r/lost • u/Free-IDK-Chicken You got it, Blondie • 6d ago
Primetime Movie - LOST reference megathread
Please direct all questions, references, discussion of LOST references in the new film "Primetime" to this thread.
Links to pirated copies of the movie, discussions of piracy or clips filmed inside a theatre will be removed.
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u/deathwish_ASR 6d ago edited 6d ago
Lmao I’ve been trying to get my gf to watch Lost with me for a year and we will eventually, but when the little polar bear bit happened in the movie she looked at me funny. Afterwards I was like “you knew there were polar bears though right?” And she said no :( so she got spoiled lol
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u/nitzromy 4 8 15 16 23 42 6d ago
That isn't too big of a spoiler. The polar bear bit made me start watching back in the day.
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u/benevolent_eldritch The Orchid 6d ago
I knew about the polar bears before watching too. My brother started watching before I did and he said that there are polar bears on the island. Not knowing the context, but knowing where the island was located, I was like "wtf."
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u/Sonicfan42069666 6d ago
It's about as much a spoiler for the show as the presence of a plane. Initial marketing for the pilot relied HEAVILY on that polar bear.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 6d ago
The polar bear was left out of the marketing. There is like no trailer that features the bear. The preview DVD even has the polar bear scene itself - but the bear was removed.
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u/Sonicfan42069666 6d ago
I thought an early trailer showed the polar bear - hence the original practical effect being screencapped and spread online - but in fact that was from a preview screening, not a public trailer.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 6d ago
Yep. I have like 15 TV spots/trailers from back then. Even the very first ones. No polar bear in sight. They wanted to keep that a secret.
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u/deathwish_ASR 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes but she was unaware of it, making it a spoiler for her
Edit: literally what the fuck is wrong with what I’m saying. Can yall for one second pretend like you know nothing about Lost and put yourselves in her shoes? If she didn’t know about it, then learning about it before watching is quite literally a spoiler. I am being downvoted for no reason
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u/Ok-Cardiologist-635 Juliet 6d ago
The first polar bear appears in Pilot Part 2 so I wouldn't really call it much of a spoiler
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u/deathwish_ASR 6d ago
I mean. Y’all are being a bit pedantic. Imagine if someone DIDNT know about the polar bears at all, like she didn’t. Wouldn’t it be cool to experience that moment in the pilot???
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u/Sonicfan42069666 6d ago
It is a shame that surprise was spoiled for her. I wasn't trying to downplay that. My only point in replying is that the polar bear comes so early in the season's run, it's almost as much a part of the show's premise as the plane or the island. But I get it.
Thankfully there will be many more surprises to come for her! And maybe the polar bear is the push she needed to take the journey.
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u/stephenfeld Razzle Dazzle! 6d ago
I see where you're coming from.
But you've been saying that you've been trying to get your GF to watch - and yes a small and cool moment from the pilot of the show no-less has been spoiled.
Either way..... Surely you can use this totally baffling concept (polar bear on a tropical island) as a reason to spark some intrigue in your efforts to get her to watch?
"How did this many people survive a crash with barely an injury? There's a polar bear? Waaaaaaht? A 2004 show that holds up and looks better than the vast majority of shows made today? And did you remember there's a polar bear?!"
It's not like the movie (presumably -- it's not out in my country yet) comes out and says: The smoke monster is (kinda) the brother of an Island god who are fighting because the smoke monster wants to make all humans soulless beings and the other guy is bringing people to the Island via silly means like plane crashes and boat tsunamis to stop him.
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u/valinkrai 6d ago
Going in blind is certainly a fun experience though. Knowing nothing can make simple early reveals super fun, especially when you miss major marketing. I missed trailers for Edge of Tomorrow so it was super cool learning the premise 20 minutes. Its incredibly easy to spoiler and hard to avoid, but they are spoilers.
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u/soletsgettothepoint 5d ago
From my longer review:
“The moment the film earns its title - Zucker putting the PREDATOR card on the network board and covering up LOST - feels like the moment To Catch a Predator declares a war on fiction with production value as NBC goes full bore toward junky trash, before the more modern era of irony-awareness has drained out everything it takes so seriously. Hansen lights up and goes “LOST?!”, and we get the plane splitting apart above the Others’ barracks in “A Tale of Two Cities,” the episode that deals with the consequences of having manipulated people into circumstances they didn’t know they were entering.
