No, it means we all have a different point of view.
It doesn't mean were weren't watching the same show.
Big questions left unanswered
- Thread starter WeAreTheBorg
- Start date
It doesn't mean were weren't watching the same show.
He fell into the light. Exactly how did the light turn him into smokey? I don't know. How does The Force work? What made Sauron's ring so powerful in the first place? We don't know the answers to these questions either but I don't see anyone complaining about it.
I never said the mysteries in Lost weren't big, I said that the unresolved mysteries weren't big. Most answers were implied.
Yeah, that's why it's just a figure of speech.
I don't know how anyone could watch this show over again and not be confused about some of the mysteries presented. Some really were blatant and were even focused on for a good deal of time, only to not be answered.
If one just shrugs it off, that's probably better for their mental health, but then it seems like at that point the involvement in watching the show is simply looking at attractive people do some things, but it doesn't really matter what those things are. At that point, there really is no need to introduce a complex mythology, yet they did.
I think it's because Star Wars and LotR by their very nature were clearly fantasy from the start. They both exist in lands or times far, far away, and people knew this going in. Lost didn't start out as fantasy and took place on the Earth that we know in the time that we know, so people go in wondering why things are the way they are given the way they were presented.
Well Ryan I'm with you, and I guess the answer is that the belief that some may hold but maybe won't actually come right and say here on this forum, is that we're just not smart enough to figure out what was right before our eyes. Since we don't see the obvious that is.
But you're probably right, just accepting "Oh it was the smoke monster" or whatever as the answer to everything probably is a more peaceful resolution to everything. In the grand scheme of things, I guess it's not really worth arguing about.
Yes, because we're all of a hive mind and if one of us is confused, then we all must be.
No, we're all people, and we all have in common that our brains work in similar ways. When the human brain sees questions, it typically wonders what the answers are. When it sees patterns, it tries to fill in the blanks. Ultimately though, sometimes it needs to not dwell on these things lest a person go mad.
Finding the cure for cancer or AIDS maybe but I sure hope there aren't any of us being driven mad trying to figure out a TV show.
The force is an energy field created by life that permeates the universe. As a field, it extends some arbitrary distance from its source. As a form of energy, it can do work. Life can use it to affect the universe, or to sense the universe without using the physical sense organs. This is a fundamental part of the Star Wars mythos; it was explained briefly in the first movie, and expanded in the second movie.
Sauron, like other Ainur, was a nonphysical being that predated and helped create the physical universe. Ainur are capable of moving their essence into physical objects to extend their will throughout the physical world. As spirits, this extension acts over arbitrary distance and impinges upon the wills of other beings who possess souls (Elves, Men, and Dwarves). On the cosmic scale, Sauron's master Morgoth poured so much of his essence into the physical world that it became subtly evil. This extension of personal essence into matter is also seen in the subcreations of the Ainur, who are unable to create ex nihilo, and perhaps in Elvish magic. This is fundamental to the cosmology of Tolkien's legendarium.
Compared to Star Wars and especially Tolkien's legendarium, Lost's descriptions of its universe's workings fall far short. Especially since so many of those workings were not introduced until the end.
I disagree. Tolkien doesn't count because he actually did write an encyclopedia on his world. But the Force is Star Wars was never fully explained. It's just an energy force. You didn't explain it any better than Lost did it's energy source. Besides, the energy in the cave was what formed all the good in the world. What more do you need to know?
I have no big unanswered questions at all. Except for MIB's name maybe. Which is still really a small question.
That doesn't really explain how it managed to churn out such an evil creature.
The force was never described as intrinsically good or bad, making it less subject to scrutiny. And it was given a lot more rules as to how it worked and what it actually was compared to the light. We know next to nothing about the light.
Reading some of the posts immediately above, I was surprised to realize that I didn't care how Smokey was created (he was created somehow by falling into the light, whereas others who were not "protected" by someone like Crazy!Mom burned up (hence the skeletons), as much as the "mundane" ones like Dharma.
But then, all of Dharma just seems to be what Crazy!Mom said--that some come to try to take the light. Dharma's reasons may have been different from that of others', maybe scientific or philosophical, but still, that's what Dharma was trying to do, possible without realizing it. They noticed anomalies and sought to understand and/or exploit them for whatever reasons.
I guess it can be interpreted that, what we thought and were led to believe was important (Dharma's activities) was just the latest version of what people had been doing there all along. And the Others were those on the island one way or another (some failed candidates others as castaways) whom Jacob later used to assist him.
Okay, if that's a decent explanation, Dharma's existence and evident relative unimportance is explained sufficiently for me.
The Egyptian stuff was, I guess (lots of guessing), from those before Crazy!Mom. Though we weren't shown it while she was there--and the boys evidently never asked about it--it had to have been there. She likely didn't build it by herself, though nothing precludes her from being ancient Egyptian, it was the boys' mother who was Roman. Perhaps she was the last of the protectors and so was relieved that the boys came along--and that their real mother would not be conducive to the task.
It just still seems that this is armchair quarterbacking on my part, that some plays and touchdowns weren't shown.
But then, all of Dharma just seems to be what Crazy!Mom said--that some come to try to take the light. Dharma's reasons may have been different from that of others', maybe scientific or philosophical, but still, that's what Dharma was trying to do, possible without realizing it. They noticed anomalies and sought to understand and/or exploit them for whatever reasons.
I guess it can be interpreted that, what we thought and were led to believe was important (Dharma's activities) was just the latest version of what people had been doing there all along. And the Others were those on the island one way or another (some failed candidates others as castaways) whom Jacob later used to assist him.
Okay, if that's a decent explanation, Dharma's existence and evident relative unimportance is explained sufficiently for me.
