yin-yang.
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Jun 27, 2010 21:17
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marktheando posted:It obviously isn't completely black and white, but Smokey is definitely the dark part of the yin-yang. My primary goal is dispel the notion that he was unambiguously evil, which is 100% false. Beyond that, the debate is a lot more flexible and interesting. I don't automatically disagree that Smokey is the "dark half", instead I raise a question. Which is worse: to commit evil actions out of desperation and frustration, or to manufacture the circumstances forcing one to resort to desperate measures? You probably feel differently, but, to me, Jacob was the greatest evil throughout the show, despite his total ignorance of it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I also don't think that Smokey was the homicidal maniac that the losties only had the chance to observe. Bundy killed for pleasure, Smokey killed for his freedom. There's not really anytime we know where he just killed for the hell of it. We saw Smokey kill people like Eko, which seem frivolous, but we also don't have his perspective of the event. Perhaps he thought it was necessary because Eko telling others about his experience would foil his escape plan. And he also killed a lot of redshirts standing in his way, but so did Jack. marktheando posted:That's why it's a leap of faith... Jack's storyline really wouldn't work if he had definitive proof that stopping Smokey was the correct thing to do. The faith angle was also played out in S5 with the Nuke and cork: Jack had faith and killed a lot of innocent people because of it. And he allowed Desmond to unplug the Island out of that faith and it was also a huge fuckup. I don't know that he was right to kill the Man in Black, especially because it seems so much like a repetition of the previous theme of "follow blind faith, commit immoral actions unknowingly." But I didn't perceive that scene as his moment of realizing faith anyway, it seemed to me that Jack killed The Man in Black out of revenge alone.
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Jun 27, 2010 22:20
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I think some folks are getting hung up on the word "evil". Is it "Evil", pure, metaphysical force? Or "evil", a value judgment, a word we use to describe the accepted worst violations of social norms? If the latter, than clearly, Smokey is a pretty evil dude. His motivations are irrelevant - Hitler had lots of issues too, amirite? I can dig why MiB was pissed, specifically upon learning his whole life ws a lie - from the ghost of his dead mother (what's that going to do to a kid? Also, who was that ghost, really?), and that Mother killed his real mother. It's tragic. But ending the world because you have this obsessive goal to leave the island (to do what, exactly? At this point, what is Smokey going to do off-island? Get a job? Hang out? Really, what's his motivation to leave other than that's always been his motivation?)? Pretty drat evil.
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Jun 27, 2010 22:37
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Granted, Jacob probably told him this, but (if I recall correctly) we don't know that Smokey knows his leaving would cause the world to end.
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Jun 27, 2010 23:04
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:There's no reason why Smokey needed to be kept on that island other than conjecture from a centuries old game of telephone powered by misinterpretation and lies along the way. And if that's all the evidence you need that he should be enslaved for thousands of years, I'm going to have to caution you against drowning local witches in your neighborhood.
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Jun 27, 2010 23:07
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It seems pretty silly to me that him leaving the island would end the world. Again, that's a piece of information we've gotten through a centuries old game of telephone filled with lies and deceit. Using evil as a value judgment, there's nothing wrong with calling him evil as long as you acknowledge that Jack and Locke have the same capacity for evil, and almost certainly would have done the same things under the conditions. Anything else is hypocritically drawing a line in the sand saying "it's okay to kill this many innocent people for your cause, but anything more than that is bad, even if the circumstances are different" But I always thought the message of Lost was best shown by Rose and Bernard. Everyone else on the island is being a jackass running around doing questionable things that they don't understand for reasons they're not entirely sure of, often inadvertently making things worse. Yet in the afterlife, none of their causes or "necessary evils" amounted to anything at all: the world would have been better off if they had enjoyed the life they had for the time they had it, doing good by being good and living peacefully. Lycus posted:We have a second source that doesn't follow the Mother > Jacob > Widmore chain, though: Isabella's ghost. Personally, I always trust the word of ghosts. Ah yeah, I had totally forgotten about that. Ghosts are some weird territory (especially after the whole purgatory reveal), who knows whats up with them. EvilTobaccoExec fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jun 27, 2010 |
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Jun 27, 2010 23:07
