WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?

 AN OUT-OF THE BLUE QUESTION:

WHAT IN LOST WOULD YOU HAVE CHANGED?

 There were plenty of unanswered questions, plenty of angst about the final seasons direction, and curses about the Ending. But generally, what would you as a loyal viewer want to have changed in the original series?

PLOT ELEMENTS? 

Did the show have to have its start as a plane crash survival story? Could have it been set in a different location such as hospital, mental institution, a secluded university campus or secret military base?

Did the show have to have a mixed genre premise? Could it have been a straight drama? Or could it have been a straight action-mystery?

Did the show need to have unclear time travel rules and supernatural smoke monster elements? If you took away the Jacob and the Island story line, would LOST still have delivered on its character goals?

CHARACTERS?

Would you have pared down the ensemble cast into a smaller focus group? Would you have eliminated the Tailies from consideration? Would you have changed the Others from its Ben's cult status to something else (like pagan, primitive natives with special powers such as worshipping the smoke monster)?

Would you have not used flash backs and flash forwards to give us the main characters pre-island stories? Would you have given the broken characters a new chance to live out their lives in their set, reality pain (such as Locke and his paralysis)?

Would you have given a secondary character a bigger role in the main story? Would the Others been better served under Patchy? What if the pilot survived to take control away from Jack? 

THE ENDING?

What did you really want to see in the final episode? Did you need a happy ending or could you have lived with a bitter island bloodbath? Did you need to see a post-island epilogue of the final survivors trying to cope back in the real world (such as Sawyer maybe uniting with his daughter)?

Would you have wanted to erase the flash sideways world in its entirety? Would you like the island stories to end, in context, on the island?

Would you have wanted one last twist - - - such as Hurley in the mental institution playing with an island snow globe?  

Would you have accepted a Sopranos style ending (sudden end to black) which was considered by the show runners?

A WORD FROM THE CREATORS

 At a recent virtual panel at NY Comic Con, LOST showrunner continued his advocacy for LOST. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said there no plans for a reboot or spinoff of the series which had its 15th anniversary of its premiere. However, they would support another show in the LOST "universe" if someone had a great idea to convince Disney/ABC to do it.

 Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were asked what they both think about any possible reboot or spinoff. 

"It would not be a good idea for us to go back," Cuse said. "This comes up all the time and, I think, Damon and I have been very consistent and forthright on this topic. We told the story that we wanted to tell."

Over six seasons, LOST followed a group of survivors of Oceanic flight 815 who crash landed on an island. As they tried to go back home (and then get back to the island), it was consistently a top-rated show on ABC.

To this day fans love re-watching and discussing the series' few unsolved mysteries — including one Cuse and Lindelof said they'll never answer about the identity of the people on the Season 5 outrigger.

While they have no interest in rebooting "Lost" or exploring any spinoffs, Lindelof said he would be supportive of anyone who pitched a good idea. 

"If somebody else comes along who has a great idea to do something set in the 'LOST' universe and sells that to The Walt Disney Company, they will have our blessings to do that," Cuse said. "We see no reason to do it. It doesn't feel like there's anything that we have left to say that's worth saying. We did it."

Lindelof said Disney has never come to him with any other show pitches since the show wrapped up in 2010.

"For the three final seasons of the show — four, five, and six — we put so much emotional energy into ending this show," Lindelof added of why they have no need to revisit this world. 

After 15 years, the show continues to be a iconic series from the past. To re-create a show with that much detail and location shooting would cost double or triple the old budget (which was already high for its time). Another re-boot problem would be that it was a serial show, where each episode was linked to the next. This made it impossible for secondary revenue like television syndication, which demands intact single episodes of shows (in case people cannot watch everyone in a row).

The LOST universe itself is a cryptic concept. Fans still debate whether it was science fiction or fantasy. Fans still debate whether it was real, imaginary or a hybrid psychotic event(s). For all its flaws, it would be very difficult for another producer to re-create the magic of the Island and its mysteries.

THREE AND OUT

Yahoo News reported on LOST's back story from one of its co-creators.

LOST launched a television phenomenon by creating mysteries and Easter egg hunts like the numbers, the hatch, and The Others.  It had high ratings from the 2004 pilot right up until the finale in 2010.

A common debate has been when the series jumped the rails to go out into filler tangents and story line dead ends. Some believe the middle seasons were merely filler episodes which distracted from the original intent of the show.

Co-creator Damon Lindelof  all but admitted it when he recently said the original outline for the ABC series was a three-season run.

“There were all of these compelling mysteries and so we were saying, ‘We wanna have this stuff answered by the end of Season 1, this stuff answered by the end of Season 2, and then the show basically ends after about three years,’” Lindelof told Collider. “That was the initial pitch.”

“[ABC] were not even hearing it… they were just like, ‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show? So why would we end it? You don’t end shows that people are watching.’”

Eventually, ABC allegedly agreed to set an end date for the show – but on its own terms: 10 seasons.

That never came to pass, as Lindelof eventually reached a compromise during negotiations around Lost’s third season.

Lindelof was set on a longer fourth season to wrap the story up which still involved “a number of the characters” getting off the island and later returning for the final run. When ABC offered just nine episodes, the two parties settled on slightly shorter seasons up to season six, a marked departure compared to the 20-plus episode seasons we got in the show’s first two years.

Despite the apparent directional conflict with the network, LOST moved forward, with all its flaws, to the controversial finale. Would have a concentrated LOST series have been better? Would more mysteries been solved? Would the End be different?

 Let's look back at the first three seasons as a guide with the help of lostpedia:

Season 1 concentrated on the middle-section survivors and their fight for survival and rescue. This was the modern update of the Robinson Caruso shipwreck story. It is a classic premise to hook viewers with a familiar story told in a new way.

Major plot points included:

Finding a suitable camp location.
Half the survivors, including Kate, Sawyer, and Sayid settled on a beach near the crash site.
The rest, led by Jack, chose to live in the caves which are located in the jungle, near a source of fresh water.
Investigating the Island (searching for food and water, discovering the caves, and learning about the Black Rock).
Confrontations with The Monster.
Getting to know and trust each other (see especially Kate, Locke, Sawyer, and Jin).
There is a relatively long-standing animosity between Michael and Jin: the latter attacked the former in order to get his watch back, which Michael had found in the wreckage of the plane.
The survivors (especially Jack and Shannon) begin to question Locke's intentions due to his lie about Boone's injury and consequent death.
Trying to leave the island.
Building and launching the raft.
Hunting for Claire, after she was taken by the Others.
Opening the Hatch found by Locke and Boone.
Started to tell the survivors' story by introducing and using Flashbacks.

The early story was basic survival: food, shelter and water. Also, a means of rescue.
But the survival group was not unified so individuals personal instincts were more important than uniting around  common leader. This was the early character conflict between those who thought they would lead.

The mysteries were unusual: the Black Rock ship found in the middle of the island; the Smoke Monster, the Others and the Hatch.  The story pivoted from basic survival to danger from Monster, the Others and the Island itself.




