|
FrensaGeran posted: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. Well, not to me it isn't. I find it more fascinating than tripe about "good" and "bad" in an amoral world. Lost for me was a tale of life, one of faith and reason conflicting, and characters who are lost in life like all of us, looking for answers that don't exist in this life. None are explicitly good, none are explicitly evil: at the end of the day they're are just people. It's the story about the human experience at heart. Through these elaborate scenarios and unsolvable mysteries was a condemnation of questionable methods to reach uncertain goals while rushing to judgment, firing first and resolving things later. The overall theme was that the drama we're caught up in is all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Rose and Bernard had it right. They seemed happiest in their purgatories, while most of the others struggled to let go of the real issues holding them back: I don't think it mattered a drat bit whether Jack saved the island or not, but he did need to finally resolve his issues with his father. You might find it bland, but to me "good demigod" versus "bad demigod" is a lot more bland than two suspected demigods with some mysterious game of life turning out to just be brothers having a slapping contest over centuries. FrensaGeran posted: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. That's selective and definitely not true of many characters. In general, it seems to me more that the islanders grew more accustomed to "sin" and far less accustomed to acts of "conventional good". The people torturing Sawyer in Season 1 seemed no different (perhaps even worse) by Season 5 when the stakes were raised and they felt it necessary to go around blasting innocent people to get what they wanted. Again, I don't think your interpretation is a dumb one to have, but that's just like your opinion man. You seem certain you know the one true intended interpretation of Lost, and I can't tell if I'm persuading you that there's no one answer, so it seems like time to call a stalemate. EvilTobaccoExec fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Jun 28, 2010 |
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 10:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 12:59 |
|
|
FrensaGeran posted: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. DirtyRobot fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Jun 28, 2010 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 10:43
|
|
|
For anyone who thinks MiB is evil, let's say I'm your brother, and our mom told us everything in this house is all there is in the world. Then one day you find a bunch of other humans in one of the rooms in the house. Where did they come from, I thought this is all there is in the world?? Oh and it turned out our mom killed our real mom, and there's a whole world outside this house, and you're actually from another city. Oh you want to visit the city you're from? How about I lock you in the basement. Man after a day you'd be pretty pissed. After the first 100 years, you might not forgive me for awhile. For THOUSANDS OF YEARS? You might resort to trying to killing your captor. Even though we both know mom wasn't really our mom, and this house isn't all there is to the world but I'm going to continue to keep you locked up in my basement anyway because I'm a huge jackoff rear end in a top hat, for whatever reason. So you're trying to kill me, I'll just cause multiple shipwrecks and plane crashes (killing hundreds) to make a select few continue to make sure you're locked here. And the best bit? After I've done all this? People'll say YOU'RE the evil one. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 13:28
|
|
|
And remember also that not only did Fake Mom kill MiB's real mom, but also massacred an entire village of people which he had grown up with for years and included innocent women and children, all because of the suspicion they might discover the light and be bad people. Jacob, on the other hand, set up a convoluted scheme/plan with a myriad of confusing and arbitrary rules, seemingly in order to prove that people are inherently good, except for the fact that his system led time after time to mass murder and destruction CharlieFoxtrot fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jun 28, 2010 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 14:13
|
|
|
Bad Sun posted:Jacob had a dark side and petty jealousies. Jacob was the epitome of corporate middle manager pussy. - In charge of something he doesn't understand - Actively fucks over people when he doesn't agree with them - Makes up arbitrary rules that are usually more harmful than anything - Avoids direct contact with subordinates whenever possible - Refuses to get his hands dirty by doing anything himself - Vague to the point of uselessness whenever asked a question LOST is a 6 season epic of the failure of business HR departments. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 14:13
|
|
|
