LOST Delusions

by September 10th, 2011 - Culture » Film and TV » Society »

Yes. I am aware that it has been well over a year since the television series LOST wrapped up.

But I have trouble letting things go, especially good things gone bad that could have been so damn good.

LOST was one of those rare what-the-fuck-is-happening, magical mystery shows that combined great writing, direction, and acting throughout its run. Building an abstract, murky mythology stlll takes skill – as subsequent lackluster copycats have shown – but it is a much easier task stringing together a series of intriguing question marks than it is slapping the final period on the project.

I am of the opinion that shows that build their success on the mounting allure of question marks, should also end with at least one last satisfying question mark, letting the world live on forever through different iterations within the minds of the audience.

However, LOST, like so many other shows, followed the failed logic that you have to wrap up all the loose ends. The particular problem that LOST had was that there were so many fractured storylines that were never perfectly related. So when it came time to boil it down, they chose the broadest, dumbest brush available, a toothless battle of good and evil through a limp, mish-mashed prism of a nameless religion that forgives all, unless it doesn’t.

The short version? God wanted everything to happen that way.

So bad was this ending, that instead of living on in my mind, the world of LOST was dead to me. I only occasionally think of it from a simple screenwriting perspective, wishing they had chosen a more surprising and stimulating ending, one that I had spun in my head throughout the show’s run.

The main baddie of the show – who had many guises and many names: The Man in Black and Smoke Monster, chief among them – was a prisoner of the island, kept there by the mysticism of his brother Jacob and his followers who believed that this supernatural evil would wreak havoc on the rest of the world if it were let loose. Throughout the latter part of the series, the The Man in Black would explain that he simply wanted to leave the island and be free, this claim largely painted lie used to gain sympathy.

The ending I wanted to see would have had The Man in Black victorious, the audience prey to an intense sorrow and sense of dread as he sailed into Australia. Seemingly ready to wreak havoc, he instead sits at a cafe, orders a beer and looks off across the ocean from whence he came, taking a deep satisfying breath.

CUT TO BLACK

Perhaps he lost his powers leaving the island. Could he still be a plague upon mankind? Or did he only ever really want to be free of the mysticism that bound him, no matter what terrible deeds he would have to do? Surely there was magic, but how much of it had a purpose?

I didn’t think much of the actual ending.

What do you think about this one?

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