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SuperMechagodzilla posted:No, because we’re dealing with two different things: I don't think anyone thinks Abrams and LIndelof are evil people trying to steal enjoyment maliciously, I think they're just terrible hack writers.
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Jun 17, 2023 19:35
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The ‘troper nerd-meme version of the mystery box is that evil people are tricking you and stealing your enjoyment by deliberately introducing ‘plot holes’ into narratives for malicious purposes.
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Jun 17, 2023 19:37
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I thought that the ending of Lost was pretty straightforwardly explained and mostly good, if a little dragged out. I thought the reveal of what was going on with the "flash-sideways" stuff fit well with the themes of the show, but I would have preferred if they'd maybe condensed that stuff to the last couple of episodes as opposed to the whole last season.
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Jun 17, 2023 19:54
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Stop arguing with SMG. It never changes anything, no one ever wins.
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Jun 17, 2023 20:06
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:This is a willful misinterpretation of pretty much every criticism I've seen leveled at Lost. No one I've come across thinks Abrams purposefully made an incomplete show just to gently caress with people. What I've seen articulated quite often is that the writers introduced a slew of mysteries, answering some but not others, and the weight of so many unresolved questions eventually outran the writers' ability to provide satisfying resolutions. But that’s just the concept of “plot holes”, and doesn’t require a special meme-term. Like, people ITT are now claiming that a mystery box refers to when you get really invested in a story but then you don’t like the ending. That also something that isn’t a unique phenomenon and doesn’t require a meme-term.
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Jun 17, 2023 20:25
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Double post
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Jun 17, 2023 20:25
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:This is a willful misinterpretation of pretty much every criticism I've seen leveled at Lost. No one I've come across thinks Abrams purposefully made an incomplete show just to gently caress with people. What I've seen articulated quite often is that the writers introduced a slew of mysteries, answering some but not others, and the weight of so many unresolved questions eventually outran the writers' ability to provide satisfying resolutions. Again, though, I'm reminded of The Prisoner never telling you who was in charge of the Village or why Number 6 resigned, because in the end, that's not what the show is about, it's about society working against the individual.
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Jun 17, 2023 20:26
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I don't think people actually care very much about 'having their questions answered', despite how often we see those kind of complaints about films/TV. They're something for people to latch onto while they can't exactly put into words what's bothering them. There are plenty of crappy shows which answer all the questions they create and people don't even notice.
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Jun 17, 2023 20:39
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I just finished season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I thought it was kinda garbage. The banter was almost always annoying and the final setup to Maisel turning down that show was just dumb. Anyway, is season 5 any better?
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Jun 17, 2023 20:52
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I’m at the part where they do a time jump forward but it hasn’t grabbed me to finish it and get closure, maybe I will this week
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Jun 17, 2023 21:06
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But that’s just the concept of “plot holes”, and doesn’t require a special meme-term. I think you are partially correct, but I also think it's a combination of what you've described in a show that is mainly built around trying to figure out what is actually happening rather than just being told a story or exploring themes and characters. Lost, and shows like it, lure viewers in with these interesting mysteries. "Why is there a polar bear on the island?", "What is the thing making a dinosaur noise in the jungle?", and "what is the significance of this sequence of numbers and why do they keep appearing independently in people's lives?" are all questions that are obviously meant to pull viewers in. Yes they are plot holes, but they are plot holes specific to a type of show that is by design about these questions and their answers. Lost was always about these mysteries, and the creators of the show going "actually the mysteries aren't important it's all about the friendships we made along the way" in the last couple seasons was a huge cop out (not a conspiracy).
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Jun 17, 2023 22:49
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Ishnox posted:I don't think people actually care very much about 'having their questions answered', despite how often we see those kind of complaints about films/TV. They're something for people to latch onto while they can't exactly put into words what's bothering them. There are plenty of crappy shows which answer all the questions they create and people don't even notice. Right; if you go to concrete examples of what nerds deem ‘mystery boxes’, it’s just basic poo poo like Snoke in Star Wars 11 or whatever. “Who is Snoke?” Well, he’s the leader of the baddies. Big guy, bosses people around… “But WHO is he? What is his ‘secret identity’???” And uh, well, he doesn’t appear to have a secret identity. He’s just some guy. (I guess it’s eventually revealed that he’s working for Palpatine?) So what happened is that nerds reading clickbait websites went insane speculating that Snoke might have a secret identity, and worked themselves into a lather trying to guess the shocking plot twist that they themselves invented. The mystery box never existed. Same with, like, Prometheus. When the movie came out, nerds were like “what is the black goo?!” And, well, it’s obviously some kind of alien mutagen. “But what IS it???” The filmmakers eventually released an infographic explaining that the black goo is a dark-coloured liquid made of chemicals.