For what it is worth, when I said Smokey is unambiguously evil, which I still believe, I meant it as a value judgment, not a metaphysical description. That is, I watched every single loving episode and I cannot think of one example of Smokey doing something "good". Whether or not the Smoke Monster is in fact the avatar of Satan or whatever, I do not know and I don't think anyone does. Every other character is shown doing both good and evil things, but not Smokey. Also, I do not consider the boy/man who lived before the smoke monster to be the same "person" as the smoke monster. That boy/man may indeed have exhibited both good and evil acts. euphronius fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Jun 28, 2010 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 14:18
|
|
|
He showed Jack where the water was in season 1 and before that, set Vincent to wake Jack up so he could save everyone before the pilot. (If missing pieces is legit, which it's probably not.) Those were pretty good things, right? I'm not saying he's a good dude though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 14:21
|
|
|
I do not know about leading Vincent or whatever. Was that in an episode? Leading Jack to water is ambiguous but in hindsight I thought MIB was trying to separate the survivors and instill jealousies and bad feelings so they off each other. Which kind of what was going on when half the people went to the Caves and half stayed on the beach. (But mostly I think it was a retcon and as such is pretty inconsistent with later ideas.) Edit Also, Jacob was "good" in a way of an Old Testament / Bronze Age god. Arbitrary, not nice, not your Own Personal Jesus. But still allowed for humans to be humans in the truest sense and was a protector. I have much less support for this idea. But he is also just a guy, even more so than Smokey. And I do not think he is the Avatar of Yahweh stalking the Earth. euphronius fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jun 28, 2010 |
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 14:28
|
|
|
Mogomra posted:He showed Jack where the water was in season 1 and before that, set Vincent to wake Jack up so he could save everyone before the pilot. (If missing pieces is legit, which it's probably not.) He tried to lead Jack off of a cliff. Also that was likely ghost Christian who told Vincent to go wake up his son. The one thing that I saw posted here recently that I didn't agree with, was that Locke was manipulated and, as implied, died for nothing. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Yes he was manipulated on a certain level by MiB; however, he was also loyal to the Island. Yes he brought back the Oceanic 6 and put everything in place for Jacob to be murdered, but he also made Jack believe him, and he put the final pieces in motion to lead to the destruction of MiB and the saving of the Island. So he was manipulated somewhat, but in the end he was right and had a more important destiny.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 16:20
|
|
|
Indeed his death was the catalyst.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 16:25
|
|
|
I had asked this before but it got lost in the Eloise shuffle, but I'm pretty sure Jack never found out Locke didn't kill himself, and that Ben killed him. Did Jack only believe in Locke because he thought he killed himself for the island? And Jack never really had time to think of it, but had he been able to he should have realized that Locke couldn't kill himself since he was a candidate. i guess it doesn't really mean anything, its just. . .interesting.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 17:00
|
|
|
So looking back on everything, I guess Widmore was pretty much a good guy? Yes he killed off Dharma under his own pretenses, but with regards to having the Island's best interests at heart, loyalty to Jacob, etc he was a better leader than Ben. I have been re-watching the show and in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham," he comes across as being sincere and honest.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 17:03
|
|
|
I need to rewatch the show, but I'm pretty sure Widmore's attempted takeover in season 4 was a plain old dick move. He got a lot of people killed, and pushing Ben to move the island was a huge catalyst to Smokey's loophole. When Jacob talked to him he realized that he had to drop the pettiness and save the island, but he was still a jerk.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 17:28
|
|
|
Wyld Cannon posted:I had asked this before but it got lost in the Eloise shuffle, but I'm pretty sure Jack never found out Locke didn't kill himself, and that Ben killed him. Did Jack only believe in Locke because he thought he killed himself for the island? I'm trying to imagine a conversation where Jack finds that out. Ben: Jack, John Locke didn't kill himself. Jack: What? Ben: He was going to hang himself. So I stopped him. Ben: And then I killed him. :jackface: I don't have any frame of reference to even know how to react to that. How do you react when someone kills someone who is trying to commit suicide and would have succeeded (baring island magic) if the killer hadn't shown up?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 17:47
