The Super Bowl ended on a controversial play. The Seahawks were ripped for throwing a slant pass at the one yard line. The Patriots rookie defensive back made a stellar play by reading it, reacting, and intercepting the pass to see New England's victory.
Once a person knows the rules of a game, then that person can create a strategy on how to win the game. One needs a strategy in order to coordinate his moves toward the path of victory.
But if one believes LOST was really a game engine where the main characters were pawns in some elaborate contest, does that hold up to scrutiny like the last Super Bowl play?
There are several possibilities of the game theory of LOST.
First, that LOST was merely the representation of a massive on-line first person adventure game. As such, the characters were not real but avatars on a computer screen. Each character would have had a real live person controlling their movements and actions (which we could assume mirror the players). The nice aspect of this theory is that the series characters were constantly playing games, some outright and some coy manipulations. There were elements of extreme first person shooter violence. There were some adventure-danger elements like attacks and kidnaps. There were torturous means of finding information to lead characters on quests for answers. The initial premise was that the castaways wanted to find a means of rescue. And like a linear platformer, they had to move along on missions to find the means to get off the island (such as finding the radio tower, or the Hatch).
Second, that LOST was some sort of Westworld live-action danger theme park. In the movie, the mechanical robots go haywire, putting the guests in real danger. Likewise, the island could be considered a theme park that pits various "teams" against each other for the "control" of the island. It is like capture-the-flag with live ammo.
Third, that LOST was really a supernatural game of chess or Senet played by immortals Jacob and MIB. In Greek mythology, the gods would look down upon human beings as inferior play things. The gods would mess with their lives at will. By substituting real human beings for chess pieces, and manipulating their own "free" will into action, Jacob and MIB could have a formed an amusing but cruel chess match filled with chaotic outcomes. And this could be the reason why Jacob continually brought more humans to their island to play game after game with MIB, who certainly was bored up to the point that the 815ers arrived on the island. A supernatural chess match makes the main characters human, alive but in a different level of existence which looks real, has real outcomes including death.
One of the supposed tenets of the show was that the island "had rules." Widmore and Ben claimed to each other that there was a rule violation (such as the killing of Alex by Widmore). However, technically the non-killing of family members did not apply to Alex, since Ben was not her real father. So when Ben was going to go after Penny, Widmore's daughter, it would have been Ben who was breaking the rules.
But we would later learn that the rules were whatever the island guardian decided them to be. So the rules were no rules. The only clear rule was that Crazy Mother decreed that Jacob and his brother could never kill each other. It was one god scolding and casting a spell on two lesser gods. But what happened? Jacob's brother killed Crazy Mother, and Jacob in turn set off the events to kill his own brother. So that rule was broken. Both Crazy Mother and brother were buried in the caves, with the smoke monster assuming the form of MIB to haunt Jacob for an eternity.
The game theory would work if there was an actual end game. One could still assume that the end game was rescue or leaving the island. Those few people who got on the Ajira plane may have been "the winners" of the game, but really what did they win? A future life of pain in the real world? If the ability to leave the island was a player's victory, then why did the O6 return to the island? Did they get a second life, a second chance to "level up" in strength and importance? No, Jack and Kate were subservient to Sawyer in the Others camp. Sayid was merely a shell crazy man. Sun was lost in another time.
And this is a basic problem with the plot of the show. There was no clear path to a defined conclusion of the island action. The sideways world resolution confused everyone because it marked "death" for every character as the "reward." When is death the best option for a game player?
Showing posts with label struggles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label struggles. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
THE BIG PICTURE
We seem to gravitate towards the bits and pieces of plot points like tiny puzzle pieces to try to grasp overall concepts and the Big Picture that was LOST.
In all storytelling, there has to be a central point to the story. It can best be summed up as what is the grand struggle that the character(s) must go through in order to reach a their climax destination.
The issues and themes of LOST need to be boiled down to the general essence. For good or ill, the final season was focused upon the vague struggle between Jacob and MIB. This detour into the island's past did not answer why the survivors were tormented in the first five seasons. But if we peel back the onion skin layers of the island participants, we find that throughout island time, there has always been two sides pitted against each other. Jacob and Smokey, a pair of immortals tied together to the island by some unspeakable bond. The Others, who may or may not have been the remains of prior shipwrecks, candidate arrivals or captive in-breeding. The Others have pushed back after some truces against any other group that have arrived on the island: the military, the Dharma science teams, and each other (with the earliest tension the leadership struggle between Eloise and Widmore).
