xhonzi

Sojourn said:

xhonzi said:

I keep hearing from the finale-lovers that we finale-haters "must not have understood it." I think I understood it fine.  

I also reject this idea that finale-lovers keep telling me: "It was never about the mysteries, it was just about the characters."

Just to clarify, I didn't say either of those things. :-)

Maybe you didn't, but you pretty much say them here below, or am I misinterpreting again?

 1) I'm simply pointing out that there are plenty of layers and concepts I didn't think about at first, that have dawned on me since the finale, that have made me appreciate it a lot more than I did right after the fact.

 This sentiment, and there have others who espouse much more violently, is basically saying: "If you care to think about it more, or understand or read what others have thought about it, then it really does make sense and there's nothing (not as much) to be upset about."  Isn't that the same as saying "If you don't like it, it's because you don't get it.  When/if you get it, then you'll like it.  You'll be like me."?

2) I don't think this is a fair point to make, either, though ignoring the importance of the character story and focusing only on plot and mythology isn't fair, either (I'm not saying you're doing this, I'm issuing this as a broader statement). 

You're right, it should have been a balance between the two.  Just like when Prequel fans say to the Prequel haters "Star Wars is just for kids, you're grading it too harshly."  They're ignoring that Star Wars is so much more than "just for kids" and they're denying that it can be better than that.  Star Wars should be enjoyable by both kids and adults alike, and Lost should be able to be about the Mysteries and the Characters alike, just like it was in most of its seasons.

 

Another interesting recap, with another nicely-articulated point:

By bookending the series around a man opening up his eyes to the unknown and closing them as a man who learned what it meant to truly live, "Lost" encapsulated its' primary thematic concern: what it means to live and learn through other people. They lived together, and none of them died alone. Not in the end. Perfect.

I thought Jack did die alone... didn't Eko die alone?  Sayid?  Daniel?  Or are you saying that in death (afterlife) they weren't alone?

I wouldn't disagree with this point of view, and it does speak to the character story, not just the mythological one. It makes me think of something Damon and Carlton said a while back, which was that over time, the (fictional) mythology they've created and shared will fade away, and the character tale is what will remain.

I agree with Boost's comment here.  It would be another thing if the show itself hadn't focused on the mysteries and literally put them on the poster.  I certainly wasn't watching the show for the characters.  I liked them fine, some more than others...  But I felt like they felt when they got off of the island.  I didn't actually want to see them get rescued, I didn't want to see what their life would be like after the island, or without the island, except for how it pertained to the unraveling of the mystery of the island.

I don't think they meant that the mythology wasn't important, but that they were speaking to what makes humanly-resonant storytelling -- characters we care about, changing over time. It made sense, though it felt weird at first, to have the finale so character-centric rather than mythology-expounding, though I still have plenty of mythology questions I'd like to have answered in some way. Maybe when Damon and Carlton break their radio silence, we can have an awesome Q&A about them. 

Even if they give a Q & A, they've said over and over again that nothing matters but the show.  On their Podcast, they occasionally offer promises that they prop-up by saying that they might not actually do them because the Podcast is the Podcast and the Show is the Show.  Do you remember the late 80s DHARMA video made by Marvin Candle and Miles?  Do you remember how they ended up not using that storyline in the show, and then they said the clip didn't matter because it wasn't on the show???  Yeah, that's how much anything else will matter.

Take care, 
Sojourn

You too.  I'm probably coming across as more personal than I mean this to be.  Hopefully you can forgive me as I've enjoyed our interaction, both the current one and the ones in the past. 

The first half of Last Action Hero. I've always assumed this movie was terrible and a torture to behold. I found myself really enjoying its campy humour and laughing throughout.

I've heard the last act is where it falls apart, so I'm prepared for that. But the first half has been pretty good! I really enjoy Schwarzenegger's humor.

THE END.

TV's Frink said:

Not to mention all the Darths on this site.

Too late, Mr. Scott.

A friend of mine (often referenced here, just not by name (it's actually the guy from the first post in this thread!)) tried a similar argument for Anakin. Basically that the PT Jedi are "following the will of the force" to find Anakin, cheese him off, and make him become Darth Vader. Somehow, that must have been for the best because that's what the force wanted.

???

TV's Frink said:

No problem, and I'll stop derailing the thread now. :-)

Really? I tried parts of COD2 on Veteran and maybe some parts of COD4... and I found Veteran to be way too tough for me. Do you think it's different on MW2, or are you just all sorts of awesome?

Farlander-
Did you end up reading some of the other posts I linked you to?

