Saturday, June 27, 2009

Lost's Zombie Season Is Now, Part One

Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse, the two masterminds behind the critically acclaimed and successful television series LOST on ABC, have jokingly said that after the main storyline of the show was completed, an entire season would then be devoted to a crazy free-for-all involving all those characters killed off in previous seasons coming back to life to wreck havoc and mortify those few characters who manage to survive. This has been a joke. It's been said with tongue firmly planted in cheek. However, the best way to hide something you want to hide is in plain sight where no one would think to look. What if, after a fashion, this is precisely the direction the series has been going from the beginning?

It would be amusing if season six turns out to be "zombie season" after all.

Only, these wouldn't be zombies. They'd be manifestations of dead characters, but they wouldn't moan and lumber about with limbs falling off of them. They'd behave as they did when alive, and fool other characters into believing them the real deal. This may already be happening. In fact, some characters may already be dead, and unaware of it.

Many characters, if not all of them, have had brushes with death. Locke is the most noticeable example. We witnessed him fall several stories to his death, only to be resurrected by Jacob himself. It's entirely possible that from that moment onward, Locke was effectively, literally, undead. He died. He came back to life. That fits the direct definition of undead. It does not make him a zombie, but he has been animated in a manner that defies logic and physics as we assume them to be. Even his own legs seem to behave in a manner that defies logic and reason.

If all this is the case, Locke may still be sentient and self-aware, but his actions would not have entirely been his own. Instead, he'd be under the thrall of either Jacob or Blackie. He'd be susceptible to the rules of their game, as a pawn within it. Locke has admitted that the Island speaks to him, not in a literal manner of voices in his head, but through his dreams and visions and by showing him 'signs' or events that could be coincidental or fabricated but that he interprets to mean directives for his behavior. In this way he is obviously being manipulated, and at the end of season five it's possible we met the two culprits to this behavior modification: Jacob and his black clad friend/enemy.

If one were to go through the entire series, from a writing standpoint, it's very easy to explain that almost all characters in the series could be likewise pawns in this shadowy game of life after death. For example, Charlie could have had a drug overdose which killed him, but a timely visit from Jacob or Blackie would revive him. We haven't seen this yet, but with flashbacks, the writers have repeatedly opened themselves to the ability to go back any time they want and infuse into the overal folklore of the series new information that illuminates or perhaps even contradicts what we have assumed from past information. Charlie may have died long before we thought he did, and then died again before our eyes, but being dead already, the writers could easily have him just wash up on shore one day, bewildered and confused as to how he survived the underwater station.

Hurley fell from a pier that killed twenty-three others. We don't know the details of that day - might Hurley have had a near-death experience that he keeps to himself? Did this lead to his depression and other psychological aberrations?

Kate's life is far from exemplary, or safe. She could have also had an experience in which she almost died, didn't, and tries not to think about it. We witnessed her walk away from her father's house after having rigged it to explode. That's how she remembers it. What if that's now how it actually happened?

Sayid was in the Iraqi military during a time of war. Jack spent time alone in foreign lands living recklessly. Sawyer's lifestyle and career choice would have placed him in mortal danger on an irregular basis.

Finally, ALL of these characters experienced a plane crash. It's important to note that Kate claims to have remembered the entire thing. She said she was awake and cognizant the entire time of the crash. However, we were shown the events of the crash of flight 815 not through Kate's eyes, but from Jack's, and Locke's, and even Nikki & Paulo's. What we know appears to be complete, but there's instances we do not know. How did some of these characters survive the crash of a plane with little more than scratches and bruises? Why was Jack in the middle of a bamboo forest, far away from the actual crash site? He only sustained one wound that was critical enough to require stitches, but being thrown that distance during the crash should have broken bones if not killed him utterly - that is unless he was brought back to life by other means.

It's plausible the 815 crash killed everyone on board with the possible exception of Kate. Who would be witness to this entire charade but unable to tell anyone. She would have witnessed how the characters we know of as survivors were resuscitated. How some of them were left for dead and others were miraculously reborn, perhaps before her very eyes, completely unaware of the transformation that had taken place. This would explain why, repeatedly, when some survivors would wander off on missions and for one reason or another they'd tell her not to come, she followed behind them anyway. Because she didn't trust any of them.

Kate may be surrounded by the undead; a form of the undead so oblivious to their existence as to still think of themselves as alive. In fact even she may not fully understand the significance of this delineation. After all, alive is alive and dead is dead. However, what if you can't really die on the Island? What if some individuals are left for dead by the Island, until it needs them again?

