For entertainment on Sunday I watched the 1995 Batman Forever, fifth feature film, which was the right way round because it was not until 2008 and the eighth film that we had explained why Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face wanted to kill Batman. In The Dark Knight, we learn that Two Face was originally a leading crusader against crime and corruption in a situation where Batman was given the choice to save his girl friend or his friend and failed in relation to the girl and his friend badly disfigured one side of his face and becoming torn between the good and bad sides of his character. In Batman Forever the main villain is The Riddler, played by Jim Carrey who worked for Batman and then went his own way discovering device which beams Television direct to an individual’s brain. It is not clear how this is different from actual TV viewing except that it also enabled the Riddler to read the minds of individual viewers and harness their collective knowledge and energy. There is the statutory Batman girlfriend, played by Nicole Kidman who is unconvincing as a psychiatrist specialising in people with divided personalities. The film also explains how Robin, played by Chris O’Donnell joins the team in which Michael Gough plays the faithful Butler father figure, although it is his lack of awareness which causes Batman, the girl and Robin all to be captured and only escape death after a series of great escapes. The film is full of divided souls in need of spiritual and psychological healing.
The most look forward to event of the day was the two end of season episodes of Lost which prepared viewers for the final season. The season had commenced ad the Oceanic Flight survivors returned to the USA, Jack, the former leader of and fugitive criminal Kate with the daughter of Claire which she is raising as her own, Sun, the wife of Jin from South Korea and her daughter, the disturbed Hurley, winner of the lottery using numbers which were of significance once reaching the island, and Sayid former Iraqi torturer, were faced with pressure to return to the island.
The pressure came from Ben the former leader of the Islanders known as the Others, brought to the island as a child by his father as a Dharma Initiative worker. They are all persuaded, that they must return to the Island to put things right and much of the season was devoted to the their reluctance and eventual persuasion to do this.
At the conclusion of the previous season Locke had been instrumental in creating a time and space instability and moving the island and those on it. In order to resolve the movement Locke also leaves the island to persuade the others to return. Key figures in the present day are also Charles Widmore who we learn was responsible for the fake discovering of the plane with the bodies of everyone at the bottom of the ocean and the mother of the Mathematician who is part of the Widmore expedition which leads to the six escaping and the rest of the island being moved. During the series we learn that both Charles and the mother of mathematician were on the island some thirty years before as part of a cult group which became the Others. The Mathematician is their son. The mother becomes a key figure is getting the seven back to the Island.
However when go back and their second plane ride together crashes there are different outcomes for those on board. Jack Kate, Said and Hurley find themselves back on the Island in 1974 where they also find. These include James Sawyer who became the lover of Kate and Dr Juliet Burke. James has become a senior member of the security Team and Juliet his effective wife. There are also three members of the then expedition team sent on the freighter by Charles Widmore, including his son. The husband of Sun, Jin also survived the blowing up of the freighter and has became part of the 1974 era Dharma Initiative. They have been on the island in the new time for three years the same period as those who returned to the USA
There are also survivors of the new flight who do not return to 1974 but land on the Island or on an island close to the Island but fidn the situation different from went Sun, Ben and Locke left it. This includes the body of John Locke as well as his resurrected state
Locke was murdered Ben but Jack is told that it is essential that the body also returns with them. Ben is amazed that Locke is alive and tries to turn one of the others against Locke before Locke reveals what has happened. Sun has learnt her husband survived the explosion and wants to find him, prepared to leave her daughter to do so. There is humour over the existence of Locke who Ben previously. Ben full of angst because he witnessed the death of his daughter who he could have saved and he is required by Locke to visit the base of the smoke monster where his daughter appears to him and orders him to obey everything which John Locke tells him.
During the series we go back to have even earlier point in time the 1950’s where Richard Alpert is seen with Jacob who is the human face of the island. Throughout the series Jacob appears to have been the leader of the islanders, telling them what to do and this includes Ben who at the end of this season admits to Locke that he has never met the being. Locke persuades Ben that he is the one to kill the being Jacob in the final episode. Richard Alpert is also a major figure who has appeared in and out of the series, but always as an ageless individual and he takes Locke and Ben to where he knows Jacob resides. In the last two episodes we learn that Jacob has appeared to the Oceanic group in the USA to help them at key points in the period leading to their return.
There are three other potential key moments before the grand seasonal finale. The first is when the returnees and those who stayed on the island but were taken back to 1974 find a young Ben who is shot and they take him to the cult Others to be saved. The second is that the Mathematician Daniel Faraday is sent back in time to the island by his mother to explode the hydrogen bomb which was placed on the island for a test explosion but is then buried underground because of concern about leaking radioactivity.
In the earliest series we find that something happened on the island which caused a switch in polarity and that Desmond when he comes to the island is told that he has to press a computer button to ensure the polarities remain in balance and that without doing this not only will the island destroy itself but the whole world if not the universe. A way is found of stopping the need for the button to be pressed. The reason why all the surviving Oceanic flight victims have to return to be on the island in 1974 is because in that year a scientist on the Dharma Initiative is boring into the island’s core and strikes the force which creates the whole chain of events. Faraday is told by his mother (with the help of Charles Widmore) that if the bomb is exploded at the same time as the Island’s core is breached then everything will be different and Oceanic Flight 316 will not crash.
The third key aspect is that the scientist working on the project has a son. The son is part of he Widmore freighter team with psychic abilities. He has the unusual experience of seeing himself as a child and of identifying himself to his father. At one point the submarine which is able to visit the island crossing time leaves the island with all the children and most if not all the women folk and scientist see his wife and son depart and then is faced with his son in the present day who is killed in the fracas that follows.
I now come to the two finale climaxes to the season. Ben does kill Jacob at the behest of Locke while members of the second flight reveal to Sun and the flight captain the anomaly that the hold of the plane was the body of Locke while he has been claiming leadership of all the survivors of both flights in the present time. There are therefore two of Locke existing at the same time.
In the final finale the bomb does not detonate as planned as the core breached and the reversal of polarity begins and Juliet is swept into the bore shaft and crashes to the bottom where seriously injured she comes to her senses and manages to explode the bomb. Will this do what was believed could happen or did this act actual create the situation which subsequently happened in a circular event. The only reason that they are able to find the bomb and take it to the drilling site is because Faradays mother kills her son thinking he is one of the enemy. They persuade his mother to help them although she has no memory of her future. The proposition is that when the bomb explodes those who have recently died will be resurrected.
Kate has left Claire’s child with her grandmother and it is understood Claire will reappear in the final season. Desmond who was not on the flight but who was stranded on the island when his boat was forced there is reunited with Penny the daughter of Charles Widmore. They marry and have a child which stops Ben Killing Penny after he blames Charles for the death of his own daughter. Desmond is shot but survivors and their role in the final season is unclear. There are other original flight survivors who have been reintroduced in the fifth series or when it has been said will reappear in the final series when he reason for what has happened is expected to be revealed. I for one cannot wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment