[SPOILERS] Which was the original intent for Monkey Island 2's finale?

[DimDunckel]

Hi,

I'm new to these forums, so I apologize if this topic has already been dealt with before. However, I wanted to share a few thoughts about Monkey Island 2's finale in the light of Ron Gilbert's revelation - in the famed Cressup interview - of the secret of Monkey Island as he coinceived it during planning of the first game: Guybrush has been in a theme park all along, imagining all of his adventures.

 

Yes, I know Return of Monkey Island gave an "official" interpretation to that ending as Boybrush and Chuckie simply playing over Guybrush's tales of his own adventures. But that is, as confirmed by Gilbert itself, a retcon, or at least a "reframing" of the finale, in order to both introduce Guybrush's son and (al least temporarily) reinstate the 17th century pirate setting as the actual reality of the game.

 

So let's assume that RtMI never took place. Which was, in your opinion, Gilbert's original intent for Monkey Island 2's finale?

 

I personally think the only viable explanation is that Guybrush was really intended to be a child: he simply got lost while visiting the "Big Whoop" theme park, and his parents sent brother Chuckie to find him. In his imagination, he soon became his archenemy, ghost pirate LeChuck. The scenes taking place in the underground tunnels are actually Guybrush slowly returning to reality.

 

There's, however, the lingering question of Chuckie's glowing eyes and Elaine still waiting for him on Dinky Island. As for that, I think Bill Tiler was right in his 2003 interview:

 

Quote

The explanation I heard is that Guybrush was lost in the Pirates Ride at Big Whoop Amusement Park the whole time, imagining the whole adventure. Then Chucky, his mean older brother goes and pulls him back to reality. The end. And that magical lightning coming out of Chucky’s eyes and Elaine waiting by the hole on Dinky Island (which sounds a lot like Disney Land) was put there just in case there was to be a Monkey Island 3. The secret is that the MI world is not real.

 

We all know Ron Gilbert left LucasArts shortly before after MI2 was completed. He probably wasn't sure he would make a MI3 at that point, so, in my opinion, he just tried to give closure to the saga by hinting at what the "secret" is, while still leaving some "loophole" to cling on in case he'd work on a sequel and therefore need to reinstate the reality of the game's pirate setting.

 

Or there may be more to it? I'd like to read your thoughts on that

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by DimDunckel

[ThunderPeel2001]

1 hour ago, DimDunckel said:

We all know Ron Gilbert left LucasArts shortly before MI2 was completed

 

Eh? First I've ever heard he left before he finished the game... 🤨

 

ReMI confirmed that the original "Secret" was that Guybrush was in a theme park all a long. There's literally a plaque on the wall stating this... right? (Not played it since it first came out)

[Remi]

24 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Eh? First I've ever heard he left before he finished the game... 🤨

 

ReMI confirmed that the original "Secret" was that Guybrush was in a theme park all a long. There's literally a plaque on the wall stating this... right? (Not played it since it first came out)

 

He did, indeed, leave after.

 

And from anything I heard over the years, the physical secret was the theme park T-shirt from the start -- Ron even confirmed the latter during his Cress interview.

[DimDunckel]

Sorry, my mistake. It was obviously after, not before 🤣

[DimDunckel]

Anyway, the topic is not about the secret, but rather how you think MI2's finale was meant to be (when MI2 came out, not now) in light of the secret...

[OzzieMonkey]

The thing about the "original intent" is...there wasn't one, and couldn't be. Ron Gilbert never started working on how that ending would be resolved until Return was a reality and development started on that game. He made the ending, and didn't think about how to "resolve" it, that could be a fun problem for him to solve later when he made the third one...or as happened in reality, for the Curse team to solve. I think that over the years, Ron has built excitement for a hypothetical third game by making bold claims about having the story in his head for years, possibly also thinking that it was such a pipe dream he could say whatever he wanted. It's only once Disney gave him the green light that he realised he would have to actually come up with something, and imo it's nothing short of a miracle that he was able to come up with something so clever and in spirit with everything that came before, but that's another discussion. He's alluded to this in interviews, but I don't think we realise how much Ron kinda forgot about Monkey Island on some level in the years since he left LucasArts because we're fans and we're almost more close to it than he is in some respects. He didn't spend his nights over the last 30 years pondering what he would do with that ending, that's just not the sort of person he is, at least with what we can glean from his limited public persona. That's just my take anyhow, I'm also not someone who buys into the all knowing auteur idea. Most creative works are people winging it, and that is not intended to minimise the art that is created, if anything it shows how incredible it is that any art is any good at all. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by OzzieMonkey

[Jake]

It seems like Ron had some scenes and moments and a vibe that existed concretely in his head for the third game, and beyond that not much else other than the confidence that chasing those ideas would result in a good game. My guess is that’s how he started on the previous two and it’d worked out well. Not everyone works by plotting out all the details of their world in advance, and basically no one works by figuring out a bunch of symbolism and “what it all means” before putting pen to paper* - interpreting a work is usually a fan or critic’s job - so it seems very likely that nobody knew the answers to these things until the next game was made. 