If that's the case, season six could very well be our Zombie Season, just not in the way that one might think.

Whatever

inspired by Julia Nunes' "Regrets"
a(n abandoned) work in progress



You make me wish I was
whatever you're looking for
You make me wish I was
whatever you want and more
You make me wish I could be
Whatever you want and need
For all of eternity

You make me wish I was
Contacts for your eyes
You make me wish I was
Tissues for your cries
You make me wish I could say
Anything to make you stay
So you would not go away


...


Okay perhaps I should explain. I was gonna just leave this poem here for later cuz it's just the chorus and I can't figure out the verses in my head. However, I just reread what I just wrote, and that coupled with the statement it's inspired by Julia Nunes might give someone the wrong idea. I'll preface this with yeah of course she's hot and talented but the words are not intended to indicate.. well, whatever.

The inspiration went something like this: while listening to Julia Nunes' song "Regrets" it occurred to me for some reason that hers is a voice that could take the word "whatever" and make it sound annoyingly acerbic and abrasive in one moment and then exhaltingly cathartic the next. I don't know why this occurred to me. I don't recall the word "whatever" in the song "Regrets" at all but I suddenly wanted to hear her voice singing with the word "whatever." There seems to be a potential longing and wispy melancholy about the word coupled with a dark sarcastic edge that I've just always admired and I'd like to hear her sing that word so my mind took the word "whatever" and started attaching other words to it and putting it in sentences and I was about to go do something else as her "Regrets" video ended and then I was like, oh damn I gotta write this down somewhere before I lose it. So I did. And now I look at it and it's cheesy bubblegum stupidity, but the idea was to make the chorus exhaultingly cathartic, soleful and wistful and filled with longing to represent that side of the word whatever, and then the verses were going to be more sarcastic and filled with passive aggressive irony. Cuz that's how I hear the song in my head. The intent would be to hear her deliver the verses in a stacatto biting almost hateful tone, and then in the verses her delivery would suddenly be like the angels of heaven descending down upon a bowling alley to go a few rounds.

However, I can't write down any verses at the moment cuz they're not coming to me. I'm only hearing the chorus. So hopefully I can come back later and finish this when I'm in a more sarcastic mood.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Fantastic Four Reboot

Okay. So yet again millions of dollars are about to be spent on an entirely crazy idea: take the Fantastic Four out of the comic books and put them on the silver screen. Again. My first reaction was "Why?" With a sudden realization that the answer is the same answer that always fuels comic book adaptations that don't make any sense: money.

For anyone unfamiliar with the comic book, the multiple animated series, the t-shirts, lunch boxes, video games, and countless other FF paraphernalia, I recommend WikiPedia to get you caught up. Yes of course you can't count on Wiki as 100% accurate and some can argue that endlessly. I don't care. It works for me and I don't want to try to detail almost fifty years of history in this blog. I'll get sidetracked to the point I actually wanna make. It is possible to put the actual Fantastic Four on the screen, but Hollywood can't do it. It would require actually following the original source material, and Hollywood won't tolerate that.

First, it's a period piece. Fantastic Four is not Fantastic Four without taking place in the early 1960s, when the general public really had no concept of how radiation or cosmic rays worked. Marie Curie discovered radiation in the late 19th century, and papers about breast cancer were published by other great minds in the 1920s, but making the connection between radiation as both a possible cause and a possible cure or treatment didn't make strides in the medical community until after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby committed the origins of many modern "marvel" legends to paper. The Incredible Hulk's exposure to gamma rays, Spider-Man's radioactive spider bite, and of course the Fantastic Four's exposure to cosmic rays during a sub orbital flight - all this was based on speculative fiction to which time has not been kind. So telling the same origin story fifty years late makes absolutely no sense. However, if treated as a period piece, it's as good a story as Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde.

Second, it's a family piece. This means you can have conflict between the characters, but you can't have them just break up at the drop of a hat. It gets too cliche too fast if you jump to that. The foursome consists of a married couple, a brother-in-law, and an old friend of the family. Ben & Reed's relationship goes back to when they were in the academy together, then the military, then the space program. Ben & Reed believe in each other and are essentially blood brothers, having saved one another multiple times. Reed's love for Sue is unmistakeable, and Sue's love for her brother Johnny is equally resolute. There are decades of complexity here that can't be captured in a two hour movie. Even comic book writers of more recent decades have made the mistake of splitting them up because they are trying to keep things interesting. However, what sets the Fantastic Four apart from other heroes is not their special powers. Most everyone in their world has powers. What sets them apart is the inter-relationship of the foursome. They are often conflicted and strained, but they are also connected by an unconditional love that comes only from having been through what they've been through - it's a bond stronger than blood.