Season 1 Finale: As the castaways brace themselves for an attack, Claire's baby is kidnapped, leading Charlie and Sayid on a dangerous chase into the jungle. While the threat of the Others bears down on the castaways, the raft crew continues their flight from the island - but when the hope of rescue appears on the horizon, they will soon learn that appearances can be deceiving. Charlie and Sayid stumble into a trap as they race to confront the kidnapper. Jack and Locke argue as they prepare to blow open the hatch. The raft crew is overjoyed to be discovered by a passing ship, but their elation is short-lived when they realize things are not what they appear. The hatch is opened, and what is inside it stuns the survivors.
 

Season Two focused on the Hatch. To find something scientific and out of the ordinary on the Island filled the castaways with hope (and food and protection) but also doubt (what was its purpose on the island). The writers were praised for effectively using flashbacks to flesh out the secrets of the characters.

Major plot points included:

The Swan, the Numbers, and pressing the button, all of which appeared to have been resolved by the end of the season.
The tail-section survivors, whose stories began and ended in the season, with the exception of Eko and Bernard.
The Others, including Tom, Goodwin, Klugh, and the fake Henry Gale (Ben).
The DHARMA Initiative stations/
Continued to tell the survivors' story by using flashbacks

Finale: Live Together, Die Alone: After discovering something odd just offshore, Jack and Sayid come up with a plan to confront "The Others" and hopefully get Walt back. Meanwhile, Eko and Locke come to blows as Locke makes a potentially cataclysmic decision regarding the "button" and the Hatch.

Season 3 mainly focused on the Others who had become the biggest danger to the castaways survival.

Major plot points included:

The Others (including Juliet Burke, Tom Friendly, Ben Linus and Richard Alpert), who they are, why they are on the Island, the way they live their lives and who leads them.
Contact with the outside world, including Penny; the Flame and Galaga being destroyed.
Desmond's future-telling powers, going back in time and Charlie's imminent death, and to a lesser extent, time.
The mysteries of the island, mainly pregnancy issues and the healing properties (see Mikhail).
The arrival of Naomi and the freighter.
Continued to use Flashbacks and during the final episode of the Season 3 they first introduced the Flash-forward idea that was used throughout all of Season 4.

Finale: Through the Looking Glass:  Jack and the castaways begin their efforts to make contact with Naomi's rescue ship.

"Through the Looking Glass" means where nothing is quite what it seems. In Lewis Carroll's book, it can mean clocks that work backwards or "... a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed, including logic (e.g. running helps you remain stationary, walking away from something brings you towards it, chessmen are alive, nursery rhyme characters exist, etc.).

At the end of Season 3, current reflection shows series turned to pure fantasy and not reality.


But by the end of Season 3, LOST could have wrapped up its main stories without jumping the shark (literally and figuratively) with the entire Jacob Temple worship story which attempted to merge ancient religions with an old Greek surreal tale of sibling rivalry.


A three season run would have boiled the LOST story universe into easily absorbed plots:

1. The conflict and tension in the 815 survivors camp on leadership and direction for survival. A passenger class struggle between the middle section and the tail section who had more contact and suspicions about the Others.
2. The external conflict and combat with the Others who claim the Island and its magical properties as their own. The story would have concentrated more on the science cult's obsession with time, pregnancy and mental experiments (which could have easily explained the Monster as being the physical manifestation of mentally ill minds through the Island's unique electromagnetic fields). In other words, the Smoke Monster would have been the island Frankenstein, roaming the island after breaking out of its captivity.
3. The realization that the only way to leave the Island was through the Others assets (boats, communications, etc.) or through rebellion (the freighter coming back to dethrone Ben as the island leader.) It could have been an interesting dynamic on whether Widmore would be as evil as Ben or whether he would have rescued the 815ers then restore the "real" original research of the Island. This would have been a cleaner and more logical ending to the series as it avoids the pitfalls of supernatural beings and clear evidence of a purgatory premise. The main characters would be given an opportunity to "go home" on the freighter or "stay" to live a new life on the Island.

THE SICKNESS

It takes a pandemic to put the microscope back on the deadly Sickness that haunted part of the LOST story. In today's world, people fear the coronavirus. It preys on people with pre-existing medical conditions and immune disorders. It is a novel virus which means there is no past immunity. It can spread quickly as it is a respiratory virus.

Characters in LOST were deathly afraid of The Sickness.

The Sickness manifested as a severe mental change on the part of the afflicted. In 1988, shipwreck survivor Robert tried to kill Danielle, his financee. In fact, except for Danielle, her entire party was taken over by the Sickness, which we thought was caused by the Smoke Monster attacking them at the Temple. Danielle began exhibiting what appeared to be similar paranoid delusions, though she claimed to be the only crew member to escape the sickness. Danielle personally killed all other members of her expedition and other characters wrote her off as insane. Sayid, after his infection, killed even more readily than usual, and he said he could no longer feel emotions. The Others were paranoid about the infection. The medical labs were obsessed with reproduction and Claire' baby. They injected her with an alleged vaccine, which did not work.  Claire post-infection became a mentally unstable, paranoid murderer and cradled a boar's skull to replace her baby.

Dogen, the Temple leader, tortured Sayid in order to measure his level of good and evil. According to Dogen, the infection was irreversible. As a result, he tried to trick Jack into poisoning Sayid.


What is believed the infection was in reality a demonic mind possession by MIB (Smoke Monster). It was part of his plan/game to get back at Jacob, who kept his "imprisoned" on the Island. If MIB could develop an army of infected followers, he could take down Jacob to get his freedom. In the last season, MIB was succeeding in the role as fake Locke when he massacred the temple occupants. Those who survived but not directly infected, were controlled by fear. Once there free will was compromised, they could be manipulated against Jacob.

It is a natural human instinct to fear the unknown. Death is the greatest unknown. Something you cannot see in the darkness, is a great unknown. A virus so small it is invisible can enter one's body to reek havoc. In today's panic world, daily updates of confirmed cases and fatalities has the world on edge.

People are told to stay at home. Shelter in place. They have panic purchased supplies including a vast run on toilet paper. It gets to a point of irrational behavior.

Just as in LOST's story line, it plays out in a similar fashion in real life.

LOST IN PRODUCTION

In a 2017 article, Jeff Jensen wrote that LOST producers were banking on a massive volcano story line to wrap up the island origin of the smoke monsters, but ABC refused to pay for it.

The use of the volcano was supposed to show us how the smoke monster was created, by Jacob throwing his brother into it. In many cultural myths, sacrifices to the gods used volcanoes as part of the worship rituals. The producers wanted to use a temple with the volcano scenes, but ABC balked because creating temples were expensive.

The show did show a temple with very detailed ancient Egyptian signs and symbols. It was the place where the Man in Black took his angry revenge on the remaining Others. This temple appeared to be the root of Jacob's power over the people he brought to the island. Its priest held forth a cult in which the spirit or smoke monster could not enter until it reached human form.