The Egyptian stuff was, I guess (lots of guessing), from those before Crazy!Mom. Though we weren't shown it while she was there--and the boys evidently never asked about it--it had to have been there. She likely didn't build it by herself, though nothing precludes her from being ancient Egyptian, it was the boys' mother who was Roman. Perhaps she was the last of the protectors and so was relieved that the boys came along--and that their real mother would not be conducive to the task.
It just still seems that this is armchair quarterbacking on my part, that some plays and touchdowns weren't shown.
Tolkien never wrote an encyclopedia. And if he doesn't count, why did you bring him up in the first place?Electric Coleslaw said:
As for the Force, its source and operations are explained and consistent throughout the Star Wars Trilogy. (And maybe the prequels). The source of the "light" is never explained, nor are its functions reasonably consistent. It does whatever the writers want it to do. When they were writing a science fiction show, it curved spacetime around the island and generated crazy EM fields. When they were writing a fantasy, it healed wounds, made people immortal (if and only if the island wasn't done with them), and turned them into shape-changing, memory-reading, sentient smoke. When they were writing glurgy feel-good spiritual fluff, it was the origin of life and a prevented "malevolence" from spreading throughout the world. I can give you a one sentence definition of the Force that encompasses pretty much everything we know about it from the Star Wars Trilogy. I don't know if I can describe the light that way.
"The light is a phenomenon variously interpreted as the source of life or exotic matter, localized under the island and maybe also present in everyone, which can be put out by removing a cork from a geothermal vent, generates strong magnetic fields, creates curves or wormholes in spacetime, may accelerate the healing of wounds, causes the souls of dead people to remain on Earth and interact with the living in the form of whispers, unless the living person can see ghosts in which case they can talk to the dead, or unless the dead go to a constructed universe that looks like Los Angeles, has been known to turn people with head injuries into sentient mind-reading shape-changing flying smoke, may possess some volition, and grants immortality-granting powers to people who agree to protect it and drink from a spring that flows into it."
In Star Wars we have several commentators that are fairly reliable. Ben, Yoda, Vader, and Palpatine all seem to agree on what the Force is, even though they disagree on what they should do with it. Tolkien wrote about Arda as an omniscient narrator/commentator, or through learned characters. We have little authorial commentary on Lost, and none of the characters had any idea what was going on.
This was answered. They were essentially Jacob's foot soldiers he used to do his bidding and hel protect the island. We learned this season that they were in the dark abbout a lot of things. Jacob kept everything to himself.
We saw several times in season 3 that Ben had resources off island such as Mittelos corporation, a plane, cameras that were kept on Juliet's sister Rachel for example. So it wouldn't be that hard to get the passenger list for 815.
So to give credit to the writers they did satisfactorily answer this question.
Now see you are the type of fan that leads other fans to assume critics of the series are just being overly critical in the complaining about a lack of answers or satisfactory answers.
The writers did answer things. I will gladly give them credit for a great many of them but the problem though was they started answering them in S3-5 and developing them but then didn't finish developing them and as a result it feels unfinished and unsatisfactory. They only developed them part-way and it feels no more satisfying to me than when a series is cancelled and we are left with an open-ended cliffhanger with no resolution.
By the same token those like exodus or sidious are being disingenuous when they say "oh but the writers did answer (fill in the blank)" because the answers those two are attempting to provide aren't complete answers since they raise just as many questions--nothing about it is definitive. Well sidious and exodus they are answers of a sort but not whole complete answers--merely the tip of the iceberg. To have done them justice they needed more development. It's like the writers just threw their hands up in the air and said screw it.
So yes I'm going to penalize the series and criticize the writers about this season, this series finale and the Mythology as a whole. Spout all the rhetoric that Cuse and Lindelof have about the show was always about these characters but really in season one was it the most character-driven. Season 2 was a mess. S3-5 were Full on Mythology--feverishly pulling together clues sprinkled from all the set up in the early years and providing tons of exposition.
So a few good touching scenes are great but you have to view the series as a whole and the Mythology really fails it. I think there is a little bit of rewriting of history when it comes to how much of a centerpiece the mysteries and Mytholgy were to the show and how important the characters were.
You still can't explain the Force any better. You only describe what it does not what it is. I initially brought up Tolkien but then I realized it doesn't apply because he wrote the Silmarillion which is basically an encyclopedia. The power of the ring is not specifically explained in the Lord of the Rings story itself. Appendices don't count.
But the point of Lost wasn't to explain the Light. That's not what the story was about.
But the point of Lost wasn't to explain the Light. That's not what the story was about.
LOST didn't do just one thing . So one of those things they should have done was explain the Light--it was the mystery of the island itself, why Mother brought Jacob and MIB to the island, it was why Jacob brought people for centuries, it was what Jack died for, it was what Eloise allowed Daniel to do for etc. So yeah it needed better explanation than the spiritual mumbo jumbo.
It's evident that a lot of questions remain unanswered, and maybe the writers made it that way so that things are open to interpretation. A more important question is: Does it really matter? Things like "Why is the Black Smoke Monster black instead of white/ blue/gray/magenta?" are inconsequential to the overall plot. 
It's almost like asking, "Why do Klingons have ridges on their foreheads?" 
It's almost like asking, "Why do Klingons have ridges on their foreheads?" It's almost like asking, "Why do Klingons have ridges on their foreheads?"
They're not nearly in the same league. One was a production joke on an episodic television show, while the other was a serial show where much relied on the answers.
And with the light, we don't really know what it does. It's inconsistent and shrouded in mystery, unlike the force.
Let me guess, it was only about the characters? The problem is that the characters lived, suffered, and died for this light without really knowing what it was. How the light works was very important to the characters.
Mother implied that it's basically the source of all life. I'm not going to take the writers to task for not explaining the meaning of life.
Just as it is in real life, in Lost there are some things we're not meant to know.
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