In one, not that I could find it now, I was thinking about the whole Dark Side scene in Jedi, and I wondered aloud: What would Palpatine have accomplished if Luke killed Vader? At that point in time, would he have:

1: Sworn fealty to Palpatine to be an evil doer the rest of his days?

~or~

2: Get so empowered by the Dark Side that he runs Vader through and then attacks Palpatine next? Which either:
2.A Ends with Luke having killed both Vader and Palpatine.
~or~
2.B Ends with Palpatine killing or subduing Luke.

~or~

3. Luke is so shocked at what he has done and he fears the Emperor's words, "You will be mine!" and so he takes off. But that Dark Side action happened, and he's had his first taste of it... he'll be back.

~or~

4. Luke thinks the Emperor is an idiot! Of course one action won't turn him to the Dark Side forever, how retarded is that? Luke kills Vader. And look, I'm not Dark Side, so nyeah! So, now Luke is unafraid of the Dark Side. His lack of fear for it, or respect for it, causes him to start using it a little more. What's this? The remnants of the Empire won't go down without a fight? How about a little more Dark Side? POW! It's for a good cause, and the ends justify the means, right? And now what? The New Republic is falling apart due to greed and conflicting interests? BAM! Take that Dark Side, why don't you? Take it with!

And sooner or later, you have a new Emperor.

-----------

All Sarcastic comments aside, I tend to lean to option 4. I think the movie (or Palpatine), if taken matter of factly, seems to indicate option 1, which I will agree doesn't make any sense. The only way I can make sense of the Emperor's taunts are that he is trying to manipulate Luke, rather than actually warn him about the choice he's about to make. I mean, that makes more sense anyways, right? Why would the Emperor actually try to talk Luke out of joining the Dark Side, right? By saying that he'll join the Dark Side as soon as he strikes down Vader, he's making Luke consider his own immediate wishes ahead of his long term goals as a Jedi, and then he also puts Luke in a false sense of security when he finds that it's not the case.

This sounds, even to me, like the EU coming in and fixing problems in the films themselves... but I don't find it hard to believe that something like that is more the case than option #1.

For I, unlike Frink, cannot tell a lie!

Marmaduke raped my poodle. :(

TV's Frink said:

: Hi, I'm CP3S, and I created an aberration new nonword: *******.

C3PX said:

No! Xhonzi, he asked you to tell him that he is not crazy. You're doing it wrong!

There were trailers for RotJ with a blue saber.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gStp2KuIgdU#t=1m08s

So I finished Uncharted 2 this week. Here comes my stream of consciousness...

I was surprised that it wasn't better than it was. It's probably that whole "uncanny valley" problem... it's sooo good in places that in the places it's not so good, it really sticks out.

Uncharted 1 was a really good game, but I found the combat to be really boring. I was getting into the gymnastic navigation and the puzzle solving and then the room would fill with bad guys and I'd say, "*Grumble and moan*... I guess I have to shoot these guys so I can go back to playing the game." I'm not sure what was wrong with the combat, but it was more of a chore than it was "fun." Whatever it was, they seem to have fixed it in Uncharted 2 (throwing grenades is very different, and better, but I can't put my finger on what else). The combat, the navigation and the puzzle solving seem to be equally engaging. I played on "Normal" and found the game to be engaging and to provide a challenging firefight every now and then. I probably could have handled "Hard" well enough, but with more dying. The game took me about 10 hours as it was, so I'm pretty content with my choice.

The biggest two issues I had were these:
#1: The more a 'game world' ressembles a 'real world' the more it needs to offer 'real world' options, I think. In one part of the game, I was stuck in a courtyard and allegedly supposed to climb to a second story window and continue on my way. In real life, Nathan Drake could have climbed to the second window in 6 or 7 different spots. In the easiest/most obvious spot, there was some 'debris' that 'blocked' Drake's ability to climb. In actuality, the debris formed a since ramp of things to walk up/climb to get to the top... but debris is a videogame staple of "you shall not pass" so I knew not to try too hard. In the end, I spent an actual 10 minutes trying not to figure out how Drake could get to the 2nd story window, but where the game developers intended for me to get up there. There was only one path up there, and it was mostly arbitrary and pretty well hidden. I do want the game to engage the logical part of my brain and not just hand everything to me on a platter... but I don't want to play "guess what the developer was thinking?!?!?" either. This happened to me maybe 5 times in the game.

#2: The story is really front and center in Uncharted 2... And it's not confusing, at least, not from a "who's the bad guy, what's the point, and what are we doing now?" kind of perspective... But it's really just a series of scenes and a slow progression towards the ending rather than a "story-story." Now, I'm slightly torn on the issue I'm about to bring up here...

