I watched AMC's The Prisoner remake. The AV Club gave it a C. I would give it a B. I kind of liked it -- it made great use of space and color, and I will not spoil the ending, but in a lot of ways it reminded me of my favorite movie, Dark City.
But WOW did it want to be LOST.
1. Like maybe the opening shot is a close up of our hero's eye as he wakes up in this mysterious place.
2. A mysterious old man says "help me" to our hero, and disappears.
3. Our hero finds a nice suburban community in the middle of what appears to be a dangerous, savage, uninhabited place.
4. There is this mysterious totally inhuman -- nearly abstract -- monster thing going around killing people.
5. It flashes back and forth between two times -- but the relationship between the two turns out not to be your first assumption.
And it uses an early theory of LOST as its ending.
Well, the monster bit was in the original series so you could say that Lost took that element from The Prisoner. If you haven't seen the original Prisoner, I suggest you check it out. Infinitely superior
ReplyDeleteMore than that, it merges an early theory about the island in Lost AND what we understand to be its present purpose.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that Marc is right to point out, and not just with regard to the Monster, that Lost has shown a greater indebtedness to the original Prisoner series as it's gone on.
Geoff did see some of eps of the early prisoner. He had some friends over to ours and put on the first season. Everyone passed out within minutes leaving him to awkwardly watch alone.
ReplyDeleteLost owes a lot to the original Prisoner. The village, Village products = Dharma products, The white balloon = the smoke monster. The AMC remake made me want to gouge my own eyes out - I watched the whole thing but I really can;t even remember anything from the last 2 episodes because I was so disinterested. The original was a milion times better, even if only for Mcgoohan's crazy 60's British actor overacting. My brother and I scream "I AM NOT A NUMBER - I AM A FREE MAN" at each other constantly.
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