But what were these struggles all about? The many themes that surround the individual stories may be a clue, but the prize seems to be control of the island. But the one person who does actually control things, Jacob, does not want the job. He wants to be replaced. But he does not want MIB to leave if he leaves. (It is like he wants a clean divorce from the island and the smoke monster, so it won't follow him.) But Jacob's need to leave the island to a candidate seems to be overcomplicated: he had centuries to find someone to take over the reins: from brilliant scientists, to egomaniac cultists, to naive average folk. It would seem anyone who actually knows what the island IS, would be happy to take it as a prize. Unless, of course, the island "prize" is the curse that Jacob himself found himself trapped into forever. He was tricked by Crazy Mom, and now he needed to trick someone else to take his job. Perhaps the Smoke Monster was angry about change, or wanted to succeed Jacob as the man/thing in charge. It seems to be a moot point because in Season 6 both Jacob and MIB want nothing further to do with the island. So, in that case, there is no conflict between the two that would lead to more bloodshed of human souls.
The Jacob-MIB story has no moral attributes, centric values or even rewards for persons who want to grow, change or become a better human being. It came down to a disillusioned Jack accepting the job after all his friends stood silently as Jacob begged for help before his light was extinguished (which in itself could have been another lie).
So what was the Big Picture Jack had to finish in order for the island to be saved? Destroy MIB. But why? There was no evidence that MIB could actually "harm" the remaining candidates. There was no clear evidence that MIB was going to destroy the Earth if he got off the island (and some suspect he had already left the island to be illusions on the mainland like ghost Christian to Jack at the hospital). Was it as simple as getting rid of two bickering immoral gods from the human realm of existence? Again, Jack did nothing to accomplish the end of their reign.
And if the island was the creator, the engine for all life, death and rebirth, why would Jacob or MIB ever want to leave it, especially in the hands of less intellectual, less advanced, less experienced people like Jack or Hurley? It does not make much sense that if the struggle was for the whole of the universe, the universe wound up being handed over to a mentally challenged chicken fry cook.
In all storytelling, there has to be a central point to the story. It can best be summed up as what is the grand struggle that the character(s) must go through in order to reach a their climax destination.
The issues and themes of LOST need to be boiled down to the general essence. For good or ill, the final season was focused upon the vague struggle between Jacob and MIB. This detour into the island's past did not answer why the survivors were tormented in the first five seasons. But if we peel back the onion skin layers of the island participants, we find that throughout island time, there has always been two sides pitted against each other. Jacob and Smokey, a pair of immortals tied together to the island by some unspeakable bond. The Others, who may or may not have been the remains of prior shipwrecks, candidate arrivals or captive in-breeding. The Others have pushed back after some truces against any other group that have arrived on the island: the military, the Dharma science teams, and each other (with the earliest tension the leadership struggle between Eloise and Widmore).
But what were these struggles all about? The many themes that surround the individual stories may be a clue, but the prize seems to be control of the island. But the one person who does actually control things, Jacob, does not want the job. He wants to be replaced. But he does not want MIB to leave if he leaves. (It is like he wants a clean divorce from the island and the smoke monster, so it won't follow him.) But Jacob's need to leave the island to a candidate seems to be overcomplicated: he had centuries to find someone to take over the reins: from brilliant scientists, to egomaniac cultists, to naive average folk. It would seem anyone who actually knows what the island IS, would be happy to take it as a prize. Unless, of course, the island "prize" is the curse that Jacob himself found himself trapped into forever. He was tricked by Crazy Mom, and now he needed to trick someone else to take his job. Perhaps the Smoke Monster was angry about change, or wanted to succeed Jacob as the man/thing in charge. It seems to be a moot point because in Season 6 both Jacob and MIB want nothing further to do with the island. So, in that case, there is no conflict between the two that would lead to more bloodshed of human souls.
The Jacob-MIB story has no moral attributes, centric values or even rewards for persons who want to grow, change or become a better human being. It came down to a disillusioned Jack accepting the job after all his friends stood silently as Jacob begged for help before his light was extinguished (which in itself could have been another lie).
So what was the Big Picture Jack had to finish in order for the island to be saved? Destroy MIB. But why? There was no evidence that MIB could actually "harm" the remaining candidates. There was no clear evidence that MIB was going to destroy the Earth if he got off the island (and some suspect he had already left the island to be illusions on the mainland like ghost Christian to Jack at the hospital). Was it as simple as getting rid of two bickering immoral gods from the human realm of existence? Again, Jack did nothing to accomplish the end of their reign.
And if the island was the creator, the engine for all life, death and rebirth, why would Jacob or MIB ever want to leave it, especially in the hands of less intellectual, less advanced, less experienced people like Jack or Hurley? It does not make much sense that if the struggle was for the whole of the universe, the universe wound up being handed over to a mentally challenged chicken fry cook.
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