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I'm not sure what part of this is confusing. Island needed to be gone, or innocent people needed to be killed for Smokey to have something. First he attempts murder (kill the rulemakers), then when that fails, he attempts to destroy the island (break the game). The island is the source of life. There is no conjecture, telephone, whathaveyou. This is a fact. If the island is destroyed, then all life is destroyed. Smokey knew this, and whether or not he believed it is irrelevant. Yes his mother had lied to him before, but his transformation after going through the Source, along with whatever intimate knowledge thereby given, is enough just cause to say "Hey, maybe I could just stay on this island and not leave. Maybe I'm being a little selfish." e: I took forgot about Isabella being an untainted narrator who totally falls in line with what we're supposed to be thinking. Unless you think Isabella was a lying ghost then I don't see a further need to muddle the narrative with "Oh but was he so bad?" Endless Trash fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jun 27, 2010 |
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Jun 27, 2010 23:18
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:Ah yeah, I had totally forgotten about that. Ghosts are some weird territory (especially after the whole purgatory reveal), who knows whats up with them. I mean, if you need a logic to it: we know from the finale that there's a link between the sustention of the light and Smokey's smokiness. I look at it as though when he became Smokey, he effectively became a part of the light. So if he left, perhaps it would tear it apart and cause an event similar to what was happening when Desmond "popped the cork". The difference being that it would be a lot harder to get Smokey back to fix it than it was to put the cork back. But even with that, I don't believe that this means that Smokey = 100% evil. I'm inclined to believe him when he said multiple times that he didn't believe that anything bad was going to happen if he left. He's analogous to Jack in early Season 2 and Locke in late Season 2 in regards to the button. Lycus fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 27, 2010 23:37
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I think you're confusing conjecture for facts a lot here, because I don't know how you're drawing a lot of these conclusions and closing the book on them. The telephone analogy applies just as much to anything Jacob says or knows. The game seems to go back farther than his mom. FrensaGeran posted:I'm not sure what part of this is confusing. Island needed to be gone, or innocent people needed to be killed for Smokey to have something. According to who/what? Why couldn't Jacob just let him leave? While wrongfully imprisoned, he peacefully tries to escape, then resorts to murder, then resorts to destroying the Island. Seems like understandable escalation over thousands of years. FrensaGeran posted:The island is the source of life. There is no conjecture, telephone, whathaveyou. This is a fact. If the island is destroyed, then all life is destroyed. According to who/what? FrensaGeran posted:Smokey knew this, and whether or not he believed it is irrelevant. According to who/what? And why would it be irrelevant? FrensaGeran posted:Unless you think Isabella was a lying ghost then I don't see a further need to muddle the narrative with "Oh but was he so bad?" No, but ghosts have been portrayed in an unreliable and inconsistent way to the point that we really have no clue how the gently caress they work. Am I suppose to believe they all can see the future? Maybe, but then can they also change the future? Or are they making conjecture and speculation based on things they've observed as Ghosts? A ghost Isabella could just think the Man in Black is going to cause "hell" based on her own religious beliefs and seeing him kill so many on the island.
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Jun 27, 2010 23:40
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Lycus posted:I mean, if you need a logic to it: we know from the finale that there's a link between the sustention of the light and Smokey's smokiness. I look at it as though when he became Smokey, he effectively became a part of the light. So if he left, perhaps it would tear it apart and cause an event similar to what was happening when Desmond "popped the cork". The difference being that it would be a lot harder to get Smokey back to fix it then it was to put the cork back. That's reasonable. I can accept the logic that him leaving or uncorking the island could somehow destroy the world, but it's one of those things where I think there wasn't enough evidence to say that's true for a fact. Personally, I follow the interpretation that the story was BS, but there's not concrete proof of that either. There's really no way either side can be certain, and probably intentionally so.
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Jun 27, 2010 23:48
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:That's reasonable. I can accept the logic that him leaving or uncorking the island could somehow destroy the world, but it's one of those things where I think there wasn't enough evidence to say that's true for a fact. Personally, I follow the interpretation that the story was BS, but there's not concrete proof of that either. There's really no way either side can be certain, and probably intentionally so.
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Jun 27, 2010 23:54
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Lycus posted:Okay, here's how I'm looking at it: We have two unlinked sources, the Mother chain and Isabella, and we have the fact that there are clear analogies here between this situation and the Swan situation. What all that together says to me is that the writers are trying to communicate this concept to me. And that's enough "evidence" for me. I like that parallel because it means John Locke and MiB in John Locke's body both were trapped in a situation they grew to question and hate, and eventually resorted to leaving and keeping others from saving it and letting it blow up.
