Tag: Lost the TV show

The Matrix vs. Lost – how not to end a story well

It’s not news that I am a huge sci-fi-fantasy-comic-book-alternate-universe story freak. I was watching The Matrix (for possibly the 30th time) the other day when I had a narrative epiphany. Or maybe an epiphany about narratives. Speculative fiction video narratives, to be exact.

Stories have to end sooner or later, in some kind of satisfactory manner – or else the things that excited it us (What do the machines want? Are those people dead? What is the Matrix? What is the Island?) will just start piling up and pissing us off.  So. How do you end it? How do you tell interesting stories – in worlds that must be explained – without either burying the viewers with WAY too much technical information, or else short-changing them?

Different story tellers make different choices. Those who are truly successful balance the world building, character exposition and plot perfectly – so we get most of our questions answered, and give a shit about the characters they happened to. I believe this is more difficult in a story in which one must convince the viewer that the world itself exists, in addition to believable characters and a plot that is both interesting and surprising (but not too).

The Matrix Trilogy vs. Lost

Both were very successful out of the gate. Both were very ambitious. Both asked all kinds of interesting questions and answered a few of them in the beginning. Both had a huge following.

And both of them had a huge portion of their followers HATE the way they ended.

In the Matrix story (I’m sticking to just the three films, here. I know there’s a lot more info in Animatrix and the games and whatnot, but the major thread is contained in the films), the writers/directors chose to explain everything they could: the Oracle, the Core, the Architect, Zion, the machines… on and on and on. An entire cosmology and ideology and history and everything. They knew this world inside and out and they shared it with us. And a lot of people (not me) thought it was boring and lame and too complicated. Like you had to take notes just to understand what was going on. And the characters are not terribly complicated. Good guys and girls, bad guys and girls. Boy loves girl, gets girl. Sketched in histories, lots of emotion but not too much depth.  In the choice between plot and character, the Wachowski  Brothers chose plot. It works well in the first flick, and by the third flick it’s clear that plot is what must sustain us.  For many, it was not enough. Or maybe too much – plot, that is, and not enough character. Time restrictions play a factor here – how long can the film be? (IMHO, their worst mistake – horrible recast of the Oracle. I know the original actress died, but they did a crappy job of choosing her replacement. Ack!)

In Lost, the TV series, Abrams and Lindelhof et.al., chose character over plot. We get histories, alternate futures, heavy interactions and lots of ambiguity. Sawyer: good guy or bad guy? Kate: bad girl or good girl? Who are the Others? And the other Others? They built a compelling but barely explicated cosmology that sacrificed detail for emotional impact. And some people HATED it. How did the smoke monster work, exactly? Were they dead the whole time? Why wasn’t Mr. Eko in the church at the end? For those who cared more about character, the ending was great (at that point, all I cared about was Sawyer and Juliet being reunited). I don’t need to know why pulling that strange stone plug out of a pool underground made the smoke monster mortal. It did, that’s what mattered. For those who wanted to KNOW, they had more questions at the end than ever.

So:
End of Matrix – finally! Who cares if it was the machines or the Architect or whatever. The humans lived. Good. Moving on.

End of Lost – What?! So were they dead? Were they dreaming? So was the island real? Did they die in the first plane crash? What about the smoke monster? Have you ever hated anyone as much as Benjamin Linus?

If you don’t get the balance just right, you will leave half your fan base angry and unsatisfied.

Many successful science fiction movies are set in the future – far enough away that you should expect for things not to make sense to your poor, feeble 21-century brain. With something like the Matrix, you have to explain why the world looks like ours but isn’t, and how it’s going to end, but it’s already ended 5 times before, but this time it’s different. Lost had six years and two timelines of strange happenings, and chooses not to give many details on most of them. But we know A LOT about Jack, and Kate, and Sawyer and Hurley and Mr. Eko and Sayid and Juliet and Ben and Locke and everyone else.

Comic books (and regular book series as well) have the luxury of drawing out the universe, painting it and describing it and making it real and believable and understandable, for years and years and pages and pages, without the obligation to tie all the loose ends or finish every sub plot at the end of each book/year/story arc/what-have-you.  It can create a place, pose 10 questions, answer 3 of them, and then continue on, asking more questions and answering a few here and there.  This freedom from deadline (at least in theory) is part of the reason it is hard to quit reading them.  One story may end, but the universe is still there, having other stories being told all over it.

Okay, so I don’t know exactly what it all means. But it seemed interesting. To me, at least. I wouldn’t presume to speak for all of you.

Bonus epiphany: theme of both Lost & Matrix = Love conquers all. Okay, so it’s a common theme. So what? It just occurred to me, so that makes it a super-amazing realization. And probably the reason I liked both of them. Well, that and cute boys.

A Master of Illusion

Paul Auster sticks in my mind as one of the most challenging authors I read while working towards my B.A. in English.  We read The New York Trilogy and I liked him mostly because he was really difficult, yet I could understand him. Not to say it wasn’t a great book – it was – just a very complicated, multi-layered text full of obscure references and stylistic flourishes not always easy to understand.  When I had to write my first ten-page paper ever, I chose his book because I knew there was more to write about in that book (all 384 pages) than any two other novels we read that semester.  I got an A, and my professor (thank you, Patty) suggested I present it in a Student Showcase, which I did.  Maybe that was more information that you really needed to explain my positive associations with Auster, but I have a bit more.  I picked up The Brooklyn Follies early this year and thoroughly enjoyed it – another great book by Auster, but much less challenging (though no less interesting).