|
|
|
microwave casserole posted:I need to rewatch the show, but I'm pretty sure Widmore's attempted takeover in season 4 was a plain old dick move. He got a lot of people killed, and pushing Ben to move the island was a huge catalyst to Smokey's loophole. In my opinion this is the weakest part of LOST. Widmore changing his ways invalidated the 4th season completely. They made it seem SO IMPORTANT that Jack and the others Lie about where they'd been, to the detriment of their own lives and (mental) health. If Widmore ever found out about the island then everybody would DIE and a rescue effort would be pointless. Well no, actually none of that mattered because all he needed was a good talking to.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 20:47
|
|
|
Bad Sun posted:In my opinion this is the weakest part of LOST. Widmore changing his ways invalidated the 4th season completely. Well if the truth about the Island got out, yea it would suck because the government would try and move in or something. But like you said, at that point they had no idea what Widmore's intentions were, and likely the only reason he didn't try and kill all of the main characters upon his return in the final season was because they were all candidates. Remember, he had no problem with forcing Sawyer to do what he wanted by threatening to kill Kate. And say what you want but he had just sent an insane, psychopathic mercenary to do his bidding, who murdered Alex and a bunch of innocent folks. So I don't see how it was illogical. edit: tl;dr: Just because we didn't see Widmore kill a bunch of people again doesn't mean he wasn't prepared / willing to do so.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 20:53
|
|
|
The Saddest Robot posted:I don't have any frame of reference to even know how to react to that. How do you react when someone kills someone who is trying to commit suicide and would have succeeded (baring island magic) if the killer hadn't shown up? Disgust that they didn't save the person. Seriously? Seriously?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 21:10
|
|
|
Locke.... It annoyed me how many characters who knew the truth about him still referred to Smokey as Locke.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 21:21
|
|
|
So were the American soldiers in the 50s just a few dudes by themselves when doing the nuclear test? Assuming they were trapped on the island (even if they didn't know it), I'm guessing they would try to stay in radio contact with whatever boat was nearby instead of SETTING UP THE NUCLEAR BOMB. I guess the American government just decided not to investigate their missing men and nuclear device.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:03
|
|
|
Wyld Cannon posted:And Jack never really had time to think of it, but had he been able to he should have realized that Locke couldn't kill himself since he was a candidate. I think people are confused about this, Michael wasn't able to kill himself because the island wasn't done with him, NOT because he was a candidate. Smokey couldn't kill the candidates because he couldn't harm the "protector" and the candidates were possible protectors.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:10
|
|
|
EvilTobaccoExec posted:Well, not to me it isn't. I find it more fascinating than tripe about "good" and "bad" in an amoral world. Lost for me was a tale of life, one of faith and reason conflicting, and characters who are lost in life like all of us, looking for answers that don't exist in this life. None are explicitly good, none are explicitly evil: at the end of the day they're are just people. It's the story about the human experience at heart. Through these elaborate scenarios and unsolvable mysteries was a condemnation of questionable methods to reach uncertain goals while rushing to judgment, firing first and resolving things later. The overall theme was that the drama we're caught up in is all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Rose and Bernard had it right. They seemed happiest in their purgatories, while most of the others struggled to let go of the real issues holding them back: I don't think it mattered a drat bit whether Jack saved the island or not, but he did need to finally resolve his issues with his father.  if you will. The bad side isn't purely bad either. The origin of the Smoke Monsters rage was definitely one in which he totally got screwed. There's good in him. So I'll draw some pictures now.My Lost:  Your Lost:  And you're absolutely right, there is no one answer. But I have the weight of the entire narrative of Lost behind me. Yours completely flips the script at the very end for no discernible reason other than to be contrarian.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:10
|
|
|