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Jun 28, 2010 00:00
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:I think you're confusing conjecture for facts a lot here, because I don't know how you're drawing a lot of these conclusions and closing the book on them. The telephone analogy applies just as much to anything Jacob says or knows. The game seems to go back farther than his mom. Yes, exactly. Why COULDN'T Jacob let him leave? Maybe it had something to do with Smokey becoming an avatar of death, and having been fundamentally connected to the Source? Or Jacob was just a big jerk, even though that's clearly not true from how we saw him in Across the Sea. Do you get it now? In Purgatory, the island is underwater, because it's the afterlife and everyone is dead. Got that? Island underwater = everyone is dead. Island is sinking when MIB has his chance to escape. Island sinking = everyone dies. This is not rocket science. Your copy pasting of "Who/want" starts to get a little silly at about this point. You're not supposed to believe that they can see the future. You're supposed to believe that they have life's best interests at heart. When have they not? Why wouldn't they? Again, you're muddling for no reason. Just take the word (which is consistent with Jacob's) of an untainted spirit of the good woman whom a good man loved and enjoy the show.
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Jun 28, 2010 00:02
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Lycus posted:Okay, here's how I'm looking at it: We have two unlinked sources, the Mother chain and Isabella, and we have the fact that there are clear analogies here between this situation and the Swan situation. What all that together says to me is that the writers are trying to communicate this concept to me. And that's enough "evidence" for me. I can respect that, although my opinion still differs. I agree there's intent to express the interpertation by the writers, but not necessarily that that's the one factual interpertation. I'd find it more compelling in a show that wasn't so heavy on duality and ambiguity. Plus, past precedent doesn't seem to support it either. Usually the writers come out later and flat out say what they're trying to be explicit about, and leave the parts they intended as ambiguous up for interpertation. For example, Cuse flat out said "hey the Man in Black is not unambiguously evil" (not that that's stopping anyone's opinioins). So I would think that if this was intended to be the undeniable truth, they wold have made a statement about it by now that, yes, the world was going to end. FrensaGeran posted:Your copy pasting of "Who/want" starts to get a little silly at about this point. Um the whole point of that was me saying "hey can you tell me what evidence makes you think that" which I'd still like to see. Both of those posts have entirely been conjecture here 
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Jun 28, 2010 00:11
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The irrelevancy came from my previous two points. There's no conjecture that the island being destroyed = end of life. Not enough, at least, for the idea of Smokey not being evil to be at all credible. e: look, for the record, I am extremely in line with the idea that many of the island's mysteries can't be answered because no character that we knew TRULY understood the island, or where it came from, or what caused it to be the way it is. That's totally cool. BUT, if you question EVERYTHING and dismiss any solid bit of exposition as "uhhhh telephone game!", then you have absolutely no solid ground to stand on, and that makes the story (to me) unbearably dull. Endless Trash fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 00:56
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Sorry if this sounds a little rude, but I'm not sure if you don't know what conjecture means or if you're being willfully ignorant here. The island sinking means the end of the world? Fact, just ignore that we didn't see it happen (i.e. science) and there's a continuous theme that everyone the audience thinks has the answers actually doesn't. Ignore that, like all religions, the practices and beliefs have been shown to have misunderstanding and warp, showing explanations we're handed are just as fallible. Nevermind the science and religion intertwining throughout the series, with the cork being a man-made structure to begin with and the only way anyone would know it'd destroy the world, is by pulling it out and destroying the world. Smokey is pure evil? Lies, just ignore the fact that Darlton explicitly said that no one, especially the MIB, is unambiguously good or evil. Pretty much the only way it wouldn't be conjecture is if the writers said it, or if they showed that destroying the island destroys the world (they didn't). Everything else has been vague exposition by fallible and deceitful characters. Your speculation that the island in purgatory proves this is far from closedbook; it could just as easily represent that the world DOES continue going after the island dies, or be symbolic of them putting the island behind them. Everything you said has been your own personal interpertation. I'm not saying your interpertation is wrong, but if you think that's the only valid interpertation intended by the writers, then you're plugging your ears here and shouting "lalala" here. One point of Across the Sea was that these are fallible, imperfect, humans who don't even have the answers. It's intended to be lifelike and ambiguous till the very end.
