DarkMode/LightMode
Light Mode

MindFood: The Dis-Connection between LOST and The Dark Tower

MindFood Banner

  The Dis-Connection between LOST and The Dark Tower

 

- Advertisement -

The Dark TowerIf you happen to be a fan of Stephen King’s sprawling fantasy epic, The Dark Tower, I imagine the final season of Lost struck a particular chord with you. It certainly did with me. I’m a huge fan of both series and an even bigger fan of their creator’s abilities to craft some of the coolest (and dumbest) moments in fantasy/sci-fi/mystery around. Having said that, I also think the entire reason the Lost finale failed to resonate with a growing majority of people is because the show’s captains, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, failed to successfully pull off The Dark Tower.

Now I’d love to come up with a theory that all of the The Dark Tower similarities in Lost are due to Lindelof and Cuse’s attachment alongside J.J. Abrams to an adaptation of King’s masterwork, that all of their discussions on how to crack it for the big screen eventually bled into their Lost story plans and that the reason it all failed to satisfy in the end is because they had only jumped this track after already having completed three season’s of the show without King’s tome in mind. But even I don’t believe that’s the case. So I’m not here to convince you ABC’s smash hit show went out ripping off Stephen King (though there are awful lot of commonalities between the two), but I think there is a fundamental difference why the ending of The Dark Tower works and why Lost’s is inferior. It all comes down to storytelling.

SPOILER ALERT! – If you haven’t read King’s series to the end or seen Lost to the end and wish to remain unspoiled, you should stop reading right now.

Sure, there are obvious hat tips to the Stephen King’s universe in Lost, the most obvious being the show’s introduction of an inexplicably malevolent character simply referred to as The Man in Black, which is the very same name used in the opening sentence of “The Gunslinger”, the first book of TDT, “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Plus, the Man in Black can take the form of dead men in either story. Also, in both stories the one person that is always on the side of the hero and that represents goodness and untainted intentions is named Jacob (granted Jake doesn’t boss the gunslinger around, but his purity is equally stalwart). And then there are the similarities between certain concepts of TDT and Lost, most notably for me the idea that characters who have split themselves across story timelines will soon begin to struggle with reconciling memories of both lives at the same time (TDT introduced this in book two, “The Drawing of the Three”; Lost introduced it in season five with Desmond and then brought it back heavily in season six with all of the major characters).

Lost's John LockeThen there are the emotional similarities between the two main characters, Jack Shepard and Roland Deschain, aka the gunslinger. Both have life-altering daddy issues after trying to take on the same duties as their hugely successful fathers (and yet are only as good at their respective professions as they are due to the tough-love discipline of their progenitors). In TDT, this takes the form of a compulsive mantra of always remembering the face of your father before doing, well, pretty much anything. In Lost, Jack has an equally impenetrable time of escaping the face of his father, which literally haunts him throughout the entire run of the show.

Those, as far as I’m concerned, are relatively inconsequential similarities, though. Where the two are most intertwined is in their finales, but before talking about what happened in Lost and what happened in TDT, it’s important to understand the narrative that propelled the audience/readers toward it, because this is why TDT works as a whole and Lost kind of sprains its ankle crossing the finish line. Both franchises started off with one small mystery and ended up working toward a far grander goal without an explicit endgame of how to get there. King openly admitted well into writing his seven-part series that he had no idea what would happen when the gunslinger reached the top of the Dark Tower; as far as I know Lost’s authors never said as much, but it’s quite clear they didn’t have a road map to the island’s secrets, either. So the difference between the two isn’t in their meticulous plotting (they had none), it’s in their understanding of how to tell a story to its end. Basically, King knew how; Abrams and company did not.
 
There is a recurring emphasis placed throughout TDT on how we as a people need to tell stories to know we’re alive (in fact, telling stories literally saves the main character’s lives at one point). There is an indelible importance placed on being part of a group and that some groups are drawn together by fate (in King’s verse, fate is called ‘ka’ and such a fate-bound group is a ka-tet). And though they all exist to help each other out, their fates will inevitably draw them apart, but when the wheel of ka comes ’round again, all will be as it should.

- Advertisement -

Lost also has a fate-bound group of people, except they don’t call them a ka-tet, they call them candidates, a term we only learn of in season six. However, unlike in TDT, there is no persistent awareness within the characters throughout the entire story that they all have a role to play in one another’s lives and that their lives are simply a story being told. In fact, no characters ever really even tell a story in Lost; all they ever tell are anecdotes. Why should they? They are lost, after all; they are storyless. By design each character lacks perspective to realize why they and their lives together are special. And that is the fundamental difference between why TDT’s ending works beautifully and Lost’s stumbles.

The Dark Tower and LOSTHell, they both end almost identically: It’s getting down to the wire and their world’s are crumbling apart. In Lost, it’s because a cork that kept the balance of good and evil in check has been removed and now malevolence is spewing out over the lands. In The Dark Tower it’s because pillars that connect all the alternate realities and timelines in one unified universe are failing, malevolence is spewing out over the lands. Our heroes prevent both from destroying their respective universes. All seems saved. They venture further into their end goals. For Jack it’s the center of the island. For the gunslinger it’s the top of the Dark Tower.

And what happens when they get there? They are guided through all of the actions that led them to this point; Jack’s life flashes before his eyes and then he has a calm and collected meet and greet with all his old pals. He remembers the face of his father. The gunslinger walks down a corridor with pictures that show everything that has happened to him and everything that happened because of him. They are both deeply enriched by the experience. They both reach a door. They walk through it. Their stories have now reset; they are bound for a new adventure, only now they are buoyed with the happiness of truly understanding what it is to love and be loved by others. The closing image we are treated to is the exact same image that opened both stories. End.

So why does The Dark Tower work and Lost doesn’t? It all has to do with the narrative structure. The Dark Tower is acutely aware of storytelling, of how important it is– and I’m not just saying that because the characters discover that they are literally a part of a Stephen King story. There is a steadfast awareness of a cyclical nature to life, the universe and everything in it. We are told again and again and again to let the wheel come ’round. When it does, even though we may not have been expecting it to happen the way it does, we are ready for it.

Lost never, ever acclimated viewers to that idea. It was blissfully ignorant of how to tell a story, of how to persist toward a goal, because that particular mystery tactic is what hooked viewers. The only awareness it had was that good and evil exist and that it’s often at times quite hard to tell the difference between the two. All involved never established the notion that life goes on after death, even if it’s simply their lives being retold as a story. Despite a few winks here and there, it never establishes the concept of cycles of life. The best we get is Desmond saying, “I’ll see you in another life, brother,” to Jack– and even that is a little too similar to Jake telling the gunslinger, “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

So, when the damned thing ends with them on the precipice of becoming part of a new, undisclosed story, it feels like a total cop-out as a storytelling device. The five seasons prior to season six did almost nothing to build toward that notion. So when it’s introduced with the utmost finality, it’s too convenient, too incongruous with the majority of what’s come before. And that’s a shame, because much of what came prior will go down as being some of the best mystery television around. If only J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof and everyone else involved understood that if they’re going to crib from The Dark Tower, the wheel comes around. And if you don’t warn people that it’s going to eventually happen, said wheel is going to knock them on their ass and on the way out all they’re going to remember is the sting of that bruise.

- Advertisement -

Hollywood.com is highlighting donation opportunities from trusted organizations like The Salvation Army – Southern California Division to support wildfire relief efforts. Donations are made directly to The Salvation Army via their official website, and Hollywood.com does not collect or manage any funds.