pinnerman
09-29-04, 03:14 AM
IMPORTANT NEW INFORMATION!!! (Sorry so long.)
New information from a Kathie Huddleston article in the October SciFi magazine titled “Lost Cause” has given me more insight into how the producers of the show are thinking. For me, the burning question is no longer “What is the creature in the trees?” It’s “What is the story with this island and is there any chance of ever getting off it?” Read the quotes and you’ll see what I mean, some of this information contradicts my earlier mammoth theory, so please feel free to give me your interpretations about what the creators of the show are saying.
Here’s a link to the scans page of LostFansite.com, a .jpg scan of the Oct. Sci Fi article is on the page, these quotes are from Damon Lindelof.
www.lostfansite.com/images-scans.html (http://www.lostfansite.com/images-scans.html)
First, regarding the creatures in the trees, here’s what he says in the first paragraph:
“I WILL TELL YOU THIS, IT’S NOT A DINOSAUR,” says Damon Lindelof, executive producer of ABC’s new fall series Lost. He’s talking about the mysterious and apparently large monster that stalks the 48 survivors of a commercial plane crash who are stranded on a desert island. Despite the monster’s apparent size, no one manages to get a look at it in the season premiere.
The point I got from this paragraph and other quotes I’ve read regarding the creature in the trees is that THEY DON’T WANT US TO SEE IT, and THEY DON’T WANT THE CRASH SURVIVORS TO SEE IT. There have been several quotes from them about how we as the audience will experience what these survivors are going through WITH THEM. We find things out WHEN THEY DO. So obviously, whatever these creatures are, I wouldn’t count on ANYONE SEEING them any time soon, there’s a quote below that reminds us of that. These things will probably show up frequently at night and in rainstorms so no one can get a clear view. It will probably be one of those situations where if one of the cast gets close enough to see it, they probably won’t live to tell about it. That’s one of the reasons I’m moving on to study the island itself. Here are the other important paragraphs:
For Lindelof, who created Lost with Alias alum J.J. Abrams, the creature is one of the many mysteries that the traumatized survivors have to deal with in the days after the crash. “When J.J. Abrams and I were starting to create the world of Lost, what this island would be, the idea that everything is inherently interconnected, that there was some relationship between the monster and polar bears and other weird things that you’ll start to see happening over the course of the first episodes was too overwhelming,” says Lindelof.
“There are explanations. We’re not going to have polar bears running out of the jungle because it’s cool. Nothing happens by accident on Lost. We sit down and have a conversation, saying, ‘All right, where do we think this polar bear came from? Are there other polar bears on the island? How did it get here? How is it surviving here?’ We answer those questions, and once we’re satisfied that we have the answer, then we set this thing lose. Then if we come up with another ‘mystery’ or genre concept a couple episodes down the road, that doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the back story of the polar bear, because the island has been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.”
According to Lindelof, the best way to balance the mysteries, the explanations, the people stranded on the island and their stories is to make the island come alive as a separate entity. “What we came up with was designing the island as a character, as a real person.”
These statements are the most important of ANY that I have read about this show. You could look at what he’s saying and view it a couple different ways, but here’s what I’m interpreting his comments to mean.
Bottom line, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ISLAND. It sounds like they purposely just want weird things on this island, and any of the weird things we’ll see won’t have to have any connection to each other at all. They might be related, but when he said the thought of everything being “inherently interconnected” was “too overwhelming”, I really took notice of that. It sounds like that is what they DON’T want.
First, he seems to answer his own question about the polar bear being there by itself with his other questions. Maybe there is just one, and if that’s the case, it obviously didn’t migrate there. So the polar bear probably has it’s own explanation of how it got there, and that will be a piece of the puzzle.
Then, when he talked about how they worked on story elements, he used the polar bear as an example of how they basically reverse-engineered the back-story of how it got there and is surviving. He also said that other mysteries wouldn’t have to be related to the “how-did-the-polar-bear-get-there” explanation, that was a key comment too. Add to that the statement about making the island come alive as a separate entity, “as a character, as a real person”, and I think I’m starting to see what they’re going for. The creature that’s making all the noise in the trees, whatever it is, could have it’s own mystery and weird explanation of how it got on the island, it doesn’t have to be connected to the polar bear as I suggested with my mammoth theory. I still think that the mammoth is a possibility because the size and characteristics of a mammoth fit a lot of the parameters of the creature we’re dealing with, but it could be anything.