A BBC article stated:

Often cultures have seen active volcanoes as the abode of gods - typically gods quick to anger.

“I think the creation of myths is essentially the human reaction to witnessing a natural process that you cannot explain, says Haraldur Sigurdsson, a U.S. volcanologist  “So you attribute it to supernatural forces and you say it is a battle between the giants and the gods.”

Was the island story a battle of angry gods, Jacob and his brother?

If true, then how could simple human beings defeat them?

The Man in Black, smoke monster, believed he was trapped or imprisoned on the island. Jacob claimed that he was the guardian of the island. Was Jacob the prison guard to MIB? Was his sole purpose not to unleash an evil spirit upon the world? The island was phasing in and out of the Earth realm to be hidden from humans, because they would be drawn into using the evil to destroy the planet?

Was Jacob bringing humans to the island a means of appeasing MIB? Instead of playing ancient board games, the two devised a game using humans as pawns.

But at a certain point, the brothers grew tiresome of their company and their mutual curse of being trapped on the island. For Jacob to be released, he would have to trick a human to become the new guardian. For MIB to be released, he would have to die which is difficult for an immortal spirit.

It is interesting that the show runners and the network were at odds on production budgets to the point where the story had to change. This confirms some skeptics who said the writers were making up the show on the fly. The fly was the network not allowing them to produce their vision.

But would have the volcano story line "solved" the ending issues?

No. Even if the whole general premise was overlaid with Polynesian mythology of volcanoes, gods and sacrifices, it does not explain the sideways world, the parallel universe, the Flight 815 plane crash and the ending in the church.

THE END GAME

The Sopranos, the crime family drama, is having its 20th anniversary. Some reports state that there may be a sequel in the form of a prequel that begins where the original show ended (in a diner with a jolting, quick fade to black).

It was that ending that inspired other creative types (writers and show runners) to mess with their audience. One of the prime directives of a writer is to tell a compelling and interesting story through characters and their actions. There is a beginning introduction, a middle part of conflict and options for resolution, and a climatic ending to resolve the main plot points of the show. Usually, the ending involves the main character learning a valuable lesson or makes a statement on social commentary. In essence, that is the unwritten entertainment contract between show and its viewers. But the Sopranos ending changed that covenant.

The show just . . .  abruptly ended.

It left the world to scratch their heads in disbelief. What just happened? Something was about to happen. What was going to happen?

Then a simmering vent of anger; WTF?

Because viewers spent a lot of time on getting to know the characters, follow the story, "experience" the events shown to them, they felt entitled to a proper ending. That is not to say they are guaranteed a "good" ending.

Viewers fumed because they thought they were "played" by the writers. Or that the writers "copped" out on wrapping up the loose ends of the plot lines so they just decided to leave everyone, including the characters, hanging in limbo.

Hollywood creative types loved the idea of an ambiguous ending. Instead of offending one group of viewers with a creative choice, you can confuse all the viewers with no choice at all.

It gave other shows the license and cover to not wrap up story lines. In a complex, tangential world of LOST, that is how the writers got out of the corner they painted themselves in. Instead of answering the big questions, they punted with a side world reboot to give the main characters a happy ending (or so it seemed). But that made many viewers madder than a hornet. They felt let down, betrayed by a series that they embraced and discussed in minute detail with friends and other fans.

It was like reading a great novel, only to find out that the last chapter is missing.

In today's more fragmented entertainment consumption model (on demand, binge watching), shows probably cannot get away with this type of shocking ending.

RANDOM FODDER

 One of the issues in LOST's narrative was the apparent continuity errors. Some were viewed as production issues, others as easter eggs. In a very random exploration, let us discuss a very minor Other named Jason.

Jason was a minor  character who, on numerous occasions, aided Pickett, Ben and Ryan Pryce on various tasks against the 815 captives. He was once termed one of the ten trustworthy minions of Ben. Even though he was in the midst of several missions against the 815 captives, he did seem to be slightly different - - - he appeared to have a conscious.

During Season 3, he was first seen assisting Other named Michael in the Hydra operating room as Ben tried to convince Sawyer that he was in control. Jason told Sawyer to bite down on a stick to manage the pain while he held him down during the operation (which allegedly included planting a mini-bomb in his chest which turned out to be a hoax) and at the time Ben discussed Sawyer's fate at the Hydra Island lookout point.

Jason also assisted Jack at Colleen's funeral.

When Ben in surgery with Jack, Jason tried to convince Pickett, who was assisting, not to leave the operating room to go kill Sawyer. Jason went with Pickett to the cages, but instead of killing Sawyer, Pickett and Jason were beat up by Kate and Sawyer and left in the cages. Once they got out of the cages, they went to the beach to try to capture Kate and Sawyer, but they were unsuccessful.

Jason was one of the men who raided the 815 beach camp. Jason survived the initial ambush explosions to help capture Jin, Sayid and Bernard. As they were lined up on the beach waiting execution by Pryce, Hurley drove the van through the jungle striking the Others. Sayid tripped up Jason to the ground, then broke his neck to kill him.

However, several days after Jason's beach death, he is seen at Richard's camp. Ariston Green, the actor who played Jason, admitted in an interview that he was the person in that scene.

It was probably a production issue where the director needed background members and Green was available. But some would think that the producers and director would have known they killed off a character before this shot - - -  which could lead to viewer confusion.

But one of the oddities of series was the strange "reincarnations" of certain characters on the island. Patchy was the prime example as the mad Russian got killed several times over but seemed to reappear to take revenge on the castaways.

But Jason reincarnation could have been a "reward" for not being purely evil, but just a foot soldier taking orders. That view would give the show at a least a partial moral fiber to the actions and consequences of some actors. If you have some morally positive attributes, you could be saved from final judgment or given a second chance in your island life.

THE JOURNEY

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “The only journey is the one within.”

The basic structure of a good story is a good premise, strong character development, action, reaction, conflict, choices and a journey's end.

The quintessential story arc in this generation is Luke Skywalker's journey to become a Jedi. From humble beginnings, a tragedy propels a naive young man into a dangerous adventure across the galaxy in search of truth, purpose and family. But throughout, the journey was within Luke's heart and soul - - - the mixed emotions, conflicts, set-backs and new friendships that affect how he would become a man.

Did anyone in LOST have such an heroic journey?

Sun defied her rich and overbearing father by marrying a poor fisherman's son, but her life did not end well.

Locke tried to rebel against his miserable life without a family, only to be crippled by his own father which led to a lifetime of mistrust and failure. His life did not end well either.

Kate was a bored, troublemaker as a child who kept her selfish ways of manipulating others in the forefront of her personal survival game. She had an opportunity to change (as did all of the characters) but she did not. She could never find true happiness in her life.

Sawyer was a vengeful boy who turned into the man he despised for destroying his family. But when he could have had a chance to led a family, he turned his back and fled responsibility. He took the easy way out because his personal bitterness and torment was his own internal best friend.

