...'It Was All A Dream!'

[Dead kate moss]

Everything in The Shawshank Redemption after Andy is being raped is a dream, dreamt during his terrible ordeal. He never escapes. Also he did the murders. And Morgan Freechild was in for fucking little kids. Happy ending really, the public remain protected.

[QDRPHNC]

Lost.

Not a film, but if the final episode had consisted of the writers defecating all over a fan of the show, at length and in lurid, horrifying detail it would still have been twelve times better than the rotten, wank infested abortion cake of an ending they centipedally spewed out of their collective withered anuses, like the drooling half-wit shitpipers they are.

Ending? End-dung more like?!

I think anyone who made it to the end of Lost is a sucker. I got two episodes into the third season before I realized these guys were making it all up as they went along, and were content to pile random mystery on top of random mystery without providing a satisfying payoff to anything.

Even just reading the Wikipedia descriptions of the remaining episodes annoyed me. Flashbacks! Flashforwards! Flashsideways! Fuck off.

[mjwilson]

I think anyone who made it to the end of Lost is a sucker. I got two episodes into the third season before I realized these guys were making it all up as they went along, and were content to pile random mystery on top of random mystery without providing a satisfying payoff to anything.

Even just reading the Wikipedia descriptions of the remaining episodes annoyed me. Flashbacks! Flashforwards! Flashsideways! Fuck off.

I made it to the end of LOST and am quite happy to have done so (I even love the ending). The question of "making it all up as they went along" versus "had it planned from the beginning" was always too binary a distinction to make - obviously writing any long-running drama involves an element of making things up along the way.

They were pretty open about their process - having a get-together each year to plan the season ahead. And that came up with some pretty coherent, long-term storylines (in addition to the occasional dud).

[The Ghost of Michael Winner]

Look at Bernhard Goetz for example, the "Subway Vigilante". Shot and killed four criminals on the subway, and was only sent down for illegal possession of a firearm. He was out in less than a year.

ah my hero!

[Cerys]

I thought it was up until the point where

Spoiler alert

the blue box is opened in Club Silencio

[close]

(or whatever it was called)

Spoiler alert

Blue box?  Silencio?  Is Lynch secretly in cahoots with Steven Moffat?

[close]

[KennyMonster]

I made it to the end of LOST and am quite happy to have done so (I even love the ending). The question of "making it all up as they went along" versus "had it planned from the beginning" was always too binary a distinction to make - obviously writing any long-running drama involves an element of making things up along the way.

They were pretty open about their process - having a get-together each year to plan the season ahead. And that came up with some pretty coherent, long-term storylines (in addition to the occasional dud).

Fiction writing lesson #1: Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Not stories have a beginning, then they are seen to be more popular than first expected 'so we better make up some more bullshit in order to sell more DVD boxsets because that is all we really wanted to do in the first place'.

[phantom_power]

That may be true of films and books and things with defined end-points but TV is so fickle that it would be futile planning beyond the current season. It is a good idea to have a vision of the ending but that could change as each season develops. Most TV programmes are like this.

[Thursday]

A lot of these "it was a dream" theories just seem to come from the idea that a happy ending is too unrealistic and Hollywood, so it can't be that, it has to be a dream. Which is kind of stupid, it's not as if they make for very realistic dreams and the "he suddenly got raped and killed" reality ideas wouldn't really be any better or even necessarily more realistic.

I do like it for Kick-Ass though. Anyway Super picked up the slack on the "someone trying to be a super hero in the real world" premise.

[Tiny Poster]

That may be true of films and books and things with defined end-points but TV is so fickle that it would be futile planning beyond the current season. It is a good idea to have a vision of the ending but that could change as each season develops. Most TV programmes are like this.

Yes, it sometimes works, it sometimes doesn't. Mad Men and Heroes threw everything they had into the first season because they didn't expect renewal.

And on the other side, Deadwood - one of the best TV series ever - was cancelled after three seasons and thus has no finale. But that doesn't stop every episode being fantastic.

[Pepotamo1985]

I think anyone who made it to the end of Lost is a sucker. I got two episodes into the third season before I realized these guys were making it all up as they went along, and were content to pile random mystery on top of random mystery without providing a satisfying payoff to anything.

Well, my pet theory is that the writers - not being particularly smart cookies - had the ending fully realised from the word go (that the characters are in purgatory) and figured that no one would work it out for the series' duration.

Then, two episodes in, when the entire internet had it cracked, they were forced to issue denials out of fear that people would lose interest and stop watching, and piled mystery upon red herring ad nauseum to obfuscate . Which had the inverse effect of making people lose interest sharpish.

I do think its a terrible, dishonest ending for the film.

Just to echo Nuclear Optimism's post, the whole point of the ending is to demonstrate that he's categorically not a hero. Had he been faster on the draw, he would be reviled for assassinating a popular Presidential candidate - as it stands, he failed, is now lauded as a hero by the media, Iris' parents and the girl he was/is in love with, and seems happy and adjusted. But then that bell chimes and he looks in the mirror, and he and we realise that he's still a psychopath. The audience - much like the public and the characters in the film, end up liking Travis by the end - we need a reminder that he remains a monster.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It's totally stupid, though, unless it's a dream. It's been years since I saw it, but don't the public and media make him a hero for killing all those people? Just the fact he gets away after being shot that many times is ridiculous.