So based on that, and given they way the producers could take any animal, current or prehistoric, and find a way to explain how it got onto the island and how it’s surviving, these creatures could be ANYTHING that lived ANYWHERE on the planet FROM THE LAST SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS. As long as they can come up with a way to get it on the island, that’s all that matters to them. I think the bigger questions about this show will revolve around the survival aspect of being on this “island character”, this island-personification of something mysterious. Now I’m not buying into any supernatural theories, the producers have shot that idea dead themselves. What I am saying is that the strange nature of the island itself will be the foundation of this show’s ongoing mythology.
To the crash survivors, the question of how the polar bear (and whatever the creature is) got to the island will not be as important as this question – HOW LONG HAS IT SURVIVED LIVING THERE?
This will be even more important if we start seeing animals or creatures that were thought to be extinct. One of the reasons I researched the mammoth was because no animal living today seems to fit the profile of what is on the island and attacked the pilot. Also, the producers keep stressing the time element of this island, Lindelof said, and I quote, “the island has been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years”. He said the word “thousands” THREE times! There’s obviously a hint in there. If I was on that island and had to accept that I’d be there for a while, I’d want to know how the polar bear survived. But if I was on that island and I saw something that was supposed to be EXTINCT, then I’d really get worried. Because that would mean that for some reason, it too was able to survive on the island, but the outside world didn’t know about it.
HOW LONG HAS THIS ISLAND BEEN ISOLATED FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD AND WHY? Those are the next big questions I’d be wondering. David Fury said this in another SciFi Article:
“Despite the surreal, bizarre aspects of the island, there will be an explanation for it. It may not come for a very long time, but certain information about the island will explain how things are possible. We'll try to root it in real science or real pseudo-science. There will be no mystical reason or an island of monsters. The island has been around for millennia, and many people have found themselves on it, and as far as we know, nobody has ever gotten off.”
That quote is the one I keep going back to for perspective on everything. For all the outlandish theories out there about “fear manifestation” or “trees coming alive” or “aliens” or “ghosts” or “mechanical devices” or whatever else, none of them are possible based on that quote.
That, plus the repeated emphasis on TIME is why I believe at some point we’ll see an extinct animal of some kind. Why? Because it would reinforce the fear element of the “nobody has ever gotten off this island” angle they’ve admitted they want to play up. Think about it logically. If you crashed on an island, you’d naturally assume you’d have at least some chance of being rescued. But if you crashed on an island and you saw an animal that was supposed to have been extinct for the last few thousand years, you would have to make the assumption that any one else that ever got to this island NEVER got off (including the French people who sent the repeating message 16 years ago). Because if they had, they would have reported what they had seen to the scientific community, who would have then sent researchers to find the animal and prove its existence, and you’d have seen news about it on CNN. You’d have read the newspaper story on the not-extinct-anymore animal AND the island it was found on. Scientists would have gotten the exact coordinates of the island from the rescuers, and someone would have gone back to get proof, and it would have been a historic event. BOTTOM LINE- If I’m Jack or Charlie and I’m walking along on that island and all of a sudden I’m staring at a mammoth or a dodo or some other animal I know is supposed to be extinct, that’s definitely going to have a huge impact on me, my thoughts of rescue, and it would change my perspective on survival.
That’s where the makers of this show are going LONG TERM. That’s why I think the creatures in the trees will be very significant to the storyline once we finally figure out what they are. The THREAT OF WHAT THESE CREATURES ARE might not be as important as WHAT THEIR VERY EXISTANCE MIGHT SIGNIFIY: That the chances of getting off that island are very, very slim, based on what is there, and how long it’s been there undiscovered.
