This seems to be a new thing for writers and such to do with their movies. They leave a bunch of things open ended, or they leave the ending completely open-ended. The fact of the matter is that this is LAZY. People dont like it, I mean, yes, you get tons of people to your online sites, and to your message boards, because with so much open-endedness, its up to the people to decide, however, this limits the audience. its very hard for people to start watching a series like LOST without watching it from the beginning, so you lose audience there, plus you piss people off by not releaseing any new information to them, and only adding questions for them to ask other just-as-confused people. the fact is, if the fans need to make most of the content in your story line, then it shows not that you are creative, but that the audience is creative, and that you are lazy. I really hope people stop doing this, it has become a trend to leave things open-ended and it really needs to stop. If I wanted to make up my own ending, or listen to 10000 other theories of how things could have ended up, I would have just watched the first episode, and imagined all the rest, and save myself the hassle. The big reason this upsets me is that movies like Cloverfield (which wasnt that open-ended, and didnt really need much explaining) get overshadowed by the who/what/when/where/whys that everyone has come to ask themselves for everything because nothing is being given to people or explained to people anymore! An example of this working well is in The Incredible Hulk movie. When Hulk gets blasted by the sound-wave machines, you are not explained that they are sound-wave machines, or how they work, or who created them, or about the subjects used to test it, because you dont need to. It is essentially useless information to spend the time and energy to expain this. I applaud The Incredible Hulk for realizing that its audience isnt 3-year-olds with no imagination.
Cloverfield was a great movie, and it really had almost nothing to do with the viral marketing for it, other than to make people ask more and more questions, speculate more and more, and spend a ton of time making up things that really dont matter. I too am looking forward to a sequel, but not because I want answers, but because I want to see what else they can do without needing to explain everything. There is a huge difference between leaving small, unnecessary, things alone. Such as with Cloverfield, you didnt need to know the creatures origins, or how it was made, you only needed to know its destructive force, and how it was effecting things around it. Good job!
However, there is a difference between not explaining things that dont make much of an impact on the story (origins of the creature, origins of the sound-wave machines from The Incredible Hulk) and just plain putting things into your story that you either forget to explain, or dont intend to explain. Like a poorly edited kung-fu film. People are not watching your movie to make up their own endings, plot twists, and events, it's YOUR movie. YOU went to school for this.
You dont have to spoon-feed your audience things, because generally we get things, but you also dont need to constantly put things into your movie or show that are inexplicable, and deterr from your own story. Your misdirection is working Mr. Abrams, we arent paying attention to the main plot lines, we are waiting for you to explain the goddamn creature and in the meantime, slowly losing interest in your show as you continue to give us only questions. You are setting yourself up for an epic fail when you dont explain anything in your ending, because inevitably, if you have been uncreative this far as to leave hundreds of plotpoints unexplained, then you will be just as uncreative with your ending, an ending which should hold answers, I will bet $100 will only disappoint those clinging to the hope for answers. Good job Mr. Abrams, you have misdirected your audience right into other channels, and television shows because after four seasons (and two more planned) you still havent explained shit, and it looks like you yourself have no fucking clue what you even have put into this show.
Keep in mind, I have never watched LOST other than the first few episodes. I was interested when the survivors were on an island with what I thought and was hoping to be scary monsters/dinosaurs. Then six episodes later, and no mention of these things/thing other than in the background noise, and I felt like I was being lead around into a whole lot of nothing. Years later I read the wiki on the show and still, nobody has a fucking clue what the thing is, except that it isnt dinosaurs or montster, but some kind of possible nano-machine cloud. I am so glad I didnt keep watching because I would have been sorely disappointed. and have you seen the wiki on that show? the actual new-information season-by-season is ridiculous, at most it reads like "so-and-so dies. so-and-so disappears. some flashbacks." but when you read the full articles 1% of the stuff from the season is useless dialogue/flashbacks and the other 99% is speculation on things that seemed unimportant but someone people 'know' they are.