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Jun 28, 2010 02:01
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:Sorry if this sounds a little rude, but I'm not sure if you don't know what conjecture means or if you're being willfully ignorant here. First of all I never said pure evil. Yes he had his reasons and mommy didn't love him and he had to stay on a paradise-esque island for eternity, but evil comes from doing things to innocent people for your own selfish gains. There's COMPLETE ambiguity of motive (boring) and there's black and white (boring), I agree. But why can't Smokey be a NET evil, for trying to kill everyone all the time, and why can't Jacob be a NET good, for trying to stop him? e: quote:Your speculation that the island in purgatory proves this is far from closedbook; it could just as easily represent that the world DOES continue going after the island dies, or be symbolic of them putting the island behind them. This is pretty weak. 1. It symbolizes that they're all dead, and was designed so we'd rewatch season 6 and go "ohhhh cause the island being destroyed meant death. Got it" 2. It means the world continues on even after the island sinks...even though the world doesn't continue on because that's not the world, but actually purgatory, because they're dead. 3. It's symbolic of putting the island behind them...even though the entire purpose of purgatory was not that the island was behind them, but in fact THEE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THEIR LIFE. Endless Trash fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 02:27
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 The jury is still out on whether ripping off this man's flesh for no discernible gain was good or bad. LOST.
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Jun 28, 2010 02:33
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Anyone read Sandman? Not too spoilery, but Satan is presented in a pretty sympathetic light. Even in Christian myth, Satan could be viewed as a tragic hero - he was God's right hand Angel, right? You don't get to be the number one guy without doing something right. But he betrays God - only because he loves him so much and thinks he's making a wrong decision - and is cast out of Heaven, fated to rule Hell, forever (was Hell created right then for the Satan by God? Or did Hell exist before this, and Satan just took over?). Pretty tragic, right? So, is Satan - Lord of Hell - evil? I'd say, from a mythological point of view, yeah!
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Jun 28, 2010 03:04
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So are the writers of lost part of this telephone game? Because, they seemed to make sure we heard how bad it would be for MIB to leave the island. Applying some literary analysis on lost might help a bit. For instance when Swayer says maybe what caused mothers and children to die in birth hasn't happened yet was the writers telling us the indecent caused it. See because in a few episodes that happens and nothing else major happens till the time period when we find out about this problem. So if the writers take the time to have different characters say it's bad for him to leave they ARE TELLING YOU IT'S BAD FOR HIM TO LEAVE!
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Jun 28, 2010 05:08
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FrensaGeran posted:
No, I'm not calling it conjecture, it IS conjecture because she's an unreliable narrator. And uncorking the plug proved that the ISLAND is sinking, not that the WORLD was going to end. FrensaGeran posted:I can take what Mother says, understand that the details and origins aren't understood, but still gain SOLID GROUND to view the rest of the show. You have no solid ground. If that's how you wanna watch the show, cool. It makes me sleepy. I need a couple of 'knowns' to triangulate myself in regards to the rest of the story. You don't. Fine. Not at all. I very much have a foundation to the show and there are plenty of constants. But it is not factual to say that "the world will end if smokey leaves" is one of them. quote:There's COMPLETE ambiguity of motive (boring) and there's black and white (boring), I agree. But why can't Smokey be a NET evil, for trying to kill everyone all the time, and why can't Jacob be a NET good, for trying to stop him? There can be, but if you blind yourself to moral relativism. One man's good is another man's evil. If you think Jacob's a net good, that's great. But that requires the assumption that the Man in Black needed to be imprisoned on the island (and that's not convincing for me), otherwise Jacob is the most evil character on the show (which is my interpertation) because his misplaced faith in archaic dogma caused all the suffering we saw. FrensaGeran posted:This is pretty weak: 1, 2, 3 I'm not going to argue these because the specifics irrelevant to me, but I'm trying to stress that you're using something that's VERY open to interpretation as evidence of something else that we're trying to interpret. It's silly. asari posted:So if the writers take the time to have different characters say it's bad for him to leave they ARE TELLING YOU IT'S BAD FOR HIM TO LEAVE! ...because the whole end of the show was everyone vs this one dude? They all have to have some motivation to stop him or it doesn't work? I addressed this in my last post. If the writers wanted it to be explicit, then why haven't they said "yes, this is what we meant" like they have with all the other aspects of the show that they wanted to be certain? It's because that's not what the writers were saying at all. It's meant to be ambiguous.