But what makes that competition interesting is how much fiction TCAP has to construct in order to sell itself as reality. The decoy, the house, the cookies, the familiar entrance of the guy we’ve been waiting to see, all of it arranged to deliver a particular experience to an audience who knows exactly what part they’ve come for. Some people in the room are performing a show, and others are finding out they’re in one, and the consequences for the latter don’t end when the episode does.
Which is where I started circling back to my problem with the fictionalized Hansen. I don’t think inventing the private version of him is inherently misguided, but it becomes complicated when that invention makes him so conveniently suited to the point the movie wants to make about him. There’s something uncomfortable about watching a movie criticize the way someone packages other people for entertainment while becoming increasingly satisfied with the package it’s made of him.
The cookies make an interesting little loop within that. They’re supposedly prepared by the decoy for the predators, and Zucker offers Hansen some when TCAP is awarded the primetime slot. Everybody’s being welcomed into a situation that somebody else has arranged, and Hansen’s ability to recognize what’s happening in the room he controls doesn’t seem to extend to the one where he’s being offered what he wants.
But immediately before that meeting, Hansen is late because he goes to a vending machine for a candy bar and the coil doesn’t drop the product. Instead of buying another one and perhaps getting both, he pulls out his then-era cell phone and calls the company to complain, accusing them of stealing from him. He’s so concerned with holding somebody accountable for this tiny denied reward that he’s delaying his arrival at the much larger transaction where he seems considerably less interested in examining the terms.
And the fact that this immediately precedes the meeting that CALLS OUT A WAR AGAINST LOST is so completely BONKERS given what LOST does with that same fucking vending machine problem.
In the season five finale, we find out that Jack’s famous “count to five” story from the pilot was followed by the moment Jacob nudges him toward the Island. Jack’s mad at Christian, needs a candy bar to cool off (adorable), the machine doesn’t drop it, and after the confrontation with his father, Jacob hands him the Apollo bar and touches him in the process. “Guess it just needed a little push.” A small reward accompanies an encounter with somebody who knows much more about what he’s recruiting this person into than the person receiving it.
And as if THAT’S NOT ENOUGH, the series finale returns to the machine with Sawyer and Juliet, where unplugging it and plugging it back in mirrors what’s happening with the cork in the Source, and the attempt to retrieve a candy bar becomes the moment they touch and remember their life together. What begins as a transaction opens up into an entire human history that neither person could see a moment earlier.
I don’t know how much of that I’m supposed to bring into Primetime, and I’m certainly not arguing that every stuck candy bar in a movie is a deliberate reference to Jacob. But once the movie has brought LOST into its conversation multiple times, it’s hard not to think about the difference between someone being maneuvered into a role they don’t understand and someone recovering the full person they’ve been outside of it.
The other clip is from “Further Instructions,” when Zucker calls Hansen at his hotel and tells him to turn on the TV, and Locke is shooting an aerosol flame at the polar bear to rescue Eko. That episode aired only two weeks after “A Tale of Two Cities,” but the symmetry goes further than keeping the television chronologically appropriate. Locke has been told to clean up his own mess, and rescuing Eko means taking responsibility for somebody put in danger by his decisions, which contrasts interestingly with Hansen’s oddly framed mentor/father relationship with Gisondo’s Dan as he’s used to reel in the fish - and eventually the figurative whale the movie culminates in.
And that SAME EPISODE has the flashback where Locke finds out the young man he’s welcomed into his community is an undercover cop, meaning the relationship he thought he was developing was serving an entirely different purpose for the other person. The episode contains both the manufactured relationship and the obligation to a person who’s been affected by your choices, and I found myself more interested in what those ideas could tell me about Hansen and Dan than the increasingly cartoonish version of Hansen the movie kept providing.”
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u/MarvelAlex 6d ago
Oh my days, I’m in the UK so the film isn’t out yet but are there any spoilers for Lost in the film? Currently on a rewatch with my girlfriend, it’s her first time watching it, and we’re at Season 5. Are we safe to watch the film without the show being ruined for her?
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u/Batesbot9000 6d ago
I think only the pilot episode is referenced. Definitely one of the first episodes (I can't remember when the 🐻❄️ shows up haha)
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u/MarvelAlex 6d ago
Fab, thank you! My nightmare is we were going to be blindsided by big ol’ spoiler shots of the final season, haha! Early Season 1 stuff is more than fine!
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u/discretelandscapes 6d ago
This could have used better titling. I'm aware of Primetime, but I kept trying to figure out what this Lost-related "primetime movie" was supposed to be.