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Jun 17, 2023 23:04
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Cithen posted:I just finished season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I thought it was kinda garbage. The banter was almost always annoying and the final setup to Maisel turning down that show was just dumb. Anyway, is season 5 any better? The show was super charming the first season or two, but it fell into the trap of all of the characters becoming caricatures of themselves. Season 5 was marginally better because they had an end game in sight finally, so it didn't feel like they were constantly spinning their wheels.
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Jun 18, 2023 00:46
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Same with, like, Prometheus. When the movie came out, nerds were like “what is the black goo?!” And, well, it’s obviously some kind of alien mutagen. “But what IS it???” The filmmakers eventually released an infographic explaining that the black goo is a dark-coloured liquid made of chemicals. I had plenty of problems with Prometheus, but the lack of a detailed explanation of what the black goo is was not one of them. But I am reminded of a video I think I saw linked here of a woman giving a negative review for Andor because “there’s no Easter eggs for me to analyze and speculate on! You’re not letting us content creators do their job!” which made me profoundly sad.
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Jun 18, 2023 01:14
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Was that women that insane hack rear end idiot Grace randolf?
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Jun 18, 2023 01:17
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The funny thing about JJ Abrams isn't that he does a mystery box but that he's just bad at payoffs in general Like if you ever saw Super 8 the back half of the film and first half of the film are basically two separate genres, like he didn't go back and read it to see if it fit together at all. I never saw Lost but it sounds like the same deal? And of course Ep IX is totally incoherent in relation to anything that came before but I don't even know if you can put that totally on him since it sounds like nightmare production of a dozen different scripts stapled together
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Jun 18, 2023 01:24
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CelticPredator posted:Was that women that insane hack rear end idiot Grace randolf? Upon investigation I can confirm that it was.
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Jun 18, 2023 01:30
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Wolfsheim posted:The funny thing about JJ Abrams isn't that he does a mystery box but that he's just bad at payoffs in general From what I understand, Abrams only created the show and created an initial plan. The showrunners were ultimately Lindelof and Cuse, and Abrams mostly stepped away. Episode 9 was a mess because he was never asked to create a trilogy. Episode 7 was basically story by committee, Kennedy insisted there be another Death Star like sequence, and that she wanted the movie to feel like episode 4. Abrams was basically just a gun for hire. They decided to hire an auteur like Rian Johnson for 8, but got squeamish with the response from the toxic fanbase, and when Trevorrow's movie bombed, they fired him and brought back Abrams for another gun for hire. He had no intention of bringing Palpatine back, but Kennedy insisted he do that, so he made it happen per her direction.
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Jun 18, 2023 01:32
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Brocktoon posted:Upon investigation I can confirm that it was. Ahaha. I just guessed. That lady is legit ill
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Jun 18, 2023 01:34
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I know Black Mirror gets a lot of poo poo for being pretty basic on their 'technology hurts society' but they really couldn't have timed the new premiere any better.
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Jun 18, 2023 03:22
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i watched extraction 2 and shovel wife owns
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Jun 18, 2023 03:38
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Nihonniboku posted:From what I understand, Abrams only created the show and created an initial plan. The showrunners were ultimately Lindelof and Cuse, and Abrams mostly stepped away. Yeah Abrams left after the first three or four episodes of season 1. Then was briefly back for a second in the third season but by four everyone has said he had no plot input and was just watching as the show aired. Giving him much credit for the mystery box element of the show and it's payoff is really assuming everyone with the show has dramatically underplayed how much he was involved for years.
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Jun 18, 2023 04:22
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Yeah, my understanding is D&D was like "we have an idea for a show about totally normal people whose plane crashes on a totally normal island and also the main character, Jack, dies at the end of the first episode" and JJ's big influence was "don't kill your lead and also make it supernatural."
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Jun 18, 2023 12:01
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Baron von Eevl posted:Yeah, my understanding is D&D was like "we have an idea for a show about totally normal people whose plane crashes on a totally normal island and also the main character, Jack, dies at the end of the first episode" and JJ's big influence was "don't kill your lead and also make it supernatural." Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse? Yeah, nah, that's not quite what happened -- Cuse definitely came on board after Abrams had been there for a bit (though I don't know if they worked on the first season at the same time). Abrams was there for the first third of the season or so. Up until around the seventh episode IIRC.