Mike the TV posted:So were the American soldiers in the 50s just a few dudes by themselves when doing the nuclear test? Assuming they were trapped on the island (even if they didn't know it), I'm guessing they would try to stay in radio contact with whatever boat was nearby instead of SETTING UP THE NUCLEAR BOMB. The US government forgetting about a lost nuke that would be too difficult to retrieve has actually happened in real life... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7720049.stm I think there was another incident with a nuclear sub losing some warheads but my google skills are failing me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:17
|
|
|
FrensaGeran posted:And you're absolutely right, there is no one answer. But I have the weight of the entire narrative of Lost behind me. Yours completely flips the script at the very end for no discernible reason other than to be contrarian. All you're telling me is that you don't actually understand my interpretation or Yin and Yang. You can pretend it's contrarian if you want though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:20
|
|
|
marktheando posted:The US government forgetting about a lost nuke that would be too difficult to retrieve has actually happened in real life... Yeah I just can't imagine there wouldn't be at least a cruiser sitting off shore.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:23
|
|
|
No I totally get that, if you average out a picture of yin and yang, it's grey. But if you take away the distinct structures of good and evil, it's just a square of gray. Yawn. I mean, our heroes who defeat the Smoke Monster and save the island go to loving HEAVEN at the end, pure good, and you're sitting there going "Well one man's good is another man's evil" and I'm flabbergasted.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:24
|
|
|
Mike the TV posted:Yeah I just can't imagine there wouldn't be at least a cruiser sitting off shore. Who says there wasn't? We know almost nothing about what happened, perhaps someone moved the island. Would seem like the sensible thing to do if the US government knows your location and you have the magic source of all life on your island.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:26
|
|
|
LooseChanj posted:I think people are confused about this, Michael wasn't able to kill himself because the island wasn't done with him, NOT because he was a candidate. Smokey couldn't kill the candidates because he couldn't harm the "protector" and the candidates were possible protectors. But out of anyone wouldn't Locke be one of the top seeds to be the protector? That's some shoddy rules if Michael can't kill himself because he had to . . . not stop a bomb from going off, Jack can't kill himself because (reason?), but Locke CAN kill himself because (reason?). I don't see any consistency there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:28
|
|
|
Mike the TV posted:Yeah I just can't imagine there wouldn't be at least a cruiser sitting off shore. I wouldn't be all that surprised if there wasn't; these sorts of operations strike me as being intensely covert, and a cruiser in the ocean near the island would bear the possibility of being discovered in addition to the risk already presented by the island itself. Assuming that the entire team was killed by the hostiles/others/indigenous people, even if the army wanted the nuke back, or the bodies of the soldiers, I wouldn't be completely surprised if they couldn't actually find the island again. I think it was near the end of season 4 that we learned (via Eloise Hawking and the Lamppost) that the island was constantly moving, whether someone was turning that wheel or not. If there was no one to respond to the army's attempts to contact their team, nobody would be able to tell them where the island had moved to. That was my thought, anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:28
|
|
|
FrensaGeran posted:I mean, our heroes who defeat the Smoke Monster and save the island go to loving HEAVEN at the end, pure good, and you're sitting there going "Well one man's good is another man's evil" and I'm flabbergasted. Ah yes heaven, clearly only pure good people afterlife heavan, the home of Keamy and Ben. Not at all a generic "afterlife" environment where we've seen good and bad people.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:33
|
|
|
Now you're being obtuse. I'm talking about heaven, the place everyone in the church goes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:38
|
|
|
At first I thought it was a bit of an insult to the viewers' intelligence to actually have Jacob and Smokey dressed in white and black, but after this argument I think maybe they should have gone even further and have Smokey wearing a t-shirt with "I'm the bad guy" written on it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:53
|
|
|
 Hi, it's me, Greg Grunberg again. Still don't have my flesh, thanks to the Smoke Monster. But, give him a chance, won't you?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:58
|
|
|
marktheando posted:At first I thought it was a bit of an insult to the viewers' intelligence to actually have Jacob and Smokey dressed in white and black, but after this argument I think maybe they should have gone even further and have Smokey wearing a t-shirt with "I'm the bad guy" written on it. The fact that the MiB isn't a big black block proves that he's not completely evil!