Sayid led a life of struggle and burden of responsibility. He did the dirty jobs. It affected his mental state. When he left Iraq and found his true love, it was taken away from him. In his journey to find her, he failed the woman he claimed to be the love of his life - - - and wound up with a woman he had only a short affair.

Hurley was an introvert scarred by his father's abandonment. He felt he was unlucky at life and that he was the sole cause of his own problems. But when he got lucky and won the lottery, a life changing event, he willed himself into more bad luck. In order to keep himself together, he invented his own best friend and checked himself into a mental institution to be safe from the world that brought him only bad luck. Even when he tried to change his life (by finding the meaning of the numbers), his plane crash lands on a dangerous island. He has an opportunity to re-invent himself but he never does. We don't know how much of Hurley's experiences and thoughts were real or imagined as some theories believe.

Jack may have been the closest to a clear path journey. His story starts as being a highly successful surgeon. He is at the top of his profession. He is well respected. He holds life and death decisions in his hands. But his demon is the lack of love from his father. His relationship with his father eats away at his soul to the point of jealousy, ire and mental breakdowns. The fact his father dies in a Sydney alley causes Jack to begin a journey into a downward spiral of personal torment. He becomes the reluctant leader of the survivors. His decision making becomes fragmented between himself as being the leader and good of the group. He decides to hide his island past when he is rescued, causing even more pain and suffering to the people around him. When Locke is killed, Jack has his final mental breakdown - - - the illogical quest to return to the island to fulfill some unknown reason. At this point, objectively he lost his ability to be rational. But since he left enough of the old Jack in the minds of his island mates, they joined him on a fateful journey back to the island. But the resolution on the island did not solve any of Jack's life problems. It was merely murky waters of his own discontent to the point of a suicide pact with the Man in Black as they went down into the Light Cave. Jack did not die a hero's death, but a foolhardy attempt to runaway from his problems. He did not have a personal redemption. He did not find the solution to save his friends. He did not get them off the island or home.  Jack's journey was the reverse path of Luke's. Jack did not find his journey's end with true answers to make his life great.

VOLCANO

The ending of Lost was almost much bigger than what audiences saw. Nothing was that different. The characters and island were always going to be what they ended up being. But, one big addition would have changed things significantly: a volcano.

Lost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse told the story to Entertainment Weekly. The summary is that Lindelof and Cuse wanted some kind of visual identifier to bring together the idea that this island was like a cork on a bottle of evil. The symbol was going to be a volcano, and it would have been set up in the third to last episode. In that episode, where we learned the backstory of Jacob and the Man in Black, Jacob was going to throw the Man in Black into the volcano, turning him into the smoke monster that debuted in season one.

Then, in the series finale, Locke and Jack were going to fight on the volcano as it got ready to erupt—kind of a natural-disaster ticking clock, with tremors, lava, and, eventually, good triumphing over evil. Lost even set up the idea of the volcano being on the island some time prior, in a third season episode that featured a Dharma classroom. And yet, it ended up getting scrapped.

The reason is simple: money. Producers and executives realized that all the volcano effects and potential location filming were going to be way too expensive for them to handle, especially when another final season set, the temple, ended up being more pricey than expected. So, in the end, the very literal interpretation of the island as evil was cut out and things were left a little more ambiguous. Same ending, Jack vs. Locke fighting on a rocky area, but just no volcano.

Money woes and writing by the seat of their pants.

Jeff Jensen, the waterboy for the series theorists, writes:

Carlton Cuse, Lost’s longtime co-showrunner, got the idea for the volcano in the early years of the show after visiting Hawaii’s Big Island with his family, taking a volcano tour and marveling at the landscape. He thought it would be cool if The Island had a volcano of its own. “We were always looking to cannibalize anything on Hawaii to aid in the visual storytelling of the show,” says Cuse. “We also thought of the island as a character on the show, so we were always looking for things that would give it more personality.” He didn’t have an idea of how the volcano could be used, “but it was something we banked and thought we could use downstream.”

The volcano stayed in the back pocket until the producers started developing Lost’s concluding seasons. The premise that developed over time was that the volcano was a mysterious place that forged the ticking, shape-shifting monster, the billowing black mass known as Smokey. By season 6, the writers had settled on the concept that the island was like a cork that bottled up all sorts of bad stuff, some volatile stew of spiritual dark matter stuff that would rob life of meaning and goodness if unleashed. “The question was always, how do you basically visualize and dramatize the idea that the island itself is all that separates the world from hellfire and damnation?” says Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof. “And the answer was the volcano.”

Lindelof and Cuse initially envisioned a finale in which Jack (Matthew Fox) and Smokey incarnate (Terry O’Quinn) would brawl over the fate of the island at Lost’s proverbial Mount Doom. “The volcano had been dormant for the duration of the series,” explains Lindelof, “but based on moving into this endgame, the island had become unstable and the volcano was going to erupt. We were going to have lots of seismic activity, and ultimately, there was going to be this big fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which ended up in the series manifesting as Jack and The Man in Black, in the midst of magma. Magma spewing everywhere!”

And so it went that Cuse and Lindelof decided to end Lost by reigniting an actual volcano and spraying their cast with actual skin-searing magma. Just kidding. But they were determined to fake it the best they could. “It would be visually stunning and really exciting for the audience,” says Lindelof. “After six years and around 121 hours of the show, we had shot literally every part of Oahu that we could for island scenes and flashbacks. So the idea that, for the finale, we could go to this new locale that’s going to look new and different and unique, primal and ancient and end-of-the-world-ish, that would be great.”

The volcano wouldn’t have come out of the blue. The producers planned to take us there in Lost’s third-to-last episode, “Across The Sea,” a major mythological outing that revealed the origin story of The Island’s long-lived protector, Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), and his unnamed brother, The Man in Black (Titus Welliver), and dramatized the latter’s transformation into Smokey. You would have seen Jacob drag his mother-killing sibling up the slopes of the volcano and toss him into its smoldering, monster-making crater.

And this is where the people who wrote the checks for Lost put a stopper in Operation: Magma Spew. At some point in all the plotting, planning, and prepping for season 6, ABC calculated that it couldn’t afford the transportation cost. Not helping the cause: The set for the temple, a refuge for Jacob’s chosen ones and a key location in the first half of season 6, turned out to be very expensive. Says Lindelof: “ABC was like, ‘Guys, we love you, and we’re letting you end the show; we can’t let you bankrupt the network in the process.’” And that’s how Smokey’s crucible — Lost’s version of Buffy’s Hellmouth — was re-imagined as a cave of light and the fight between Jack and the monster was filmed on the cliffs of Oahu.

Cuse says The Volcano That Never Really Was speaks to how practical factors, models of production, and s— happens variables affect the execution and finale form of big saga serials. Lost was marked by several such stories. Perhaps the most well-known involved Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, whose Mr. Eko was a season 2 breakout. The producers loved writing for Mr. Eko (his showcase episode in season 2, “The 23rd Psalm,” written by Cuse and Lindelof, is one of Lost’s best) and envisioned a prolonged conflict with John Locke (O’Quinn) that would have made the middle seasons of the series quite different. When the actor abruptly ankled Lost the second season, the producers had to create a new story for Locke and other characters impacted by his sudden departure. (Akinnuoye-Agbaje stuck around for a few episodes to shoot Mr. Eko’s death-by-Smokey exit episode.)