DENIAL, HOPE and ACCEPTANCE will be the most important themes in this show. The concept of hope is something they’re going to deal with very early on. Jack will have to weigh the benefits of what information to pass along to the survivors because people without hope can panic and become a huge problem in that situation. The prospect of learning that some poor French people were there for a long time and never get off would be disheartening enough. The huge implications of seeing an extinct animal walking around, if that happened, would be a turning point in the show. We’ve all seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, he never gave up hope of being rescued because logically he didn’t have to, there was always a chance. But what if you were in that same situation and enough things happened to you to lead you to believe there was NO chance you were ever getting off that island, how would that change you? What would you do then?
On one side of the spectrum you’d have those that would cling to HOPE and live in DENIAL of the situation and want to continue to focus all their time and energy on being rescued. On the other side, you’d have those that would say, “Screw it, we’ve ACCEPTED that we’re never getting off of here, the laws of the world don’t matter anymore, nothing else but survival matters. Some of us are going to settle in here and start our new lives and start building really good shelters that can withstand the weird storms and get ready for the long haul. We’re going to come up with our own rules, pair off and procreate, and start a new society.”
When the inhabitants get to that point – THAT’S when this show will really hit its stride. That’s when all that is good and bad about human nature will show up and be displayed. That’s when you’ll have the power struggles and the splintering into groups and the fighting for resources and all the conflict that a real situation like that could create. It may come sooner than later, or it may slowly build throughout the first season, but for those who wondered how they could write a four-year story arc about people living on an island, you have your answer. The first part of the show will have a lot of the survivors looking for a way to get rescued and working toward that common goal. As soon as they start dealing with the mysteries of the island and there’s some real disagreement about how to proceed, that’s when viewers will really get hooked on this show, if they aren’t already.
What I’ll be watching for from now on is the character development of The Island itself. I invite you all to do the same. Just like some people who are Dominic Monoghan fans will be watching to see how Charlie deals with his addiction problems, I’ll be studying the geography and vegetation of the island for oddities. While some are watching for Charlie to show symptoms of withdrawal and keeping an eye on how that affects his behavior, I’ll be monitoring the sudden weather changes on the island. I may even request that the mods give The Island it’s own character forum, then we can discuss it as the creators of the show intended, as a character.
-Pinnerman
As always, please feel free to post your interpretations about what you think these statements mean. Better yet, I’d like to get some agreement on what theories we can eliminate based on this information. It would be nice to narrow things down a bit.
New information from a Kathie Huddleston article in the October SciFi magazine titled “Lost Cause” has given me more insight into how the producers of the show are thinking. For me, the burning question is no longer “What is the creature in the trees?” It’s “What is the story with this island and is there any chance of ever getting off it?” Read the quotes and you’ll see what I mean, some of this information contradicts my earlier mammoth theory, so please feel free to give me your interpretations about what the creators of the show are saying.
Here’s a link to the scans page of LostFansite.com, a .jpg scan of the Oct. Sci Fi article is on the page, these quotes are from Damon Lindelof.
www.lostfansite.com/images-scans.html (http://www.lostfansite.com/images-scans.html)
First, regarding the creatures in the trees, here’s what he says in the first paragraph:
“I WILL TELL YOU THIS, IT’S NOT A DINOSAUR,” says Damon Lindelof, executive producer of ABC’s new fall series Lost. He’s talking about the mysterious and apparently large monster that stalks the 48 survivors of a commercial plane crash who are stranded on a desert island. Despite the monster’s apparent size, no one manages to get a look at it in the season premiere.
The point I got from this paragraph and other quotes I’ve read regarding the creature in the trees is that THEY DON’T WANT US TO SEE IT, and THEY DON’T WANT THE CRASH SURVIVORS TO SEE IT. There have been several quotes from them about how we as the audience will experience what these survivors are going through WITH THEM. We find things out WHEN THEY DO. So obviously, whatever these creatures are, I wouldn’t count on ANYONE SEEING them any time soon, there’s a quote below that reminds us of that. These things will probably show up frequently at night and in rainstorms so no one can get a clear view. It will probably be one of those situations where if one of the cast gets close enough to see it, they probably won’t live to tell about it. That’s one of the reasons I’m moving on to study the island itself. Here are the other important paragraphs:
For Lindelof, who created Lost with Alias alum J.J. Abrams, the creature is one of the many mysteries that the traumatized survivors have to deal with in the days after the crash. “When J.J. Abrams and I were starting to create the world of Lost, what this island would be, the idea that everything is inherently interconnected, that there was some relationship between the monster and polar bears and other weird things that you’ll start to see happening over the course of the first episodes was too overwhelming,” says Lindelof.