I don't think it is a dream necessarily. If anything, I think it's supposed to be real. But I do think its a terrible, dishonest ending for the film, and would be improved by it being a dying fantasy, or how he had imagined things going before he gets shot.

He saved a young girl from a gang of murdering paedophile gangsters, so I'm certain the public would make him a hero (especially in the 70s). Possibly other papers condemned what he did, but he only cut the bits out of the papers that were on his side.

Keep in mind that in the 80s, Bernard Goetz was declared a hero when he shot a guy dead on a subway train in New York (until it was later revealed he was a trigger happy psycho), and here in the  UK Tony Martin was declared a hero in many tabloids.

Anyway, Scorsese himself has said that it's not a dream, and the end signifies that he is a time bomb waiting to go off again.

[mjwilson]

Fiction writing lesson #1: Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Not stories have a beginning, then they are seen to be more popular than first expected 'so we better make up some more bullshit in order to sell more DVD boxsets because that is all we really wanted to do in the first place'.

My point was, if you're writing a TV show for six years, then you have to work out some things along the way, eg if you sack some people for drunk-driving, or if someone else decides he can't cope with living on Hawaii any more. Or if you hire an actor for a few episodes, realise that he's better than you thought and so take him on full time: these kinds of "making things up as you go along" are to be praised, not criticised.

[El Unicornio, mang]

yep, it's quite different for TV shows because you never know if something is going to be picked up after the pilot, extended beyond one season, renewed, or kept going indefinitely. I think they were genuinely surprised that Lost made it past the first season. I wasn't that into the ending, but then again I find most endings to films/books/TV shows disappointing, especially after six seasons which kept me engrossed throughout.

[mjwilson]

And the writers' account of things is that they asked for an endpoint. During season 3, when things started to dip (according to most people), they asked to be given a set duration for the rest of the series, so they could start to plan towards the ending.

[Dead kate moss]

Well, my pet theory is that the writers - not being particularly smart cookies - had the ending fully realised from the word go (that the characters are in purgatory) and figured that no one would work it out for the series' duration.

Then, two episodes in, when the entire internet had it cracked, they were forced to issue denials out of fear that people would lose interest and stop watching, and piled mystery upon red herring ad nauseum to obfuscate .

I never watched it, but this seemed to be what happened as far as I could tell. Didn't they categorically deny the characters were all dead/in purgatory? They should have just said 'maybe, you'll just have to wait and see.'

[biggytitbo]

Jacobs Ladder is ruined by its non clever it was all a dream ending. Shite.

[El Unicornio, mang]

They should make a film where it's a dream but then at the very end they realise it actually all really happened. That would blow. peoples. minds.

[Phil_A]

Jacobs Ladder is ruined by its non clever it was all a dream ending. Shite.

Yeah, I've been wondering about that recently. I had a theory that the

Spoiler alert

"Jacob never left Vietnam"

[close]

ending was something that was only decided late into filming, otherwise lots of stuff that happens during his "dream" doesn't make much sense, like when see from the point of view of other characters who are elsewhere from Jacob, and the government conspiracy storyline that just sort of peters out. But from reading up a little, it seems like this always was the intended ending, so I dunno.

It's always been frustrating to rewatch for that reason - it has some fantastic imagery and cinematography but it doesn't hold together from a story logic point of view. I suppose it doesn't help that the first time I saw it was very late at night, and I kept falling asleep then waking up in a panic whenever something frightening happened. Every time I've watched it since then has always seemed something of a disappointment.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It definitely frightened me more than any other film. Even just thinking about some of the moments like the broken wheel in that hospital makes me shudder.

[Pepotamo1985]

Didn't they categorically deny the characters were all dead/in purgatory?

Yep - they flatly denied that theory whenever it was postulated.

From Wikipedia;

Several of the more common fan theories were discussed and rejected by the show's creators, the most common being that the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 were in purgatory.

These theories arose within days of the first episode's airing, IIRC. I thought the resolution was pretty obvious from the word go, but would've been happy to stick it out to the conclusion if the show was actually engaging. Much like like The Wire or Mad Men, a satisfying conclusion is totally secondary to my enjoyment of the show overall. As long as I find the plots and characters interesting, I'll stay rapt until climax (JUST ASK MY BIRD YEAH).

[Cerys]

So were they all dead?  Fantastic.  I worked that out from the trailer.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Not quite. Basically, the last scene is a place where everyone is, regardless of when they've died. There's no concept of time or relativity to the real world, so if you died on the island you'd be there with people who died of old age, etc, but everyone is at the same age they were when they were on the island together.

[Cerys]

Ooh, sneaky!

[mjwilson]

They pulled off quite a good trick I think. Everyone guessed "it's purgatory" for the on-island story, which turned out to be wrong. Then, in the final season, they effectively made one half of the split storyline purgatory, but this time round no-one guessed it.

[SteveDave]

They should make a film where it's a dream but then at the very end they realise it actually all really happened. That would blow. peoples. minds.

Isn't that what sort of happens in Reeker? A film I hated all the way through but then the last 3 minutes were quite good. Like the opposite of Unbreakable.

[Dead kate moss]

They pulled off quite a good trick I think. Everyone guessed "it's purgatory" for the on-island story, because it was obvious, which turned out to be true, so they had to knock up some bullshit. The 'good trick' was pissing off all the show's remaining fans who stuck with it expecting some much less bullshitty. Haha stupid twats, that'll learn 'em.