Still, Cuse and Lindelof do think scratching the volcano was for the best. Lindelof says the producers came to believe during the writing of season 6 that it would be better if some ideas about The Island remained metaphorical or mysterious, things to be interpreted, not explained.

>>>> I have to disagree with the notion that Budget Killed the Volcano. You can use stock film footage of an eruption with close up footage of characters panicked reactions; and waves of ash clouds as they flee from the jungle.

The "monster making" volcano would explain how one is made but not WHAT it is. We got some circumstantial evidence of monster creation in Light Cave when Jack "rebooted" the island cork. But that was placed in the context of rebalancing good and evil not creating a monster. (Even though some say that the body of Jacob's brother was washed into the cave, knocking over the cork and thus creating the Man in Black.)

But if the volcano was supposed to be the climatic star of the Series 6 final episodes, why did the production crew spend so much time and money on the Egyptian symbols and the temple if the temple concepts were immaterial to the resolution of the story?

This story shows that the show runners and writers were struggling to find a way to end the series. There were too many ideas but not enough continuity to resolve the series story lines. Instead, it was decided not to answer the questions but create a final "character study" of the cast as they passed into the afterlife.

LOST BUTTERFLIES

In 1961, meteorologist Edward Lorenz entered a microscopically different value into his computer model -- .506 rather than .506127 -- and discovered that it had drastically altered the results of his weather prediction. His subsequent paper titled, "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?", officially coined the term "the butterfly effect." It is the theory that small events can have significant consequences.

What were the butterfly effects in LOST?  What little change(s) had dramatic effect(s) on the series.

1. The rework of the pilot episode. It was the most expensive pilot produced at the time. The network was going through management changes. It decided to fire the original writer to put the project in the hands of new Hollywood golden boy, J.J. Abrams, whose show runners made a few changes to the script and filmed the first show.

If the regular production company was in charge of the series, the emphasis would have changed from being a Jack leadership role back to Kate being the lead character. It would have been more a show about survival than a supernatural/mystery series.

2. The two-show story arc of Ben's character. Ben was only supposed to be a guest character for a two episode arc. It was to show how the island would change the 815 survivors into dark killers. It was thought that after Sayid went to find the balloon crash site, and learned that Ben was not Henry Gale, Ben would have died at the hands of the castaways. It would have been a commentary on the nature of normal human beings in pressure situations. But since Ben's evil character was so good, he was written into the rest of the series as the villain.

If Ben's character was killed off, the Others series arc would have less meaning and would have probably ceased in a short time. It probably would have truncated the Widmore involvement in the story as his main rival was Ben.

3. The use of flashbacks to tell the back stories. One complaint during the series was that the characters would not ask each other basic questions or want to learn information about missions, etc. If the production team let the characters converse with each other to pull out information, secrets, motivations, etc., the series would have had a different feel and story progression. It would have been more one to one dialog driven shows than the action adventure sequences.

Many believe the flashback technique was used as "filler" to keep the series main story line from collapsing or it was a means to save production costs by using more interior sets.  But when the reliance of flashbacks ran its course, the show runners did something significant to keep the format alive: invented "flash forwards" which led to the slippery slope of the illogical sideways universe story arc.

4. Locke being able to walk on the island. If Locke remained handicapped and in his wheel chair, his character would have never been able to be the fantasy outback survivalist. If Locke remained physically unable to run around the island on missions, his character would have quickly fallen to that of a beach extra.

But the action of giving Locke a "miracle" recovery on the island (as well as a cure for Rose's terminal cancer), it set off a series of theories about the special properties of the island. But it also led to the growing complaints that the writers were not explaining the miracles or supernatural elements. This led to fans breaking into their own story camps and heated arguments on the premise of the show (whether it was real; characters in purgatory; or just all a dream).

SOAP OPERAS

The creator of the anime series, Baccano!, had a line in adapted episode which probably probably sums up LOST: 

Stories never begin, nor do they end. They are comprised of people living. An endless cycle of interacting, influencing each other, and parting ways.

It was a way to try to describe a complex and layered novella series with a wide range of characters. In the end, the confusion comes down to when a drama-adventure series turns into a standard soap opera.

Soap operas were early transpositions of live theater acting to the television audience. A weekday drama airing during the daytime, intended for women (particularly "homemakers"/"at-home moms"), soaps were known for excessively emotional acting and shallow plots and scripts. Soap operas are so-called because the earliest dramas, which originated in the 1950s and 1960s, were sponsored by soap-making companies.

When the LOST show runners continually defended their series from critics, they inferred that the critics did not get it: the show was about character development and not explanations of sci-fi story lines or mysteries.

The one difference between LOST and a standard soap opera is that LOST did have complex plots and scripts, but it had only vague and shallow answers to the mysteries and questions the plot lines posed to viewers. Viewers, who were as rabid as daily soap watchers, spent years trying to figure things out to minute detail. The problem with LOST is that it was not a long running soap opera in terms of fixed characters and slow moving to tedious cliche plots. LOST fans were promised by the creators and writers that it would be different; that if fans kept with them they would get answers to their questions. 

After Season 6 concluded, the show runners claimed that they had answered most of the "big" questions which set off another round of fan debates and arguments. However, Carlton Cuse said afterward, "Very early on we had decided that even though LOST is a show about people on the island, really, metaphorically, it was about people who were lost and searching for meaning and purpose in their lives. And because of that, we felt the ending really had to be spiritual, and one that talks about destiny. We would have long discourses about the nature of the show, for many years, and we decided it needed to mean something to us and our belief system and the characters and how all of us are here to lift each other up in our lives."

Damon Lindelof  explained, "For us, one of the ongoing conversations with the audience and there was a very early perception, was that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying 'It's not purgatory, this is real, we're not going to Sixth Sense you.' And we felt it too that the show had to become sort of meta in this way. And so the writers said, 'Obviously, there are all these mysteries. But what if we answered a mystery that was never asked, what's the meaning of life and what happens when you die?'"

Damon added that the idea for the "Flash Sideways" world came about between the planning of seasons four and five because "We were out of flashbacks and we were done with flash forwards. So we started to think about, what if we sort of Trojan horsed in a paradoxical sideways story line?"

So basically, the show creators admit that they used soap opera techniques of changing course, mixing up the characters, adding strange and disturbing elements in order to keep the audience engaged in the show despite the show's writers running out of original ideas.

And even if the hidden agenda of the show was to ask The Big Questions, what's the meaning of life and what happens when you die,? LOST failed to deliver because there was no clarity on when the main characters died and where did their souls go. Was the island heaven? Was the island hell? Was the sideways world purgatory? Or heaven? Or was the O6 arc purgatory (as in Jack's breakdown and suffering return to the island)? Or was the O6 arc heaven (for characters like Walt who was in a normal family with school friends leading a normal life)? Or was it up to each viewer to impress their own belief system on to the events to come to their own conclusions?

