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Topic:
Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 1. "The Matrix" (1999)
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
4/25 8:12am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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I thought the first season of Lost was hugely overrated, and far too much emphasis was placed on each "clue" to mysteries that they were quite obviously making up as they went along.
I'm not certain this was the case; at this point they've shown that they have pulled certain "clues" to conclusion -- Roger Linus and his Bus, for instance.
There are certain small things still technically unresolved from way back in season one (bodies in the cave, how the nigerian plane got there, etc), but for the things that HAVE come about, they've just been put together too well for them to have been making it up at the beginning.
If that were the case, there's no way it could have been this precise. It is unimaginably hard to pull this stuff off without intensive planning, becuase you have to go back and check, recheck, and check again. It's like computer programming: if you add something new you have to go back through mountains of what's already there to make sure you haven't "broken" something.
It's been four years and they haven't broken a single thing (Eko's early permanent departure was the only major thing that seems to have been unplanned, which was beyond thier control). That indicates too me that if they didn't have all of this planned from the beginning, the overall arc was laid out before the Pilot aired, and plot elements we're seeing now was hashed out by the writers before the first season was through. Dialogue wasn't written, but they knew the conflicts and events and when they would happen.
This show shows a mastery the likes of Alan Moore and Pink Floyd (in thier respective fields).
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soitscometothis
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
4/25 8:41am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
- Date Edited:
4/25 8:46am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
soitscometothis
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I think you're giving them too much credit. I think that their plotting has improved a great deal in the last few seasons, but at the start I really think they had not sorted out what was really happening. I'm pretty sure, for example, that the writers didn't know what the monster looked like, specifically that it was made out of smoke. I have my doubts that they knew what the were doing with a lot of the plot-lines in the early shows. Later on, yes - season 3 particully seemed better worked out than what had gone before.
I don't think they really knew what they were doing with The Others when they intoduced them - at first they were able to walk around the forest without leaving tracks, and were often accompanied by the whispering sounds - later on they seemed to lose these abilities/traits. I don't think that their original look, complete with bare feet that never where shoes, was supposed to be a disguise when they first appeared - I think the writers simply changed their minds, or at least kept things ambiguous enough to keep their options open.
I do think the writers are doing a good job on tying things together, but I think more than a few ideas from s1 have been retconned.
Edit: I think I think a lot. I'm too lazy to go back and rephrase it all, though. 
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JMJacenSolo
Registered:
May '06
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Date Posted:
4/25 10:50am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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[quote]wait, they explained where the numbers came from... but you actually expected an explanation as to why they showed up in random places everywhere?
lmao... sorry man, but that's your own fault. Most people didn't really expect an explanation for that. That truly was just easter egg type stuff. [/quote]
Okay, I can buy that them showing up in random places was easter eggs, but how about the fact that Hurley won the lottery using the numbers? That's truly significant, and warrants an explanation.
A_J posted:
the producers have said that they plan on getting to the four toed statue, it hasn't just been left behind. And even if it was, no one would be upset, seeing as how it wasn't a major plot point or anything. It was just a statue seen in passing.
See, you admit the thing might just be a huge tease, and its not that important to you. I don't find it worth it to watch the show and have to sift through things that may or may not be relevant.
[quote]as far as piles of journals... I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you elaborate? [/quote]
In the Season 2 finale, they found a bunch of pipe-like things that came out of the ground and had apparently deposited a ton of journals all over the ground.
[quote]
And as for the four-toed statue, that's going to be addressed quite soon by the writers. Probably in the next few epsiodes. Unfortunately you haven't had the patience to get there. LOST is a demanding show, and doesn't hand things to it's viewership when they want it.
[/quote]
It's not that I'm impatient, it's that the pacing is bad. If I'm watching 24, for instance, I don't want Jack Bauer to catch the terrorists in the fifth episode, but I do want him to constantly be working towards it. I don't want there to be episodes you could discard and not really miss a beat as the main plot thread goes. The mysteries are artifically extended. What about in the first season when the monster attacks Jack and that french woman and he asks her what the hell it was, and she says "a security system", and that's that? Come on.