Third, it's not dark. The current rumor is not only will the Fantastic Four get rebooted yet again, but the franchise will go darker with it like the Batman Dark Knight series. However, the Fantastic Four has never been dark. Admittedly, horrible things have happened. Most notably is Reed Richards' betrayal of the others. After many years, it's discovered that on some unconscious level, Richards may have deliberately sabotaged the space flight, using his own friends as guinea pigs in an experiment that would either grant them unknown power, or kill them outright. That's mighty dark. However, you can't start there. The audience has to experience the lifetime of camaraderie and trust and faith or else that discovery has no weight to it.

What might work is taking a page from recent critically acclaimed success of the movie Watchmen, and also perhaps a page from the tv series Lost. If'n I were Fantastic Four's reboot artist, here's how I'd do it.

You'd have two storylines being told at once in the first film, in a treatment similar to Lost or Kung Fu. The first storyline would take place in the 1960s, and would be essentially a very brief origin story told by news reporters as they were covering the events that essentially put the Fantastic Four on the map: the Mole Man Battle. This story would show the Fantastic Four as they were first starting out, and with their powers still fresh and novel to them. Their friendship would be palpable and their teamwork flawless. We'd see them overcome inexperience and adapt to the new life of heroism before them. These scenes would be bright and vibrant. Even venturing into the caves, everything would have a look of fond reverie - the good old days how everything looks better than perhaps it really was.

The second storyline would be your dark storyline and would take place some decades later - perhaps even in present day. The Fantastic Four would have had many adventures on Earth, and then at one point they went into deep space to fight in the Kree-Skrull Wars, leaving their nonpowered infant son in the hands of trusted friends. They return only a few weeks later in their time, but many years would have passed on Earth. In their absence, the Earth they knew would be a world without any superheroes and devoid of any happiness. Those who had powers were now in the service of a nameless, faceless despot who Reed would assume immediately was Doctor Doom.

The Fantastic Four would be branded as un-human and face death or exile from Earth if they refused to do the despot's bidding. The Fantastic Four would struggle with this discovery, avoid death and exile, while investigating the events that led to their homeworld turning so grey and hopeless. Ben would meet the nameless despot first on his own, be captured and tormented, and the truth revealed to him that Reed had purposefully orchestrated the accident that left him a freak. Ben would break free of his prison, hunt down Reed and demand an explanation. Reed has no conscious knowledge of this, but it's something that causes him to second guess his actions, as the foursome agree to settle their differences later and confront this unknown enemy together.

At the end it would be realized that their son grew up into a powerful being but with a cold heart having been abandoned at a young age. Franklin is the nameless faceless despot that demands the foursome go back in time and undo the damage that has been done, and has spent considerable time and resources since his youth creating a time machine explicitly for this purpose. Reed explains to Franklin that's now how time works - that the foursome could go back in time but that this reality would be unaltered - a new timeline would emerge from their return from the past. It would not erase the current timeline that already existed. "Time is not a chalkboard, Franklin. It's more like a river. You can dam up the water and redirect it, but the dry riverbed you leave behind will remain, scarring the land."

Franklin's power, coupled with his rage, is so great that he claims he can destroy the universe in which they currently reside either after the FF return back in time to correct their past mistake with him, or he'll destroy it with them still in the present. Essentially this dooms the fate of two potential universes. Reed relents and the foursome venture into the time machine.

Upon the return to the past, which in the narrative happens about the same time as the narrative in the first storyline approaches the foursome leaving Earth to fight in the Kree-Skrull war, we see this mature and conflicted foursome still together but with more questions about trust and devotion than they have ever had before, and Reed struggles with whether he should murder his own son now to spare the potential power to experience upon maturity, or hope that he and Sue's presence in young Franklin's life will be enough to change those variables, like a butterfly's wings. Meanwhile, since in this timeline the Fantastic Four never go into space to fight in the Kree-Skrull war, it instead comes to Earth, which sets up the sequel.

There. You got your darkness, but you also got a chance to show the Fantastic Four at their best and brightest. You got conflict, but it develops naturally in the context of the plot and not unnaturally like in the previous movies. I'd go see it, but I'd probably be the only one. Here's hoping at the very least, the new reboot of Fantastic Four doesn't include that preposterous robot Herbie. God, I hated that thing.