So I just downloaded 23rd psalms from Itunes for 2 bucks, and i went to where we go inside the smoke monster and low and behold the flashes of electricity that swell up inside of it make out pictures of people. the last one is a statue of jesus on the cross, then there is eko's brother, some chick, the guy young eko shot at the beginning of the ep, and a bunch more that I didnt recognize.

yeah, this is a stupid idea! a mind reading smoke monster that doesnt kill some people but does kill other people. we already have an enemy like that on the island. Goodwyn and the others take the good people and leave the bad ones. How do they know a person is good or bad? Can they see into someone like the smoke monster does?

Maybe they are taking the ones they are pretty sure are good and leaving the rest for smokey to judge.

Whatever. Stupid idea!!!!! Now Locke and Eko are to be considered redeemed. But what about Jack? Remember pilot pt. 2. When they are running from the cockpit section and they get split up. Jack was gone just long enough to be judged by smokey.

So here's the problem I have with a mind reading smoke monster. 1st it is not a good idea and there isnt much room for justification for it. Unless it turns out to be alien which is an even dumber idea than and incident involving Joop turning into a smoke monster during an unforeseen incident.

and 2nd who is smokey to judge? we've seen how he acts towards humanity and nature and neither one must like him much by now. Always uprooting trees just to scare people and scan their brains and maybe kill them. yeah he isnt subtle at all which leads me to ...

3. the judge, jury and executioner. the rebel angels. the loyal angels. the saved. the redeemed. the sacrifice. the ritual. adam and eve. etc...
yeah i like the show when they incorporate religious symbols and ideals from some of the most ancient religions who figured out matrix's with 1's and 0's like in the I Ching, and I love the Gilgamesh reference. But when you make a list like this there does seem to be slanting towards a christian ideal of things. which makes me believe that nobody survived the crash. that they are all dead and the island is some kind of purgatory where their fate is decided by their actions. I dont like it.

luvppskull

Mm, the story would end up being pretty depressing if they were all in purgatory. It's possibly partly a cliche monster. "Judge not lest you be judged." At least, that's all I can think it would be at this point of the show.

How do we know the monster is 'judging' anything? For all we know it might be taking a 'tour' of their minds.

Or Eko might have been thinking he was going to die (not AFRAID he was going to die..just THOUGHT he was going to die) and he had the 'life passed before your eyes' thing and that is what the monster caught.

And how do we know that anyone is 'redeemed'? I didn't see the monster do a blessing and say "I now absolve you from all sin' or anything like that. It just showed up..took a look around and moved on. We have no idea what its motives were.

And its not purgatory.

However if you really think its a stupid idea..there's not much anyone can do about that.

Marlboro,
All due respect I think it's too early to be making these kinds of snap judgements about what the smoke is and isn't. Is the smoke reading his mind, or is implanting memeories to manipulate his actions on the island? It was hardly spelled out for us.

And while I did not come away from the scene thinking the show had re-invented the wheel, I will say I have never seen anything like that before in film or TV, and that should be acknowledged as something that is hard to accomplish these days.

But the fact is, we don't KNOW what was happening there. But it sounds to me like LOST just isn't your cup of tea.

A few things to think on.

Is the smoke even smoke? Dharma is obviously capable of mind control, so perhaps what we are seeing as smoke is manipulating the minds of people looking at it, or the smoke is just masking what is really there. It's a camoflage of sorts.

If you go back to the orientation film, we saw Degroot using magnetics to control matter (the floating black sphere), so the smoke may be electrical magentized particals of some kind. The "visions" inside the smoke looked an aweful lot like montiors to me, so I have to wonder if the smoke isn't some sort of tool for remote viewing, and mind reading that someone else, somewhere in a control room somewhere, may be controlling. Probably Degroot.

But I feel were presented with a clue, not a monster, and not an answer.
Njc------------------

Moving this because I in no way see a spoiler in this...please try to keep threads pertaining to spoilers in the spoiler theory section and reactions to a current episode in the Episode sections or the Gen theories section.

Thank you.

i don't think it reads minds at all i think it was just an effect the producers wanted to show...... to show that through all the events ecko went through in his past he isn't afraid of anything

It's pretty hard to call something a stupid idea when noone knows for certain what the smoke really is.
No matter what the island turns out to be some people are going to end up disappointed in the way it turns out. What we saw of the smoke in this last episode and what we saw of the smoke before- well it's really not all that new.

What did you think the smoke was when we saw it last season?
What were you hoping it was?

I'm not sure what I thought it was at the end of last season, but I was hoping that it would be better than a mind reading blob of something that may or may not be smoke. Personally I thought the nanobyte/catoms idea was pretty cool, and that may still be the case, but the idea that images appear as if it was a television inside smokey doesnt sound realistic. Looks like the makers of lost were simply force feeding us clues as to what the monster is...

If someone is afraid or not is still a reason to judge the person and therefore kill them.

You are correct in that I absolutely hate the show... I'm more interested in the mythos surrounding it. Perhaps I should just wait until the entire show is finished and sit down and watch them all at once just so I can find out what is going on.

luvppkull

You are correct in that I absolutely hate the show... I'm more interested in the mythos surrounding it. Perhaps I should just wait until the entire show is finished and sit down and watch them all at once just so I can find out what is going on.

luvppkull

Wait a minute you're interested in the mythos of the show? the one you hate? oh man you lot crack me up.

You hate the show? That is your right...just be careful to not come in here to pick a fight with people because trust me..wether you meant too or not with that statement...you ticked a lot of people off...

And other posters DON'T RESPOND WITH INSULTS OR ADVICE AS TO WHERE YOU WANT HIM TO GO...let it go. I don't want this turning into an "Oh yeah?? Well take this!!!" Okay??

Keep your posts articulate and on topic...your first post was well written..you made some very good points...just be careful..

The "I hate the show" remark was sarcastic. Its much easier to tell I'm being sarcastic in person. I am however vastly more interested in the mythos than the show itself.

luvppskull

The "monster" is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
It's made of smoke and "mirrors" people it confronts, if you will.

A Wikipedia entry on the term:
"It is based on magicians illusions, where magicians used smoke and mirrors to accomplish illusions such as making objects disappear, when they really didn't disappear at all."

and

"but also calls to mind the fierce Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (lit. "Smoking Mirror") for whom the hearts of huge numbers of human sacrificial victims were regularly cut out."

It might literally be smoke and mirrors. An illusion. I know, that doesn't explain the flashed images.

"Is the smoke even smoke? Dharma is obviously capable of mind control, so perhaps what we are seeing as smoke is manipulating the minds of people looking at it, or the smoke is just masking what is really there. It's a camoflage of sorts."

Well, I think its safe to say that its not smoke in any sense we would consider. Smoke does not have any means to control its movement, does not have the ability to apparently produce meaningful images to those watching it.
It just refered to as the smoke monster or whatever because that what it resembles most. I suppose, perhaps it *could* be smoke, somehow altered for some reason by Dharma- butr i guess, when does it stop being smoke and start being something else.

i think the smoke is kind of corny. unless is supposed to look totally computer-generated because it is totally computer generated from some island supercomputer