Okay, I tried to write this up in a civil fashion. But then I went all Lewis Black explaining it to a co-worker. So pardon my rage, but here we go:
There are apparently 11 more minutes of Lost. An epilogue of sorts, focusing on Ben and Hurley, which will be available when the complete series is released on DVD and Blu-ray later this summer.
Yes, 11 more minutes that apparently are already making waves among TV writers who have seen an excerpt. (More at Techland: The 10 Ways We’re Glad Lost Didn’t End)
Now I am not, nor ever have been, a Lost fan. In fact, I have never seen a single second of the show. But I feel like I have something valuable to say about Hollywood’s incessant need to tweak and add to things, to give fans a new reason to buy their newly-inferior products. The constant need to tinker and rejigger.
My outrage started years ago, when I was hunting around one weekend for The 40-Year-Old Virgin on DVD, to watch with my girlfriend, who had not seen it in the theater. Four video stores later, we could not find the original theatrical cut. The only thing stocked in every single store was the director’s cut, watered down with 20 minutes of crap that made the film far less cohesive, original and funny.
Then there was Apocalypse Now Redux – the 3-hours-plus Redux – that made the long ride up the river a needless marathon of pinching one’s blatter.
And then, THEN, Star Wars. The original trilogy, digitally altered and scrambled and changed for all time.
Good lord, producers. When we fall in love with something like Lost, we fall in love with it for what it is. What’s missing isn’t a flaw; it’s what was left out to make the thing just right.
As for Lost, the series that aired IS the series. That’s it. Beginning, middle, and end. Or wait, with Lost, isn’t that middle, end and beginning? And then purgatory right? Or polar bear? WTF.
My point is this: We’re not giving you any more money; Take your 11 minutes and shove it up your wallets. Stop trying to tack on addendums to easter eggs, P.P.S.’s to P.S.’s. You are taking something that worked, that won people over, and reducing it to its most obvious, commercially-crass form. I hope Lost fans avoid watching those 11 minutes, and that one day I will once again see Return of the Jedi without those stupid tentacles coming out of the ground monster on Jabbas’ planet.
There aren’t supposed to be any damn tentacles! Spikes and gurgling noises. That’s it. Who needs tentacles? And a mobile Jabba? And a sunset in cloud city? And Luke screaming as he falls after having his arm cut off? And a shockwave when the Death Star explodes?
Who needs 11 more confusing, contradictory, obscure minutes of minutiae. Consumers rise up!