Critics of the final season bring up the "more questions than answers" response to this narrative as proof that the show lost its bearings after Season Two by throwing disassociated concepts at the writers wall to see what would stick.

Fans of the final season are content with the mere fact that the main characters grew into a group of friends at the sideways church. That the loners, misfits and troubled souls could find a measure of happiness in the end, whether it was actually real or an illusion.

MILESTONE

2016 marks the 12th year since the launch of the epic series, LOST.


Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else. — Brian Tracy


So goes this this blog, one of the few small corners of the internet which still actively discusses the series.


In 2013, the LOST producers decided to finish discussing their series in one last rant while discussing the ending of Breaking Bad. At the Paleyfest TV convention, there was  a LOST 10th anniversary panel. It was more of an awkward high school reunion than a ground breaking discussion of the series.


Since then, LOSTheory continues to post stories, theories, science stories that may tie into the LOST-centric fan communities when the series was at its peak.  This site which started in Season 6, now has posted 1,097 articles. Two years ago, we did not know how much longer we would continue writing posts. But we just hit the milestone of 20,000 unique page views. There still appears that there are fans who still miss the series, and who still want to engage their minds on the ramifications of it.

For the LOST fan community, nothing really has replaced it. No other show has had the layers of complexity, the clues, and the rabid fan theories and story lines.


LOST is like an old friend that you want to stay in touch with even though real life has started to occupy more and more of your time and energy.

LOST LINE

Jorge Garcia posted video of his first line in LOST which was deleted from the pilot.

In the scene, Jack turns around in the beach debris and yells,  "Hey you, come here" and then Hurley points at the plane and says "plane crash."

Garcia said it was a great line, and many fans agree.

But with Hurley in a dazed but unhurt expression, the idea of him saying the obvious is an intriguing leaping off point for a theory.

What if Hurley was not dazed by the crash itself, but amazed that he had "created it?"

The question is whether Hurley could have "projected" one of his nightmares into reality.

The concept of projection is well known. A strong personality often "projects" his feelings and opinions on the people around him. Cult leaders are famous for doing this. They can control other people's minds by their charisma and charm, even if the ideas are batsh*t crazy.

Now, throughout the series, Hurley truly believed that he was cursed. When anything good happened to him, he would dread it - - - and suddenly something bad would happen, like his grandfather having a heart attack or the chicken joint hit by a meteorite.

Now if you take the phrase "mind over matter," and turn it around to say "matter over the mind," it would mean that a person's mind can magically create a new physical world order by thought. If Hurley could create events just by thinking about them, then he had god-like abilities. And the island could have been a place for these gods, as Jacob also had those attributes as well as the smoke monster.

It harks back to the Greek legends of the various gods coming to Earth to mess with the human beings. The bred, tortured, cajoled and misused the human race because of the gods arrogant superiority. One could think that Hurley may have been the offspring of such a mythological god race.

Or it could as simple as creating a vast new world in your mind's imagination. We do it all the time. We call it dreams. But if a superbeing has the power to project those dreams into reality, that could be the premise of the series. The struggle of competing minds to fashion their own world.

If Hurley did cause the plane crash, that puts an entirely different spin on the Desmond story arc which he believes his not putting in the Numbers caused the crash. But those Numbers were tied directly to Hurley prior to Flight 815.

DREAM POLICE

Throughout history, literature came in standard format elements such as metaphor, symbolism, satire, exaggeration and codes. At times, the authors used those devices to criticize their leaders so as not to lose their heads. Writers use these methods to allow a reader's imagination to fill in the gaps. One of the most successful books that have been used over and over again as examples are the parables in the Bible.

As with the vagueness of LOST's premise and main plot line, many different themes and theories have arisen to explain the totality of the series. Was it purgatory? Was it a parallel universe? Was it time travel? Was it the avatar representation of players in a video game? Was it all a dream?

The latter has been a highly investigated topic. Many theorists have focused in on Jack's character as the source of the dream theory. It was Jack's eye opening to start the show's mythology that got people to thinking it was a link to the mind's eye, or subconscious state. It seemed to hold water when Jack's last island shot was him closing his eyes in the bamboo jungle after defeating MIB.

However, after recently hearing Cheap Trick's "Dream Police," there may be another suspect.

The dream police
They live inside of my head
The dream police
They come to me in my bed
The dream police
They're coming to arrest me
Oh no

You know that talk is cheap
And rumors ain't nice
And when I fall asleep
I don't think I'll survive

The night the night

'Cause they're waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
(They're) driving me insane
Those men inside my brain

What if the duality state of psychic responses was not in Jack's head but in Kate's?

It may make more sense because Kate's story line features all of the main character story elements. The show was supposedly all about character development more than plot.

The lyrics of the song pen a simple premise for Kate's dream state.

What was the major focus of Kate? To run away. To not accept responsibility. Not to grow up to make adult decisions toward accountability. And where do many people run to in troubled times? Into their own heads. The factually incorrect assumption through the series was that a U.S. Marshall was chasing down Kate for an Iowa state murder. The U.S. has no jurisdiction over murder, a state offense. And when she was "tried" for that murder, it was in California, another state without any jurisdiction. Those errors were so big and stupid it cast the whole series writing in doubt. 

The only real explanation for those egregious errors is that they were not real. 

If we accept the premise that Kate's story is fantasy, then a workable theory can be made from it.

When know the basic elements of her character: she was a rural child living with her working mother and lazy stepfather. She wanted attention so she caused trouble. She learned early how to manipulate young boys. She longed to get away from the chains of her family and to have adventures. But her family had no resources to send her away, and Kate seemed to have no attributes to better herself to go to school or college to make her own path.

LOST could be considered Kate's dream flight away from her boring life. Besides, Kate is the only person in the O6 story arc to have a "happy" outcome, i.e. getting her murder charges dismissed with a wrist slap. All the other O6 characters had brutal disappointments, including Jack turning into a drug/alcoholic, Sayid seeing the love of his life killed in an accident, and Locke being murdered by Ben.

And the other characters are elements of her personality, as depicted in Disney's recent movie Inside Out.

Shannon represents a vanity, a pretty but lazy girl who wants to be showered with gifts and attention. Locke represents her adventurous side. Sawyer represents her devious wants and desires. Hurley represents her shy but crazy side. Charlie represents her hidden creative talents. Ben represents her repressed anger against her parents. Jack represents conformity, the responsible person she is trying to avoid. Sayid represents the exotic problem solver. Claire represents the little girl trapped inside her head. The smoke monster was her deepest fears; reality. Mars, the marshal, represented her parents and the societal pressure to conform, behave and be accountable for your actions.