[quote]Because the writers have pulled PHOENOMINONS out of thier hat. Like when Locke looked into the hatch mirror in first season and the light came on? That incident came back to have huge resonance later. [/quote]
Yeah, waaaay later. Could you really blame someone for thinking it had fallen by the wayside? I mean, props to them for doing it, but you can see the other viewpoint.
Now, the show has a set lifespan now right? 6 seasons? So I'm sure the plotting is probably better now that they have a fixed timeline to work with, and I'll probably rent the whole thing on DVD when its over, but I'm not going along for the ride.
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PadmeA_Panties
Registered:
Oct '03
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Date Posted:
4/25 11:16am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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The numbers were explained: Bad things happened to everyone who used them.
The journals were explained: it was to show that the pearl station; the one viewing and watching the Swan was the real joke, not the Swan station..
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
4/28 8:27am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
- Date Edited:
4/28 8:33am (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Gonk
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I don't think they really knew what they were doing with The Others when they intoduced them - at first they were able to walk around the forest without leaving tracks, and were often accompanied by the whispering sounds - later on they seemed to lose these abilities/traits.
That's false. In the current season 4 Epsiode "The Other Woman", Juliet encounters the wife of the man with whom she had an affair -- Goodwin. She is also an "Other". Her appearance is preceeded by the whispers, as is her disappearance. She has be no indication died or anything else by the time this epsiode came around.
In the last episode "The Shape of Things to Come", also a season 4 epsiode of course, Ben is encountered in the middle of the Tunisian desert. The bedouins he encoutners are alarmed and shout in Arabic how he is in the desert and yet has left no tracks.
So clearly those traits and abilities are still alive and well, and are being shown in the current episodes.
Yeah, waaaay later. Could you really blame someone for thinking it had fallen by the wayside? I mean, props to them for doing it, but you can see the other viewpoint.
Yes, I can blame someone, and I do. Like I said, someone has to have patience for this show. I can understand people not having that patience; in that case, this show is not for them. and that's all they have to say: that they don't have patience for it.
But I'd much rather they didn't say the writers don't know what they're doing, or that they leave plot threads that don't go anywhere, because that's not the case. The show is going places, and there's been a few assumptions knocked down already in this thread.
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What shall we do to fill the empty spaces
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Shall we set out upon this sea of faces
In search of more and more and more?
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soitscometothis
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
4/28 9:01am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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 Gonk, please remember that those of us in the U.K. are lagging behind the U.S. The last new episode I saw was Meet Kevin Johnson, and until Sky show the next ep, I am avoiding any details of the episode. I think we get the new episodes starting next week, but until then...
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
4/28 1:02pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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Oh, sorry dude.
However, in my defense, I don't know what the air dates are in the UK, nor did I know you were from the UK. So, if it just so happens we're debating about how certain traits have been dropped from current episodes from old ones... and the latest epsiode is most definately a current epsiode... hey, I know chances were it wouldn't have come up lately, but it as it happens, it did.
It's a pretty small thing anyway. Trust me, that getting spoiled is the LEAST of what you'll be thinking about when the next one is over.
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What shall we do to fill the empty spaces
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Shall we set out upon this sea of faces
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soitscometothis
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
4/28 1:06pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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It's okay, I stopped reading after I didn't recognise the episode title, so no harm done.
