"The very young do not always do as they're told."

Buuuuuuuuuuuurn.

Sounds like the makings of a road trip to me.

Oh geez, I jus watched that one the other day. Timescape?

With judo, I hope.

It completely slipped my mind during the commentary that the Japanese currently have a probe called IKAROS.

Slightly more fittingly than Sunshine's ship, it's testing solar sail technology, which uses the sun's light as propulsion.

At least the fate of humanity doesn't rest on the success of it.

That's what Eddie calls his penis.

Right, but I thought this had come up before. I was under the impression this forum was for discussions of released commentaries while topics for other movies went into "Off Topic."

Don't matter to me much either way, but we should probably get a ruling on the field.

EDIT: Oh, Teague actually did comment on the change and just beat me to the post. Never mind. 1984 joke inapplicable. Move along.

I knew the man was a communist.

Oh no, The Muppet Movie is a pillar of childhood. I LOVED it as a kid, watched it many times. "Ah, a bear in his natural habitat...a Studebaker!"

Honestly, looking at the other examples in this thread, there isn't much that comes to mind. Though I do have one friend that is always mentioning movies as references for our filmmaking conversations and they always manage to be movies I've never even heard of, much less seen.

I guess, as much as I'm becoming a fag for everything Hitchcock lately, it's embarrassing that I've seen as little of his stuff as I have.

Also, I've never seen The Goonies.

Not to be an ass, but I totally called the West Wing thing. But I've read the Ford-special-election theory before.

My point isn't that you have to know everything the magic bean can do. The writers don't have to give you the manual before hand. But they have to have the manual. And whether or not they have it will come across in the final product. I buy Constantine not because they explain the manual to me, but because they've clearly worked the manual out for themselves. And that comes across in the final product.

The deeper point, I think, is this: Every story needs to have a point and exist to tell that point. Any piece of that story that doesn't vitally serve a function in communicating that point doesn't belong there. Any story without a point becomes a collection of shit just happening.

When you create the magic bean, you're doing it to help you communicate that point. And that bean shouldn't allow you to do anything else other than what's necessary to communicate your point. When you know what you're point is, you know what you need your magic bean to do and nothing else. When you don't, it becomes the storytelling equivalent of rambling.

We've been listening to stories our entire lives and culturally for thousands and thousands of years. I think as a species, we've developed a finely honed intuition about when it's a story with a point and internal consistency and when it's just a bunch of shit that's happening. You've listened to a really good storyteller tell a story (I know because you've listened to Trey) and you've listened to a guy rambling with no real idea of what his point is (I know because you've listened to Teague). We can tell the difference, even if we can't tell what the difference is.

Lost was a special case in the sense that it was borderline for very long. It was obviously rambling early on but seemed like it had figured itself out with enough time to pull things together by the end. Turns out, sadly, it wasn't the case. I, for one, was rooting for it.

EDIT: Oh, and I always figured that the ratifying of the Constitution had just occurred slightly off schedule, one or two states held out for a combined period of time that added up to about two years. With the Ford special election theory, you still have to account for how the major political actors on the stage are all completely different. Logically, we should have a Senator Vinnick or they should have a Senator McCain.

But it's just a TV show, I should really just relax.

ROBOT ROLL CALL!

I still don't know how Wonderland scenarios fit into the grand scheme of storytelling theory, admittedly.

But I think everyone's presumption was that all the crazy stuff would ultimately be traced back to one magic bean. If, for example, the island turned out to be an alien spaceship, would you be able to consistently explain everything that had come before through that avenue?

And that was the test of Lost that some felt it could pass and some felt it couldn't. That's the sentiment of, "There's no way they're going to be able to tie all that random shit together" is essentially a way of saying, "There's no way they'll be able to tie that all back to one magic bean."

Did we just get spammed by Zack Snyder's production company?