Throughout LOST, Kate was seemingly in the middle of every major event. She went on all the missions. Out of nowhere, she was an "expert" tracker. When she needed to be an expert marksman, she was. She got in and out of danger with barely a scratch. She always got what she wanted: escape and freedom. All the main story threads had Kate as a major factor: the plane crash, the O6 story arc, and the sideways world. In fact, Kate's story is exactly the same in both the island world and the sideways existence while the other characters had major differences. That is because Kate's mind was in control of both story worlds, bouncing back and forth like a pleasant dream to a nightmare. 

But as Kate got deeper and deeper into her fantasy dreams, the more dark they became. Add in "the Others," people who don't know her but want to control her. Jacob and MIB, tyrants who are trying to hurt her, kidnap her and enslave her mind - - - take away her freedom. 

Her Dream Police, her imagination,  were authority figures who were making demands on her. All the characters did indeed live inside her head. And when she was asleep, they tried to "arrest" her - - - take away the fantasy of adventurous freedom by putting her (and her character elements) in danger. There were times she felt she would not survive: as the plane was crashing, as she was chased into the mangrove roots by the smoke monster, when Ben held her captive, when MIB attacked the temple, when Claire lashed out at her, etc. 

So we may never really know who Kate really was. She could have been a transference of Libby, the mental patient in Hurley's group day room. As the song said, the dream police were driving her insane.

TWO LOSTS

There is a position in the LOST universe that says that the fans who hated The Ending never understood it. Or that they were never real fans of the show. Or they expected too many answers to the questions posed in the story lines.

In order to justify this viewpoint, it is said that the final season of LOST was its own universe, its own independent story - - - its own self-contained bubble. It's features and attributes do not reflect what was happening in the island world. In other words, the fact that the characters in the sideways world were dead did not mean that the characters were dead all along. But that in itself is only a supposition.

Except, there were connections between the two worlds. In the sideways world, it was a character's "awakening" that flooded back island memories to re-bond with lost friends and lovers.

But if you do want to separate LOST into two distinct, independent stories, here is what you get:

THE ISLAND world would apparently have ended with Juliet detonating the bomb, killing everyone on the island. Or, as the science would tell, you can't detonate an atomic bomb with a rock (there needs to be a complex chain reaction explosion to detonate a nuclear device), so the bomb did not work. That would mean the island characters were still "alive" and battling among themselves in the Jacob-MIB feud.

THE SIDEWAYS world would be totally different. For example, none of the characters were ever in a plane crash or lived on the island. They were normal people with normal problems. Ben was a school teacher taking care of his disabled father. Locke was a disabled substitute teacher who was happily married to Helen. Jack was divorced but from Juliet. He had a son. Hurley was a successful businessman after winning the lottery; a confident community leader. Sun and Jin had made it to the US. She was expecting their child.

Now, complete separation of the characters time lines has to be part of any independent universe view. In the linear story telling of the show, the sideways events happened AFTER the island events. And that creates a clear paradox. The children were born in the prior island time, but were not born in the sideways world until the end. And the End was a place of death so how can children be born in the sideways world? Again, the theory that the sideways is self-contained means it is not fair to ask that broad question.

Then you have to look at LOST as two franchises. The island and first 5 seasons were the original. The sideways episodes were the "re-boot" of the franchise (as JJ Abrams did with Star Trek). But that seems too confusing and inconsistent with what the show writers were telling fans at the end of Season 5.

One could divide the worlds into one where the gritty danger of real life engulfs a person with one where a person's dreams and imagination of a perfect life controls. If you take the sideways world as the collective dreams of the island characters, folding it like whipped cream into a cake batter, then you would discount Season 6 as mainly unimportant filler.

If, as some fans thought at the time, the sideways world was truly a glimpse of the characters if Flight 815 did not crash, then that would be fine . . . . until the point when the writers merged the fantasy with the island "awakenings" and the poor choices to conclude the series, such as Sayid embracing his alleged soul mate, Shannon, instead of Nadia. In fact, the whole structure of Season 6 was premised upon Eloise trying to keep Desmond and Penny a part in the sideways world - - - because she knew it would open a Pandora's box of memories to the characters which would cause her son, Daniel, to remember how cruel she was to him.

The two LOSTs explanation is one way of looking at the series. Two distinct character studies of the cast members. But that is a dry, academic explanation. And really unnecessary. If you wanted to show the good and moral side of a character, such as Ben, you could have made those changes in the island world story. You could have had the characters leave the island and try to adapt to LA instead of creating a conflicting, parallel universe.

LOST was one show and one series. It has to be accepted as being one, complete, and coherent story. The last part is what continues to cause fans the most problems. The blanket explanation that the show was only about the characters and their actions and reactions to events is shotgun logic. It does not explain the important mysteries the writers gave us to solve. It does not give closure. It just keeps fans debating the merits of the ending.

WHEN YOU CAN'T SLEEP

There is a Japanese legend that states that if you cannot fall asleep it means that you are awake in another person's dream.

How interesting.

LOST had several key trigger words or concepts: awakening, dreams, alternative reality, changes in time and space.

But what is a better representation of an alternate reality or change in time and space than dreams?

Even another person's dreams that affects you.

It is not that the person who cannot sleep knows about, or controls the other person's dream. It is probably the exact opposite. When one tosses aimlessly trying to get to sleep, you are restless and not in a dream state. It is like the actual dreamer has pulled the mechanism for your dreams, your subconscious REM dream state, from you to power their vivid imagination with your appearance, words, character and personality.

Would this be a dream thief in action?  No, because they are not "your" dreams since you are still awake.

The idea that a heavy, deep thinking dreamer can attach their mental thought waves to other people to harvest and extract "better" more lucid dreams is a fascinating collision of philosophy and science fiction.

Through the series, we rarely saw any of the main characters actually sleeping. They were constantly on the move, in day light and at night. And over time, they did look tired. Their mental faculties were low. (How many times did we complain that the characters failed to ask basic questions to people coming back from a mission?) The island characters were the ones who were sleep deprived for a reason.

It still could be associated with a Dharma experiment on weaponizing dreams for the military. Or it could be that the stress levels and electromagnetic properties of the island interfered with anyone getting REM sleep (the biological basic need to rest and recharge one's internal batteries). Prolonged non-sleep can make people forgetful, irritable, and psychotic.  

But what does the original legend mean?

It may be a philosophical means to explain how being awake can be expressed on different levels of reality. Being in another persons dream for example can simply mean that person has interest in you or it can actually be a theoretical idea that you exist many different places at once.

In LOST, we presume that the main characters were in two different places (island world and the sideways plain of existence) at the same time. The sideways people could not "remember" their island pasts until "they were awakened."  Since the sideways world was the after life, it could be equated that the main characters were "restless ghosts" who could not come to terms with their pasts. 

Or it could mean that in each person, we have many people: we have our biologic human form that is transfixed to this planet. We may also have a spiritual form which rests inside our body, but it can be released into a different plain of existence. Perhaps, people whose "soul" has left their living body are suddenly defenseless against the temptations and evil urges that plague mankind. 

In the sideways world, the characters did not reunite with their bodies. Their souls "remembered" their past - - - their island past and their friendships, the missing pieces in their lives.  