“There are explanations. We’re not going to have polar bears running out of the jungle because it’s cool. Nothing happens by accident on Lost. We sit down and have a conversation, saying, ‘All right, where do we think this polar bear came from? Are there other polar bears on the island? How did it get here? How is it surviving here?’ We answer those questions, and once we’re satisfied that we have the answer, then we set this thing lose. Then if we come up with another ‘mystery’ or genre concept a couple episodes down the road, that doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the back story of the polar bear, because the island has been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.”
According to Lindelof, the best way to balance the mysteries, the explanations, the people stranded on the island and their stories is to make the island come alive as a separate entity. “What we came up with was designing the island as a character, as a real person.”
These statements are the most important of ANY that I have read about this show. You could look at what he’s saying and view it a couple different ways, but here’s what I’m interpreting his comments to mean.
Bottom line, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ISLAND. It sounds like they purposely just want weird things on this island, and any of the weird things we’ll see won’t have to have any connection to each other at all. They might be related, but when he said the thought of everything being “inherently interconnected” was “too overwhelming”, I really took notice of that. It sounds like that is what they DON’T want.
First, he seems to answer his own question about the polar bear being there by itself with his other questions. Maybe there is just one, and if that’s the case, it obviously didn’t migrate there. So the polar bear probably has it’s own explanation of how it got there, and that will be a piece of the puzzle.
Then, when he talked about how they worked on story elements, he used the polar bear as an example of how they basically reverse-engineered the back-story of how it got there and is surviving. He also said that other mysteries wouldn’t have to be related to the “how-did-the-polar-bear-get-there” explanation, that was a key comment too. Add to that the statement about making the island come alive as a separate entity, “as a character, as a real person”, and I think I’m starting to see what they’re going for. The creature that’s making all the noise in the trees, whatever it is, could have it’s own mystery and weird explanation of how it got on the island, it doesn’t have to be connected to the polar bear as I suggested with my mammoth theory. I still think that the mammoth is a possibility because the size and characteristics of a mammoth fit a lot of the parameters of the creature we’re dealing with, but it could be anything.
So based on that, and given they way the producers could take any animal, current or prehistoric, and find a way to explain how it got onto the island and how it’s surviving, these creatures could be ANYTHING that lived ANYWHERE on the planet FROM THE LAST SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS. As long as they can come up with a way to get it on the island, that’s all that matters to them. I think the bigger questions about this show will revolve around the survival aspect of being on this “island character”, this island-personification of something mysterious. Now I’m not buying into any supernatural theories, the producers have shot that idea dead themselves. What I am saying is that the strange nature of the island itself will be the foundation of this show’s ongoing mythology.
To the crash survivors, the question of how the polar bear (and whatever the creature is) got to the island will not be as important as this question – HOW LONG HAS IT SURVIVED LIVING THERE?
This will be even more important if we start seeing animals or creatures that were thought to be extinct. One of the reasons I researched the mammoth was because no animal living today seems to fit the profile of what is on the island and attacked the pilot. Also, the producers keep stressing the time element of this island, Lindelof said, and I quote, “the island has been around for thousands and thousands and thousands of years”. He said the word “thousands” THREE times! There’s obviously a hint in there. If I was on that island and had to accept that I’d be there for a while, I’d want to know how the polar bear survived. But if I was on that island and I saw something that was supposed to be EXTINCT, then I’d really get worried. Because that would mean that for some reason, it too was able to survive on the island, but the outside world didn’t know about it.
HOW LONG HAS THIS ISLAND BEEN ISOLATED FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD AND WHY? Those are the next big questions I’d be wondering. David Fury said this in another SciFi Article:
“Despite the surreal, bizarre aspects of the island, there will be an explanation for it. It may not come for a very long time, but certain information about the island will explain how things are possible. We'll try to root it in real science or real pseudo-science. There will be no mystical reason or an island of monsters. The island has been around for millennia, and many people have found themselves on it, and as far as we know, nobody has ever gotten off.”