The Book of Illusions I picked up on that fabulous sale rack at Powell’s.  Now looking at it, the eyeball shot on the cover brings hints of Lost (which I’ve recently become addicted to and watched voraciously for weeks on end).  I must have bought it before I started watching that show, because it never occurred to me before.  I suppose at some point you’d like me to actually tell you about the book I read?  If you insist.

I really enjoyed The Book of Illusions.  It is the story of a man who loses his wife and children when their plane (which he was not on) crashes.  He drinks and drifts for almost a year until he sees a clip from an old silent film on TV that actually makes him chuckle for the first time since their deaths.  He becomes a bit obsessed with the comedian in the film and decides to find and watch all the films he made.  In the process, he discovers the actor is alive and is invited to meet him.  It is a sad, powerful story about grief and guilt and the strange things it makes us do.

I liked the book for several reasons.  It is written almost completely in the first-person (as many of Auster’s books are) and the internal monologue rings true,  painting a vivid picture of David’s internal life.  The narrative is convincingly erratic (like the thought processes of a human being) without being inconsistent or difficult to follow. I love a story that takes the scenic road to get to the point and doesn’t always give you clear directions.  His descriptions of the movies he ‘sees’ are so rich, you feel as if you are watching the films with him.

Some of the themes embedded in this narrative are also favorites of mine – the mechanics of how and why stories work, and why they are important.  The conviction that we all write our own lives (stories), and therefore we can change our lives if we work hard enough.  Affirmation that – regardless of the present moment – the future always offers hope.  So it’s not surprising that I devoured the book and closed it feeling happy, uplifted and wishing I could write half as well.  He is never boring, never predictable, yet entirely convincing.

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a tale that begins with two cities

I thought it might be fitting to start a blog about books with a classic.  I just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  Though I am an avid reader, have a B.A. in English and considered myself reasonably well read, this was my first time reading AToTC.  Dickens has never been a favorite of mine, nor is the Victorian period one I’m drawn to.  But since I am currently between schools while working on my Master’s, I am trying to keep myself in the loop by reading some of those iconic works that have somehow slipped thru the cracks of my lifelong reading list.   And while taking a Victorian lit class last spring, I came to appreciate the period more (much thanks to the post-modern feminist focus of the course provided by one of my favorite profs, Genie).  So, with all of this as background, when I was watching Flash of Genius, and Bob Kearns (played by Greg Kinnear) reads the first paragraph of AToTC to show that new things could be made from old pieces (words, in Dickens’ case, electrical thingamajigs in the case of Kearns), the book got added to the library book list in my head.  (I have yet to make enough money to afford my reading habit, so the local library is a friend and lifesaver.  I knew that Portland was a good place to be when – on my first trip to a local library – I found five interesting books to read in under 10 minutes, only two of which were on my mental list.)

We’ve all heard those first words – “It was the best of time, it was the worst of times.” But it wasn’t until I read the introduction that I found out that the book was set during the French Revolution, and the ‘two cities’ in the title were London and Paris.  And until I read that intro, I don’t remember ever wondering which two cities the book was about.  And then, of course, I wondered what kind of idiot I must be for not being curious about that before now.

I suppose I should say here that, if you haven’t read this book either, this column contains spoilers.   The intro to the edition that I read talked about how AToTC was the Dickens novel that received the least critical acclaim, while  remaining one of his most popular with readers. And while I am certainly not widely read in the Dickens’ oeuvre, it does move along rather quickly and with less of the obsession with detail I’ve found in other works of his, as the intro suggests.  And the plot is certainly not a mystery (I don’t think many are surprised when the amazingly twin-like men who are morally and psychologically opposite love the same woman and end up switching places at the end), but, as with most great novels IMHO, it is the characters and the masterfully suspenseful writing that keeps you reading long after you should have turned out the light.  It was slow going in the beginning as I accustomed myself to the Victorian syntax and pace, but by half-way thru I was skipping my online viewings of Lost to find out what would happen next.

I knew that when Lorry was going to Paris after the revolution had broken out, that Darnay would not be far behind.  I knew that when a mysterious stranger showed up at Lorry’s flat in Paris, that it was certainly Carton.  But the appearance of Miss Pross’ brother was a complete surprise, as was the real identity of Mrs. Defarge.  Dickens wisely (yes, that’s me, passing judgment on one of the masters of the English novel) chooses to reassure the reader that Lucie will survive the horrors of the revolution, while leaving us hanging as to the fate of the rest until the very end.  We buy into the release of Darnay and are almost as devastated as she when he is re-arrested the same night.

In the end, I enjoyed the novel more than I expected to (which, in all honesty, was true of most of the novels I read in my Victorian lit class).  I’ve tried some older novels on my own in the past (Moby Dick, for instance) that I just never finished.  Maybe what I was missing was a critical perspective – which would give me something to focus on if the story or writing didn’t hold me – but A Tale of Two Cities did not need anything but a little patience to hook me all on its own.

As with everything I do in my life, but particularly in what I read, I try to find the lessons offered by the text.  I didn’t find a lot in AToTC that I didn’t already know (oppression is bad, the reaction to oppression is usually ugly, never lie about who you are, true love will save you in the end – though not usually by providing a body double to die in your place) so it won’t be going on my personal Favorite list.  But if you are looking for a book to read that will impress your cerebral friends at cocktail parties (so, basically, the gay men in your life), A Tale of Two Cities will fit the bill without boring you to tears in the process.