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JediANGELA
Registered:
Sep '02
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Date Posted:
5/7 6:43pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: "Lost"
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10. THE THING (1982)
Directed by John Carpenter
Recently, there's been talk in Hollywood of remaking The Thing. Please don't. For the love of God, we're begging you. After all, this streamlined exercise in subzero paranoia cannot be improved upon. A badass and bearded Kurt Russell stars as R.J. MacReady, the unofficial leader of a team of scientists in the Antarctic whose camp is infiltrated by an alien who kills, then inhabits the bodies of its victims. As the crew is offed one by one, Carpenter's movie becomes a war of attrition — and a gory war at that. When one of the eggheads (Charles Hallahan) is body-snatched, his severed head sprouts spider legs and scurries across the room, while one of the scientists looks on in disbelief: ''You gotta be f---in' kidding!'' A flop when it was released, The Thing has, with time, been reappraised as a masterpiece. A masterpiece that Tinseltown shouldn't even think of messing with.
POP CULTURE LEGACY Rob Bottin's trailblazing gross-out effects work is still the holy grail for monster-makeup geeks everywhere.
THE BEST BIT Wilford Brimley's crotchety Blair going loco when he's quarantined. You'll never look at a bowl of Quaker Oats the same way again. —Chris Nashawaty
Please dont remake it!
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Memories are gained, memories are lost But those that we retain are with us for an eternity. Once things are gone, theyre gone forever. Never let the memories fade. The final year-Yankee Stadium 1923-2008 
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Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
5/7 9:01pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 10. THE THING (1982)
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*This* film is a remake itself.
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StarDude
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
5/7 10:38pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 10. THE THING (1982)
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But it's such a badass remake. I love the quiet tension, not to mention the shocking parts--the scene where the guys torso bites the doc's arms off is still one of the most effective scares even after a million viewings. I love how John Carpenter avoids all unnecessary exposition. The opening shot is the spaceship arriving, and we basically see the characters grow in how they deal with the alien threat.
Easily one of my top five favorite horror movies. Probably my favorite of John Carpenter's.
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Zaz
Title: Manager:
The Amphitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
5/7 10:38pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 10. THE THING (1982)
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Have you seen the original?
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Vortigern99
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
5/7 11:04pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 10. THE THING (1982)
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This is one of those so-called "remakes" that isn't really a remake at all. It's a second adaptation of the same source material: the novella Who Goes There? Carpenter's version adheres much closer to the original tale. Howard Hawks' 1951 The Thing From Another World is a very good movie, but it doesn't even hold a candle to the visceral horror, white-knuckled suspense, and testosterone-fueled intensity of the Carpenter film.
I always wanted to see a trailer for Carpenter's movie with the following slogan (don't read if you haven't seen it): "Wilford Brimley IS The Thing... IN... John Carpenter's The Thing. Rated R." It's funny because it's true.
As far as re-making the film, there simply isn't any point. It would be like remaking The Wizard of Oz or Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's already been done as perfectly as humanly possible!
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"I knew from the beginning I was not doing science fiction.
I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece,
a fairy tale."--George Lucas
My "Vader's Origins" thread:
http://boards.theforce.net/Classic_Trilogy/b10002/8708417/p1
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dp4m
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
5/7 11:54pm
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 10. THE THING (1982)
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The Thing is still one of those films I OWN because it's that good but can't quite bring myself to watch because I have such vivid memories of this film destroying my psyche as a younger kid when I first saw it.
I generally tell people that the type of horror film that scares me isn't the type of thing with a Freddy or Jason, but things that are either marginally plausible (e.g. Scream) or where the protagonists are not rambling idiots. This film, in that an extraterrestrial isn't COMPLETELY farfetched, plus the fact that the soldier/scientists act pretty much as smartly as they can during the entire film -- completely using logic and tactics to try and deal with the situation -- and get absolutely DESTROYED, either due to the creature being more clever, more powerful or simply due to sheer paranoia.
The ending is pure perfection...
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StarDude
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
5/8 12:15am
Subject:
RE: Sci-Fi's top 25 movies and TV of the past 25 years: 10. THE THING (1982)
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Zaz posted:
Have you seen the original?
Indeed I have. And I enjoy it about as much as I enjoy Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is saying something. But I do personally prefer to watch John Carpenter's remake which, incidentally, is closer to the original novella, Who Goes There.
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