*I’m aware that people like Tolkien and Lucas seem to work this way, and their process is legendary among nerds like us, so people who are into nerdy things think that their worldbuilding-and-symbolism-first approach is a normal way to tell a story, but at least historically it’s actually highly irregular! 

[Thrik]

I’m sure I read years ago about how the glowing eyes were added to the end of MI2 to provide an out if needed, so I personally have always disregarded that detail and taken the rest of the ending for what it is.

 

When looked at that way, the whole ending chapter is fairly literal and easy to understand. It’s two kids messing around, supported by numerous clues throughout the first two games. What else could it mean?

 

The ambiguity always came from the glowing eyes at the end, but that has been cleared up by interviews and Return (including its little ending note).

[DimDunckel]

I agree with Thrik. I think MI2's ending was to be interpreted "literally", and was worked out as a way to hint at the (original) secret, while still allowing an "out" should the saga continue. Surely, had there been a MI3 by Gilbert in 1992, it would have been interesting to see how he would have worked his way out of that ending while still keeping the promise of revealing the secret (which was exactly what MI2's ending was about).

 

Anyway, I'd be interested to learn about other interpretations if any of you have any.

[Udvarnoky]

I don't believe Ron's intention at the time ran much deeper than the impishness of doing a Monty Python and the Holy Grail ending. I hardly doubt he had "thoughts" for where he might have gone from there, and it is intriguing how that rug pull encourages you to re-examine the games' fourth wall humor as if it was conscious foreshadowing, but I think by and large he just liked the idea of a wild swerve to be answered for only when/if the time came to do so.

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 11/3/2023 at 2:37 PM, Thrik said:

When looked at that way, the whole ending chapter is fairly literal and easy to understand. It’s two kids messing around, supported by numerous clues throughout the first two games. What else could it mean?

 

Are you forgetting Elaine's line (that was missing from the Amiga version)?

null

 

[Thrik]

Yes, I suppose you would also disregard that if you’re disregarding the glowing eyes.

 

I would imagine both were added in about 15 minutes flat before the crew jumped in the van to the floppy printing factory.

[LuigiHann]

If we accept that Guybrush was imagining effectively the whole game, it's not a stretch to think he might also have imagined the glowing eyes and Elaine's line on his way out of the park. I accept that the ending was likely intended to be taken literally, and that if there were a third game shortly after MI2 it likely would have elaborated on that and had Guybrush going in and out of the imaginary world. Could've been neat.

 

The only thing it leaves me wondering is that if "the secret of monkey island" was that Guybrush was just a kid playing, why would Ron pretend it hadn't been revealed when MI2 had effectively revealed that. So I think the titular secret may have been something else altogether.

[Didero]

13 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

The only thing it leaves me wondering is that if "the secret of monkey island" was that Guybrush was just a kid playing, why would Ron pretend it hadn't been revealed when MI2 had effectively revealed that. So I think the titular secret may have been something else altogether.

The titular secret of the first game is that there's tunnels and a lava lake under the Giant Monkey Head (in the original script this was a mouth to hell), as far as I understood the discourse of this over the last few years.

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 11/2/2023 at 7:32 PM, Remi said:

And from anything I heard over the years, the physical secret was the theme park T-shirt from the start -- Ron even confirmed the latter during his Cress interview.

 

Not sure I follow this, but my understanding (from the plaque in ReMI) is that the "it's a theme park" was the "original" secret, and that basic idea was expanded on to become the nostalgic Boybrush explanation in ReMI.

Edited November 5, 2023 by ThunderPeel2001

[DimDunckel]

17 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

If we accept that Guybrush was imagining effectively the whole game, it's not a stretch to think he might also have imagined the glowing eyes and Elaine's line on his way out of the park. I accept that the ending was likely intended to be taken literally, and that if there were a third game shortly after MI2 it likely would have elaborated on that and had Guybrush going in and out of the imaginary world. Could've been neat.