I suggest that if something is a plotpoint that will be explained later, TELL PEOPLE THAT! Everyone and his dog has a fucking blog. Tell people "yeah, we will revisit the story of so-and-so next season, so lets try and focus on other things, like this thing over here, which will be the main focus of this season." or "yeah, just stop focusing on this, this, this and that, we arent going to explain them, because we really didnt intend for anyone to notice that shit, what the hell kinda crazy fucking following have we creative that people have to start noticing shit like THAT?"
I am still upset about the Sopranos ending, because after all the time all of the fans spent watching episode after episode, we were expected to make our own ending up. This idea, as I said, isnt creative, but lazy, and its like saying "well if we take any ending, we will piss some group off, so lets just do no ending and let everyone make up whatever they want, that way everyone is happy." but the fact is, that really just enrages EVERYONE and causes people to argue for days and hours about what was the REAL ending.
As a writer, if you leave loose ends in your story, you are a bad writer, not some creative, innovative thinker. I am very tired of people thinking this is new or creative or innovative, the choose-your-own-adventure novels have been around for quite some time, and I think people should warn their audience how long a show will run, generally, and if the endings will be open ended, or if they will leave a lot of questions up to the audience. I for one would love this, because then I would know what I was getting into: a choose your own adventure tale that I am, essentially, creating myself.
So long as he is considered 'visionary' and creative JJ Abrams will stay true-to-form and probably have viral marketing, story lines, and plot points left unknown and unsolved. Again, I apologize for this rant and realize that I am only adding to the problem of speculation on open-ended things online. I just wholly dont believe in spending money on DVD box-sets 2,3,4,5 seasons worth at 50 bucks each, for a storyline that has limited continuity, plot holes, and no ending in sight, like LOST, and then getting rave reviews from people touting you as visionary and creative. Leading your audience around by the nose is like putting a carrot on a stick infront of a donkey, its cruel and unusual punishment.
One classic example of this is the movie Contact. No, we didnt need to know the origin of the aliens, and I applaude you for not telling us, and no, we didnt need to know all the exact tech-specs and alloys used to make the machine, thank you for that, but if you are going to have a movie whose focus is alien contact, and very little focus on the main characters past, DO NOT have the aliens show themselves as her GODDAMN FATHER, and the alien planet as, essentially, a beach, with some extra moons.
Now, if the focus had been the main character, her relationship with her dad, and everything seemed to be her tied into that, then the aliens showed themselves as her father, then it would be touching, because her pain was eased and she was happy, and the movie would have been a women-empowerment tale, with a sci-fi twist. Instead you had the whole movie shouting at you "sci-fi, aliens, sci-fi, aliens, sci-fi, aliens, sci-fi, aliens, HUMAN NEED TO SAY GOODBYE TO LOVED ONES" and the anti-climaticisim ensues. Again, back to mis-direction. You mis-direct people right out of the movie theatres. That would be like the ending to cloverfield being that the monster goes up to the top of a building and rubs its face on someone with a machine hooked up to his arm, who is laughing manically as he looks down at all the carnage. You just go, WTF? where did that come from? (and the questions ensue) was the creature a machine? who is this guy? since he was standing on a Macy's building, how was Macy's involved? does that movie have to do with Terminator since it was a man controlling a machine? etc. etc.
the simple fact about theme is this: keep to the theme. If you have a theme about aliens, and contact, do not have the ending be a woman losing her regret from her past. Either have aliens in their true form who give her sage advice about earth's place in the universe, which she LATER takes to the micro-level and applies it to her own life and feels better, OR you have a movie about a woman struggling to get rid of her past, and how every man she meets reminds her of her father, and how, every man who stands in her way is standing in her way for getting over her past, her past, focus on her past, her struggle with men, her past, and then have the aliens appear as her father, soothe her pain, give her resolution on a macro and micro level as a scientist and for her father. That would be a Lifetime movie, and probably a damn good one. The following pretty much sums up my rage
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