The Lost pilot set up the tone and the drama of this acclaimed series, and these facts shed a lot of light on how it came to be.
Lost premiered in 2004, and the two-hour pilot immediately captivated audiences. It had flash, heart, diversity, and the acting was spot-on as well. They managed to squeeze an incredible amount of mystery and intrigue into a relatively short time span, and the final cut of the pilot was a true masterpiece.
The companion book released for the first season, fittingly called The Lost Chronicles, explained a lot about the intentions of the creators and the hidden meaning in the small details of the pilot, and it also revealed some juicy secrets.
Lost begins everything with a close-up of Jack's eye, and the visual steadily became a motif throughout the series whenever an episode was focused on a specific person. However, the meaning behind the "opening eye" is a little more abstract than just indicating which character was being highlighted.
The creators intended the "eye" to represent the comradery between the audience and the survivors. It signaled that, like the viewer, the survivors had no idea how the episode would pan out, and they were just as puzzled about the island and their journey.
One of the most iconic scenes from the pilot was the destruction of the plane, or more specifically, the tail breaking off mid-flight. And what might surprise a few fans out there is that during the crash, none of the actors were actually shaking around. It was all camera work, visual effects, and a few harnessed stunt performers in the background.
It just goes to show that even with all the available film resources, the creators knew that nothing would beat some good old-fashioned camera tricks, and it helped further establish the Lost pilot as one of the greats.
Vincent became an important symbol of hope and normalcy by the end of the series, but in the beginning, his meaning was much more obscure. The creators set him up as a reference to the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and he very much embodied this idea of arriving to a "new world."
Like Wonderland, the Island is a place of mystery and fantasy, and Vincent the "white rabbit" was a great way to symbolize all of the absurdity to come.
The Oceanic airplane wing was a serious showstopper in the Lost pilot. It loomed over the survivors, and the apparent CGI was so good that it almost looked real. And the kicker is that it was real: an actual plane wing, from a legitimate L-10 11 (a type of wide-body jet). They took a decommissioned plane from an airplane dumping ground in the Mojave Desert, and they cut it into several pieces in order to ship it to Hawaii.
Of course, safety was still an issue, so while filming they decided to hold the wing up by a construction crane. Artists then erased the crane in post-production, and it was some true movie magic.
Lost is such an iconic name that its original title, "Nowhere," feels almost foreign to the ear. And as the companion book The Lost Chronicles aptly put it, the original "Nowhere" script "seemed to be going the way of its title." This initial screenplay was very different than the final version, and it was more stereotypical of a survival plot.
The change to "Lost" signified the change in tone, style, and genre to more of a "sci-fi" concept, and the name as a whole is just much, much better.
Following this same thread, the change to "Lost" actually did have a more complex and deeper meaning than just being a catchier title. The co-creators of the series, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, described the title as signifying this idea about "lost people on a lost island."
Not only were the survivors "lost" physically, on a deserted island, but all of them were lost in their own lives and emotions as well. They all had demons to overcome, and the title was a great signifier of the many character journeys to come in Lost.
This is one of the biggest shockers about the pilot. Because originally, Jack's character was supposed to die by the end of act 2 in the episode. He still had many of the same attributes (heroic, daring, doctor-ly), but the writers wanted a big twist to the pilot, and they truly thought this was it.
It was only right before the first meeting for the green-lit pilot that the creators decided to let him live, and the epiphany happened after months of other people's concern over having a titular character die so suddenly. Many thought it wouldn't be fair to the audience, and everyone is quite lucky that they elected to make the change given that Jack is a legendary fan favorite.
The wreckage-strewn beach was such a massive set that it actually had a few bystanders worried. Just a few days after filming began, there were several calls to the police to inform them that an actual plane had crashed because the crash site was just that realistic.
They had to put out a press release in order to negate the stream of calls, but fortunately, it all worked out for the best, as the finished product wouldn't have been nearly as impressive without the incredible realism of the crash.
As production for Lost began to roll out, the network actually called mid-way to ask if the pilot could be turned into a movie. They wanted them to film an alternate ending in case they decided to convert the pilot into a movie, and there's even a photograph of J.J. Abrams adamantly fighting on the phone for the pilot while he paced atop a fallen plane wing.
The pilot wouldn't have been nearly as successful as a film, and thankfully, the creators stuck to their guns. The series was born, the Lost fan-favorite season one was off with a bang, and no one could have predicted the complexities and intrigue this decision would then bring.
By the date that it aired, the two-part Lost pilot was the most expensive pilot ever produced. It totaled a jaw-dropping 10 - 14 million dollars, and it was seriously unprecedented in its time. Not only does this number speak to how different Lost was just as a television series, but it also spoke to the risks there were with a pilot of this magnitude.
Luckily for everyone involved, they pulled it off flawlessly, and the Lost pilot has gone down as one of the greatest in cinematic history.
