Lost Game
From a piece in the A.V. Club (linking to Entertainment Weekly), it turns out Lost originally had a fancier idea for their ending, with a major fight atop an erupting volcano. They didn't do it because it would have cost too much and, they later realized, would have looked pathetic next to the fight in Revenge Of The Sith between Obi-Wan and Anakin.
This does explain why the kids in the Dharma classroom are learning about volcanic activity. But one thing I don't like in the article is this:
I like season three. I even like the mini-series at the beginning--that so many fans didn't go for--which has our heroes imprisoned on a separate island. And then when they get back to the main island, there's some amazing stuff. Okay, some episodes are weak, but we also get classics like "The Man From Tallahassee," "The Man Behind The Curtain" and, above all, the finale, "Through The Looking Glass," with an ending that was one of the greatest moments in television history.
There's also the unsettling prospect that Bran can do much more than witness major moments in history, but actually impact these moments with his abilities.
I suppose you can call it a "prospect," but I see no evidence that he has any impact on history. Some fans claim he has--they point to the flashback where Bran calls out his father's name and young Ned Stark seems to respond. Okay, but is there any reason to believe that Ned had lived this moment previously without hearing something?
posted by LAGuy @ 10:42 AM
6 Comments:
There were some problems with the middle of Season Three, but it was still the last time that the writers were trying to build on all their previous episodes rather than ignoring some of them. The "Others" had been a central feature since season one: the first Other we met, Ethan, was extremely competent in the wild and yet was also familiar with non-island civilization. This was finally explained when we met the Others in Season Three. Meanwhile, their relationship to the Dharma Initiative, first hinted at when Ben was a captive in the Hatch, became clear as well.
In later seasons, the role of the Others diminished and became increasingly inconsistent. If the volcano had suddenly reappeared in the final episode, casual viewers would have probably forgotten all about it -- just as young Ben's friend Annie had been forgotten.
I don't think Lost had casual viewers. So at the time there was lots of talk about what the teacher was saying to the Dharma kids (and even more about Annie). Thus, if the ending had a volcano, people would have talked about how it was set up.
The Lost writers set up a lot of things that didn't pay off (and maybe even more that didn't pay off that well). But it was fun when things clicked into place, like how they were building an airstrip for no seeming reason but later we found out why.
Of course, they had to make a lot up as they went along, and when you have that many characters and each hour needs to be entertaining on its own, there's bound to be some trouble holding it together.
It's only after you're finished can you look back and make it work better. Maybe in the future computers can make fixes to cover up some of the problems. But the big problem is still many of the choices made for the last season. We'll need a few more generations of computers before they can fix that.
I hate the whole time travel aspect of GoT. I don't mind flashbacks or even if Bran just got to go back see what happened- that's just narrative exposition. But throwing out issues of causation and changing the timeline makes things ridiculous and impermanent. I like to know what happened, happened and not think its gets to be rearranged later. This is also why I hate instant replay in sports but that is another post
I usually don't like time travel, since it's a cheap out, but I liked it in Lost, and thought they had fun with it. It wasn't until the final season where they lost control.
Game of Thrones, on the other hand, has no time travel yet. All it has, as far as we've seen, is Bran (and the three-eyed raven) being able to see things anywhere, geographically and chronologically.
But Hodor
Once again, Hodor had always had that experience. Bran didn't go back in time and change things.
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