Does every story have to confine itself to the 3 Act structure?

I'm not sure. I think there can be stories so interesting, so well told, or so avant garde that they can get away from the standard structure, and not only survive, but succeed. I'm not sure the story in Uncharted 2 is this way. Uncharted 1 suffered from a similar fate, I think. The storytelling didn't do a good job of communicating to me, the audience, what it was ultimately all about, and therefore what was required to let the story end. It felt like a series of scenes that were all in the pursuit of some magic artifact and that the story could have existed with any subset of the scenes.

Maybe this isn't a problem particular to Uncharted. I guess you could summarize Raiders of the Lost Ark in similar way. No doubt, due to the fact that much of Uncharted 2 seems to be based off of Raiders. I think BioShock 1, also, seemed to have this "problem" as well, but I didn't mind it as much in BioShock. In BioShock, the protagonist seems to be eternally just around the next corner from his objective: to escape. One more task, you think to yourself, and I'm out of here. Then the ceiling caves in and you spend an hour looking for a way around it. Now I'm free, you think. And then some poison gas goes off and you have to switch it off before you can continue. That takes another hour and it's time to get out of Dodge, you think. And then something else happens. 20 obstacles and 20 hours later, you manage to find your escape.

But it bothered me in Uncharted, for some reason.

This is somewhat minor, and more to do with my preference for the 360, but I was also annoyed by the controls. Why PS3 games still insist that you shoot with the smallish button above the "trigger" like button is Beyond me. (see what I did there?) I have a Shadow 6 controller for my PS3 so it is more consistent with the Xbox controller, and that helps... But you still have to shoot with the top button! Uncharted allows you to switch R1 with L1 and R2 with L2, but not R1 with R2 and L1 with L2. I found myself mashing the wrong buttons all of the time.

All in all, I was frankly just 'whelmed' by a game I expected to overwhelm me. It was the clear winner of the gaming press's game of the year and I'm not sure it made my list of top 10 games I played last year. People told me it was worth $460 it cost to buy this game new and the PS3 to play it on. I borrowed it from a friend and I can say I'd have been happy to spend $30 on it, but not much more. But I'm also a cheapskate and wouldn't be happy paying more than $30 for much of anything.

Next: BioShock2.

Bellboy-

You are crazy.

I would like to quote the various paragraphs written above since you all have expressed my own opinion quite well.

But I'm too lazy to do that.

So, instead, I will just say: I like RotJ. I like it 3rd best of the OOT, and there's no comparison to the non-existant PT. I do wish the Ewoks were more fierce / the legion of the Emperor's finest soldiers weren't so gay. But I'll take them over RotS's wookies any day.

I think you can tell the vector that Star Wars was heading out on in RotJ, but I think the damage isn't done yet. It's easy to see the seeds of the SE nonsense and PT garbage, but they have yet to grow and blossom into the trainwrecks we know today.

And yes, very good stuff with the Emperor, Vader and Luke.

I fixed my post at the end of the previous page.&nbsp; I was apparently too clever with my <insert name here> jokes and they were deleted from the text. Making it incomprehensible. Which is too bad, because it was, and is again, totally awesome.

RE: Sojurn...

I keep hearing from the finale-lovers that we finale-haters "must not have understood it." I think I understood it fine. I came to the party because I heard <cool band> would be there. Turns out it was a lie and <cool band> wasn't there, not because <Cuse & Lindeloff> didn't want <cool band> there, but because they couldn't deliver. After years of promising, they could not deliver.

I also reject this idea that finale-lovers keep telling me: "It was never about the mysteries, it was just about the characters."

Bull-<crap>

C3PX said:

 

: Hi, I am Xhonzi. I hate *****s, like "*****" and "****". I liked ****, but now I am mad at it.

 

IGNORE!

Even if you could

1. Install to the HDD
2. Start the game with the disc in the drive
3. Remove the disc and leave the game running

I think you could provide this function AND curb piracy at the same time.  The only practical application would be to play LAN games.  I'm sure there are 6 copies of Halo in every dorm room, and that might change if they added this feature, but I can't see it resulting in too many lost sales.

Ye.

He is one of three people who does not.  ;)

doubleofive said:

... I just wish we could play together without buying another xbox and hooking it to the other TV.

 Me too.  But I would buy another xbox in a second if it also didn't mean I had to own 2 copies of every game I wanted to play this way.  If they used the install to HDD option to allow you to play it on multiple boxes on a LAN, I'd be all over it.

Jon Bon Jovi does not appear at the end.

That's what happens.

???

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166387/

Surely, you're thinking of Brian Keith?