That quote is the one I keep going back to for perspective on everything. For all the outlandish theories out there about “fear manifestation” or “trees coming alive” or “aliens” or “ghosts” or “mechanical devices” or whatever else, none of them are possible based on that quote.
That, plus the repeated emphasis on TIME is why I believe at some point we’ll see an extinct animal of some kind. Why? Because it would reinforce the fear element of the “nobody has ever gotten off this island” angle they’ve admitted they want to play up. Think about it logically. If you crashed on an island, you’d naturally assume you’d have at least some chance of being rescued. But if you crashed on an island and you saw an animal that was supposed to have been extinct for the last few thousand years, you would have to make the assumption that any one else that ever got to this island NEVER got off (including the French people who sent the repeating message 16 years ago). Because if they had, they would have reported what they had seen to the scientific community, who would have then sent researchers to find the animal and prove its existence, and you’d have seen news about it on CNN. You’d have read the newspaper story on the not-extinct-anymore animal AND the island it was found on. Scientists would have gotten the exact coordinates of the island from the rescuers, and someone would have gone back to get proof, and it would have been a historic event. BOTTOM LINE- If I’m Jack or Charlie and I’m walking along on that island and all of a sudden I’m staring at a mammoth or a dodo or some other animal I know is supposed to be extinct, that’s definitely going to have a huge impact on me, my thoughts of rescue, and it would change my perspective on survival.
That’s where the makers of this show are going LONG TERM. That’s why I think the creatures in the trees will be very significant to the storyline once we finally figure out what they are. The THREAT OF WHAT THESE CREATURES ARE might not be as important as WHAT THEIR VERY EXISTANCE MIGHT SIGNIFIY: That the chances of getting off that island are very, very slim, based on what is there, and how long it’s been there undiscovered.
DENIAL, HOPE and ACCEPTANCE will be the most important themes in this show. The concept of hope is something they’re going to deal with very early on. Jack will have to weigh the benefits of what information to pass along to the survivors because people without hope can panic and become a huge problem in that situation. The prospect of learning that some poor French people were there for a long time and never get off would be disheartening enough. The huge implications of seeing an extinct animal walking around, if that happened, would be a turning point in the show. We’ve all seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, he never gave up hope of being rescued because logically he didn’t have to, there was always a chance. But what if you were in that same situation and enough things happened to you to lead you to believe there was NO chance you were ever getting off that island, how would that change you? What would you do then?
On one side of the spectrum you’d have those that would cling to HOPE and live in DENIAL of the situation and want to continue to focus all their time and energy on being rescued. On the other side, you’d have those that would say, “Screw it, we’ve ACCEPTED that we’re never getting off of here, the laws of the world don’t matter anymore, nothing else but survival matters. Some of us are going to settle in here and start our new lives and start building really good shelters that can withstand the weird storms and get ready for the long haul. We’re going to come up with our own rules, pair off and procreate, and start a new society.”
When the inhabitants get to that point – THAT’S when this show will really hit its stride. That’s when all that is good and bad about human nature will show up and be displayed. That’s when you’ll have the power struggles and the splintering into groups and the fighting for resources and all the conflict that a real situation like that could create. It may come sooner than later, or it may slowly build throughout the first season, but for those who wondered how they could write a four-year story arc about people living on an island, you have your answer. The first part of the show will have a lot of the survivors looking for a way to get rescued and working toward that common goal. As soon as they start dealing with the mysteries of the island and there’s some real disagreement about how to proceed, that’s when viewers will really get hooked on this show, if they aren’t already.
What I’ll be watching for from now on is the character development of The Island itself. I invite you all to do the same. Just like some people who are Dominic Monoghan fans will be watching to see how Charlie deals with his addiction problems, I’ll be studying the geography and vegetation of the island for oddities. While some are watching for Charlie to show symptoms of withdrawal and keeping an eye on how that affects his behavior, I’ll be monitoring the sudden weather changes on the island. I may even request that the mods give The Island it’s own character forum, then we can discuss it as the creators of the show intended, as a character.
-Pinnerman
As always, please feel free to post your interpretations about what you think these statements mean. Better yet, I’d like to get some agreement on what theories we can eliminate based on this information. It would be nice to narrow things down a bit.