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Jun 18, 2023 12:33
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Baron von Eevl posted:Yeah, my understanding is D&D was like "we have an idea for a show about totally normal people whose plane crashes on a totally normal island and also the main character, Jack, dies at the end of the first episode" and JJ's big influence was "don't kill your lead and also make it supernatural." JJ was right
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Jun 18, 2023 12:35
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Eh just get some deadly gas in there I'm out!
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Jun 18, 2023 12:44
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I think I basically agree with SMG that pretty much all the time people say: "They never explained X!" they usually mean "The explanation for X was unsatisfying to me". Like, whether you liked or hated Lost I really don't think there was a single thing that was left unexplained. People just didn't like the explanations, and in some cases disliked them so much it basically amounted to not being an explanation at all in their minds. The best example I can think of is people always used to say Lost never explained what the whispers in the jungle were. But they definitely did. A character pretty much turned to camera and said "the whispers in the jungle are ghosts". But people didn't like that because they wanted something sciencey I guess.
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Jun 18, 2023 20:37
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So as long as the writers add one line hand waving away a mystery it’s beyond criticism?
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Jun 18, 2023 20:46
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No, the criticism is "that's dumb, I don't like it. It's not very satisfying. I thought this was a sci-fi show but it looks like the religious themes are kind of overtaking it" or something. But "that's not been explained" is not particularly accurate.
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Jun 18, 2023 20:58
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If the focus of Lost was supposed to be small stories about 20 people dealing with their daddy issues they should have set it some place normal like everyone working in a hospital or grocery store or something and not a mysterious magical island. Of course no one would have watched their badly plotted out personal dramas about everyone having daddy issues without the mysterious magical island so here we are.
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Jun 18, 2023 20:59
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The complaints about Lost were that everyone from the start was like this is obviously purgatory they're all dead and then the creators of the show repeatedly said no that's not the case and then that was the case.
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Jun 18, 2023 21:02
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No it wasn't
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Jun 18, 2023 21:04
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feedmyleg posted:No it wasn't What was it then? I fell off near the last season but that’s what it seemed it was in the last episode.
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Jun 18, 2023 21:09
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Papercut posted:The complaints about Lost were that everyone from the start was like this is obviously purgatory they're all dead and then the creators of the show repeatedly said no that's not the case and then that was the case. Yeah, you hear this a lot as well but it's not true. Purgatory was introduced in the last season, but the island itself wasn't purgatory.
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Jun 18, 2023 21:20
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OrthoTrot posted:Yeah, you hear this a lot as well but it's not true. Purgatory was introduced in the last season, but the island itself wasn't purgatory. Lol the material part of that complaint is the whole all of them being dead part, not whatever you want to call the island.
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Jun 18, 2023 21:30
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Papercut posted:Lol the material part of that complaint is the whole all of them being dead part, not whatever you want to call the island. They weren't dead the whole time, all the events of the show with the exception of half of the last season all happen while the characters are alive. The purgatory stuff in the last season is explicitly a separate thing happening to the characters after they've all died at various points in their lives, most of them after the events of the show. Like I said before I have problems with the fact that this takes up a lot of time in the last season and ends up being bad for the pacing but it's very clearly explained by the ghost dad in the church in the last scene.
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Jun 18, 2023 21:40
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A solid chunk of the Lost audience simply rejected the last season and preferred to pretend they were right all along.
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Jun 18, 2023 22:26
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The last season was garbage in so many ways, but it definitely didn't reveal they had all been dead all along.
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Jun 18, 2023 22:32
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Martman posted:A solid chunk of the Lost audience simply rejected the last season and preferred to pretend they were right all along. For another concrete example of nerd insanity: the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode Seven featured a line of dialogue referring to a powerful new character who’s related to Luke Skywalker. Who could it be??? In the actually-existing movie, the character is revealed to be Luke’s nephew, Ben Solo. Ben was very powerful, and luke was teaching him to be a Jedi. This is fact told directly to the audience, fairly early in the runtime. Despite this fact, nerds ignored the actual movie and went fuckin bonkers speculating about an additional secret mystery relative. More specifically, they became absolutely obsessed with the idea that Luke hosed somebody, and that Rey must be his bastard lovechild. They were, like, angry that this didn’t happen, and the filmmakers felt pressured to awkwardly comment on this bizarre online phenomenon in Episode 8. Note that there is absolutely nothing in the film that even remotely implies that there is a secret relative. It was purely a misinterpretation of a teaser trailer. Mystery boxes don’t exist. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jun 19, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 00:13
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It's very odd that you keep bringing up movies that are very clearly not mysteries as evidence that mystery box shows don't exist.
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Jun 19, 2023 00:33
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