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 22:58
|
|
|
FrensaGeran posted:
He just wanted to get home to his wife, his childhood sweetheart. He never took that ring off.... 
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 23:02
|
|
|
Literally everyone in Lost is a dick. That's what makes the show great.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 23:12
|
|
|
Wyld Cannon posted:But out of anyone wouldn't Locke be one of the top seeds to be the protector? That's some shoddy rules if Michael can't kill himself because he had to . . . not stop a bomb from going off, Jack can't kill himself because (reason?), but Locke CAN kill himself because (reason?). I don't see any consistency there. Locke didn't kill himself, but besides that his death was an important part of the plan. I don't see any inconsistency at all.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2010 23:31
|
|
|
LooseChanj posted:Locke didn't kill himself, but besides that his death was an important part of the plan. I don't see any inconsistency at all.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2010 02:23
|
|
|
Some Strange Flea posted:No! Don't you get it? He's a cloud of black smoke! He's nebulous and complex and uncertain! If he were completely totally evil, he'd be solid, not gas! He'd just be this great big monolith sliding around the island and running people over! Hitler was a vegetarian and liked Dogs and by all accounts treated his pet Dogs very well. Seriously, there is no doubt about VALUE JUDGMENT word "evil" to describe Smokey. He's the villain, after all.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2010 03:03
|
|
|
My nutty co-worker has been behind in watching the last season. He had them all saved on his DVR. He watched them over the weekend. It turns out that the last 5 episodes or so had some timing issues and started recording too early and then finished too early. He never saw the last 10 minutes of each episode. I guess he was sort of ok when an episode kind of filled him in on the ending of the previous episode but the finale ended up cutting off after Jack asked Christian "What is this place?" I asked him how he was dealing with that and he just shrugged his shoulders. I pointed him to abc.com. Weirdo.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2010 18:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 12:59 |
|
|
FrensaGeran posted:Hi, it's me, Greg Grunberg again. Still don't have my flesh, thanks to the Smoke Monster. But, give him a chance, won't you? Hi, I'm Dharma employee that grabbed a rifle when we heard shots going off. I had a wife and kids, but they had to fend for themselves after some maniac Mechanic and LaFlour started shooting up the place. Their suffering doesn't really matter though, because.... Some Strange Flea posted:The fact that the MiB isn't a big black block proves that he's not completely evil! drat, you fuckers are dense. http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/exclusive-interview-lost-producers-damon-lindelof-and-carlton-cuse-talk-across-the-sea Let's get into a couple of specifics about last night. Last week, when you spoke to Jeff Jensen, you said all of the deaths happened in part so you could establish Smokey's bonafides as a bad guy, and to make it clear he's not on the side of our characters. And in that episode we were clearly meant to side with Jack as the newfound man of faith. But in "Across the Sea," it's Man in Black, who's the man of science, who winds up being the more sympathetic character, and the victim of his upbringing. So is it supposed to be black and white like the backgammon pieces, or is still supposed to be more complex in the war between the two sides. DL: We have long sort of spoken about the interesting dynamic in the show is nobody is 100 percent good, nobody is 100 percent evil. Everybody has the capacity for both. Every time you come up with an explanation that's black and white, it turns into shades of grey. Ben Linus starts as a villain and then can become sympathetic. Sawyer and Jin who were also first presented in less than sympathetic lights became increasingly more sympathetic. We wanted to explain why the Man in Black had behaved the way that he does, and to show that like a lot of other characters on the show, he's the victim of very bad parenting. To reduce him to just a supernatural force, as opposed to a person, was not our intent. "Across the Sea" was our attempt to say, "Here's why Jacob feels the way he does about people, why the Man in Black feels the way he does about people," and a bit about their childhood. It's as simple as that and as complex as the themes of the show are."
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2010 21:58
|
|