WONDER TO GO

In 1977, I went to a large suburban theater to watch the first Star Wars movie. I do not recall what actually motivated me to see the movie, except that that was what kids did on Saturday afternoons.

The old theater had a monster screen and new Dolby sound. It could fit three current theaters into it. It was the last arc of the grand movie palace experience, where the characters and action on the huge screen was larger than life.

I remember it was a very good action-adventure movie. So much so, that I made a point of seeing the next two sequels.  But then after that, I had no interest in George Lucas' prequels. It came mostly from negative reviews and the lack of the original characters involved in the movies.

And that is a point of franchise stories: people get personally invested in the characters that they are drawn to . . . in such a fashion to follow their stories to the bitter end.

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I can guess a couple of major plot twists because I know that Hollywood rarely has a totally original story idea. I have been spoiler free in internet surfing so if I make the commitment to elbow through the mobs this holiday season to see the picture, I will get the full effect of re-boot.

But I am thrilled with JJ Abrams at the helm. As a loyal, old school Roddenberry Star Trek fan, I was disappointed with his franchise reboot to the point of not watching any more of his "alternative" universal thought. It seems the younger generation does not care about alternative canon story lines since the major comic book makers seem to re-boot their franchise characters every couple of years, to the point of total confusion of character roles and motivations. Example, is Batman good or bad?

So I wonder if the new Star Wars movie will hold to Lucas' vision, or will it be a tale of Hollywood Disneyification profiteering, or a mixed bag of hope dreams bruised by formula pole tent movie making.

Great science fiction charges one's imagination. Poor sci-fi clouds the mind.

This new Star Wars movie is supposed to break all box office records. But industry insiders think it will be a commercial flop if it does not make $1.5 billion at the box office. Reports indicate that Disney has strong armed many theater chains to pay higher ticket gate percentages in order to show the film. To be super successful, Disney hopes for multiple viewings by fans and a huge rush of merchandise purchases.

But let's hope the old characters can gracefully hand over the story to the new, younger Jedi characters. Because in the end, it is still the story that counts the most.

A HERO'S JOURNEY

The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development.  It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization.

Its stages are:

1.        THE ORDINARY WORLD.  The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma.  The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history.  Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

2.        THE CALL TO ADVENTURE.  Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.  

 

3.        REFUSAL OF THE CALL.  The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly.  Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

4.        MEETING WITH THE MENTOR.  The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey.  Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

5.        CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.  At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.  

6.        TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES.  The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

7.        APPROACH.  The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

8.        THE ORDEAL.  Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear.  Out of the moment of death comes a new life. 

9.        THE REWARD.  The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.  There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

10.      THE ROAD BACK.  About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home.  Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

11.     THE RESURRECTION.  At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home.  He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level.  By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

12.       RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR.  The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

THE PAST DIVINED FUTURE

Study the past to divine the future. --- Confucius

It is hard to argue against a master's pure thought.

Human beings do dwell on the past in order to divine or predict their future.

They do so in work: if I did X,Y, and Z then I should get that promotion.

They do so in relationships:  if I did A,B, C with Lady One in the past but that did not work out, if I do X, Y, Z with Lady Two I will have a better relationship with her.

Sometimes, we get trapped in the past. When the "what if" scenarios begin to consume your thinking and reflecting time, you get caught up in the past which freezes the present to cause a fantasized future hope.

If you replace the "what if" with a more proactive, positive "what's next" attitude, then you are living in the present with a better outlook for the future.

This is best observed when people date and break up. Depending on how sudden or blindsided the break was, two things can happen. One, some can hide in the past (the good memories) to the point where they obsessive chase to get their former lover back in the future. Their future is a time loop of disillusion and rejection. Failure.  Two, some can let go of the past to the point where they can move on to find a better friend and lover. Their future is moving forward into the future with confidence and new awareness based upon experience. Progress.

The perfect character study for this behavior pattern was John Locke.

Locke carried with him additional baggage from his childhood abandonment issues, and added more baggage with each failed relationship. His past haunted his present and clouded his future.

His obsession with his con man father, even after he conned him out of a kidney, destroyed the best relationship he ever had with another person, Helen.

In the real world, he found a woman who loved him for who he was, but since Locke had so much personal baggage unresolved in his mind (that he could not love himself enough to be loved), he effectively destroyed the best chance he had for happiness.

And even if one considers the sideways world as Locke's "fantasy" future to try to get Helen back after their final break up on the mainland (island time frame), that did not work out either since Locke ended the series alone in the church.

Human beings try to project future happiness upon themselves. But just fantasizing about it will not make it happen. Action speaks louder than words. Action also speaks more to obtaining a new future than just thinking about it.

Locke never tried to replace Helen in his life. And that was his down fall. His failing. His past ruining his future because once he realized that Helen was very good to him (and for him), it was too late. He could have went back into the dating pool to find a new Helen (learn from his past mistakes) but he was too afraid. He envisioned himself as some grand outback warrior, but that was pure fantasy clouding his judgment and detouring him from real, tangible goals.

And this trap is what makes people have lonely lives.

DEJA VU AGAIN

We don't know exactly because it’s difficult to study—you can’t induce déjà vu in most people. 

But scientists have theories. It may be a memory error: An experience triggers a memory, but the brain can’t retrieve it. When that happens, your brain fails to distinguish the past from the present, leaving you with an odd feeling of familiarity. 

Another theory holds that two parts of the brain perceive an experience at the same time. If information arrives slightly faster to one part, a person can feel like they’re having the same experience twice. 

However, a group of scientists from the U.K., France, and Canada think another cause could be anxiety. They recently studied the bizarre case of a 23-year-old man with chronic déjà vu and found in one instance that the more distressed he became by the endless loop of déjà vu experiences, the worse they got. But you’ve probably heard that before.

We play mind games all the time: puzzles, board games, mental math tables, etc.

But most people do not realize that their own mind plays games on them. We may be aware of the mind game consciously when we hear a noise in the dark and the mind flashes to an intruder, or a banging shutter. But the mind can also play subconscious tricks on you.

Some psychologists believe that the subconscious mind tricks as a defensive or coping mechanism. For example, past hurtful experiences may be housed in a section of the brain that is triggered under similar circumstances. When a shy person sees a person that is attractive, his subconscious mind triggers a hurtful memory of rejection so the shy person never attempts to say hello to the attractive lady. This sets off another reaction in the conscious mind of guilt, remorse, loneliness and shame. But a person usually can cope, in reality hide, with their internal demons than a public display of rejection that puts a cloud of group judgment on themselves.

Deja vu could also be the mental process in which to solve problems. In third grade, you did math tables. As an adult, you are trying to split a $36 bar tab three ways. You access that math table in an instant to figure out the share sums. You may not mentally flash to the third grade chalkboard, but the subconscious mind does that for you.

The whole concept of LOST's flash backs and flash forwards could have been incorporated into mental experiments by scientists trying to figure out the brain functions that trigger deja vu memory recall.