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Jun 28, 2010 07:08
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No one is all good and no one is all bad. As viewers we tend to want to see the show in terms of black & white, good & evil, because we tend to transpose these on to our own lives and ask ourselves how we would deal with these situations. Even our heroes commit some atrocious acts during the course of the series. I mean everyone is so quick to come down on the Others for things like The Purge, but remember, when the LOSTies first get to the island they kill first and most often. I just watched the episode 'The Cost of Living' and I think that episode really drives home the fact that our heroes actions, despite their intentions or misunderstandings, were not altruistic, and some would in fact argue quite evil and we see the price of that misunderstanding first hand. quote:No, it was not a dream. Injured Eko was walking through the jungle, headed towards the plane, when he encounters all these apparitions. Soon after he's drinking water from a stream and sees the reflection of the Smoke Monster in the water. Then, also awesomely, John Locke dramatically emerges from the opposite direction. I know this is from a few pages back but since I just watched this episode, I'm struck by a few things. First, Eko is not dreaming. At one point one of the "apparitions" throws a machete at Eko's head and it sticks into the tree he's backed up against. Eko takes the machete. Several scenes later Eko puts the machete to Locke's throat when Locke asks Eko if he's looking for Yemmi. If it was a dream, then Eko can pull physical objects from dreams, and I don't know about you, but I can;t make that leap. Now we've established that it's not a dream, hallucination or vision let's consider what happens in this scene: Eko is confronted by people he killed in the past, chiefly the member of the gang he kills in the church at the end of the episode. So, those were obviously not the same men who flew off from Nigeria in the beachcraft, because Eko is already a priest. I imagine this takes place only days after the beachcraft leaves Nigeria. OK, so that means that the people who "attack" Eko in the jungle, their bodies are nowhere on the island. Additionally, just before Eko swings the machete at vision of the gang leader he killed in the church, he suddenly appears as the altar boy from back in Nigeria. There's no way that boy's body could be on the island. I happen to think this is pretty conclusive evidence that 1) The visions of the dead gang and the altar boy as well as Yemi are the smoke monster 2) The smoke monster can appear as anything 3) The Monster does not require a body to appear as someone Thoughts? aniero fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 07:57
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:One man's good is another man's evil. I think your entire problem is you take this to too far an extreme to be of any substance at all. Your Lost is bland and nebulous. Even though for 6 seasons the overarching message of each character's development was one of turning away from sin and evil which were embodied in conventional concepts of sin and evil, and of redeeming themselves through acts of conventional good. Sawyer, stop being an amoral murderous prick and start helping people and use your skills to help your friends. Every character was lost because of the life they had led, quite clearly sinful, and were redeemed by the island, through Jacob. There's no conjecture or ambiguity that the characters went through a restorative process that helped them find peace. Conventional concepts of evil to conventional concepts of good. There's no nebulosity or blandness. It's conveying certain moral values, and each season they are conveyed through different mediums, ending up with Jacob and the Smoke Monster. I can't imagine watching all that and thinking the show ends with absolute moral ambiguity at the highest order.
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Jun 28, 2010 08:07
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Jacob had a dark side and petty jealousies. MiB had an understandable background and empathetic grievances. This made them three dimensional and interesting, and kept us guessing about what was really going on. that said, by the end of LOST it was really obvious about who was "Good" and who was "Evil". When you make a story this mythical you need those elements for it to work.
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Jun 28, 2010 09:10
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Bad Sun posted:Jacob had a dark side and petty jealousies. MiB had an understandable background and empathetic grievances. This made them three dimensional and interesting, and kept us guessing about what was really going on. Yeah not that anyone cares, but I officially approve of this opinion, I guess primarily because it captures my personal experience. It makes sense, and it isn't loving tedious. It allows us to say "yeah wow what a bunch of hosed up people they all were... sure wouldn't want MiB to win though." Edit: also, Bonk, fantastic writeup; seriously. You should steal Doc Jensen's job at EW. Hipster_Doofus fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Jun 28, 2010 |
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Jun 28, 2010 09:47
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