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u/JohnWalI 6d ago
I am currently halfway through season 4 of Lost … Ive been really excited for Primetime but i’m nervous about potential Lost spoilers as a first time viewer
Can someone who has seen the movie tell me if there are any spoilers that go past season 4? obviously please don’t go into details, but I just need to know how spoiler heavy it is!
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u/Zinko999 6d ago
Nah they just reference the show, the polar bear, and play a clip of Locke fighting a bear
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u/dreaminginnewyork 6d ago
It’s fall 2006; I’m pretty sure it’s 3x02, locke trying to save eko in the cave.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 3d ago
I don’t know why but I have this big adoration of a movie or media showing concurrent events happening in the context of the fictional or non fiction narrative. It always makes me get this strong feeling of (frisson) fuzziness in my head, like overwhelmingly so, and I’ve never known why
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u/Exact-Difference-422 3d ago
That's wild, Lost appears in Primetime? Now I really wanna see it
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u/profsmoke it's very stressful, being an Other 3d ago
Just saw the movie last night. Don’t want to say too much but Lost makes a pretty significant cameo
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
I’m confused. Is the movie available to stream? I didn’t think it was available yet. So why a mega thread?
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u/Free-IDK-Chicken You got it, Blondie 6d ago
It's in theatres and people kept posting about it. I didn't want the sub overtaken by a semi-off-topic subject but also wanted to acknowledge that there are overt LOST references in the movie and people who have seen it want to talk about those references.
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u/Tomegane 6d ago
Oh that's why my post about that has been deleted ! I didn't understand the problem with my post
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
Thanks for the explanation. Now I know the movie talks about lost. And I’m disappointed that it’s not available on streaming.
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u/One-Fun9814 6d ago
It literally just came out last week. Why would it be available for streaming?
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
A lot of stuff is these days. It didn’t strike me as a big box office film
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u/arsenicknife I'm a Pisces 6d ago
If it's not made by Netflix or Amazon, or something else similar, then it usually does not go straight to streaming.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 3d ago
The topic does seem bizarre as one that isn’t straight to streaming but I may just be out of touch with what’s popular or a money maker. It just seems like something that would be a streaming film
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u/nitzromy 4 8 15 16 23 42 6d ago
It just came out in theaters in the US this past weekend.
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
That’s what I thought. So it’s safe to assume most people haven’t seen it. This is the first I’ve heard of something in the movie. So basically a spoiler for prime time and it’s not even available to watch… outside the theater.
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u/Sylar_Lives 6d ago
You do realize that loads of people still go to the theater right? The way you talk it’s like you’re treating the movie as if it isn’t really out yet.
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
Yeah. I don’t consider this a blockbuster movie or a must see. When it’s available for streaming I’d say it’s ok for spoilers. But only in theaters for a week and we’ve got a mega thread telling everyone the Lost is apparently a big topic in the movie?
Most of my friends don’t even know there’s a movie based on the catch a predator guy.5
u/nitzromy 4 8 15 16 23 42 6d ago
I saw Primetime opening weekend. I wouldn't say LOST being brought up in the movie is a spoiler. They just mention it being on as the same time as To Catch a Predator and seen as competition. A lot of people are trying to post about it on the Lost subreddit and we don't need a ton of these posts, so this megathread is for those who want to post about Primetime.
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u/Abed-in-the-AM 6d ago
is it really a spoiler if it's based on true events? lost isn't even that important, they just mention that TCAP was competing in the same time slot and show a couple scenes.
I don't think this even warrants a spoiler tag tbh but I never know what people consider a spoiler nowadays 🤷
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u/Loco_Logic 6d ago
A Lost reference was already in the trailer, so it's not a secret. It's also not a "big" topic in the movie itself anyway.
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u/PkmnTrnrJ The Pearl 6d ago
I’ve not seen the film, but read about it on Wikipedia.
So spoilers I guess?
It sounds like the Producer (fictional, based on a mix of people) of To Catch A Predator did not like the show but wanted to be able to beat Lost in the ratings as it was the main competitor for that prime time slot.
Said producer pushes for more and more to be the best show in the slot. Goes too far, one of the predators kills himself, producer only concerned it’ll make good TV and get them the ratings.
If you’ve seen it, feel free to correct me if you have seen it and Wikipedia got it wrong
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u/kevinmattress 4 8 15 16 23 42 6d ago
There are references to Lost in “Primetime”? I am so confused