 

Yes, I think that would've been an intriguing plot! 🙂

 

17 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

 

The only thing it leaves me wondering is that if "the secret of monkey island" was that Guybrush was just a kid playing, why would Ron pretend it hadn't been revealed when MI2 had effectively revealed that. So I think the titular secret may have been something else altogether.

 

The titular secret is, as revealed by Gilbert himself in the Cressup interview, that "it was all a theme park", so in my opinion the ending of MI2 revealed exactly that, abeit with some ambiguity (Chuckie's glowing eyes).

 

Maybe Ron planned to state that with no ambiguity at the end of the third game, would he one day make it, or maybe it was just a way to have people keep speculating (after all he outright lied when asked if the secret was about "a kid lost in a theme park" in a 1999 chat).

[ThunderPeel2001]

2 hours ago, DimDunckel said:

The titular secret is, as revealed by Gilbert himself in the Cressup interview, that "it was all a theme park", so in my opinion the ending of MI2 revealed exactly that, abeit with some ambiguity (Chuckie's glowing eyes).

 

Hmm. Firstly, interviews aren't canon, the games are. Sometimes directors claim things about their films, but in the end, it's the films that speak for themselves, not the director's intentions. So whatever Ron said in an interview about interpretation doesn't mean much (whether in 1999 or 2023)... especially when he's said he doesn't want to impose his interpretation (which is why ReMI has multiple endings).

 

So, not meaning to sound reductive, but the intention of the ending of MI2 was... the ending of MI2 that was released. If you discount, ignore or reduce specific elements of that ending because you don't like them, then you're engaging in cognitive bias: "The bits I agree with/like are important... the bits I don't, are not."

 

So the intention was, in a very literal sense, everything we saw. Contradictory bits and all. 

 

And Ron has even spoken about how he came up with the ending: It was very late in production and he didn't know how to end the game. As Jake said, I don't think there was some major plan. There was an idea and MI2's ending was how that idea was executed. So I don't think there needs to be an expedition to dig much deeper than that... I feel Ron has been absolutely clear, especially with the ending to Return to Monkey Island.

 

So, yes, it's clear that Ron's original idea was: It's was a fantasy in a theme park. It's been confirmed (most importantly) in Return to Monkey Island itself. But the execution of that idea, in MI2's ending, inserted ambiguity. Not by accident, but deliberately. That ambiguity is now canon and is what was "originally intended". 

 

And Return to Monkey Island again deliberately allows the player to choose how to interpret the whole ambiguous situation... 

 

Am I missing something?

Edited November 5, 2023 by ThunderPeel2001

[s-island]

Interviews are canon.

[ThunderPeel2001]

45 minutes ago, s-island said:

Interviews are canon.

Which interviews?

 

For example (taking another fiction for a moment), I think Ridley Scott is full of shit when he says Deckard is a replicant (and so does the screenwriter and lead actor, incidentally). The movie itself leaves it ambiguous... so which is right? The director? The actor? The screenwriter? Or the movie? (Answer: Art speaks for itself.)

 

And even in this case, Ron Gilbert says he doesn't want his interpretation to overshadow the player's... In fact, I don't even know if these two interview answers are actually contradictory...

 

 1999 interview:

 

Quote

<Flirbnic> And there is another theory that it's all just a dream that a little boy (Guybrush) was having while in a ride similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean thing...

<Ron-G> Cold, cold and cold.

 

2023 interview:

 

Quote

When I first started working on this game, and it got the title The Secret of Monkey Island, this was the actual secret of the game: It was that Guybrush was just in this giant amusement park. But that whole concept was kind of abandoned early on in development...

In the original 1988 version of the game, [Guybrush] did not know he was in an amusement park... and that was his source of discovery throughout the game.

...

There's a lot of interpretations of what the ending of [Return to Monkey Island] could mean... you could follow some of these and go, "Oh, he's not in an amusement park, it's just a weird story he's telling his son." So I think you can look at it a lot of different ways.

I didn't really want to come down [with the ending] and say, "this is the way it is"... I look at those 10 different endings, and in my mind there's one of those endings that is canon, right? And it's probably a different one for Dave. And it's probably a different one for other team members. I'll never say which one is mine, because if I do then it will become canon. It will be the definitive truth, and I don't want that.

 

So I don't know how anyone can say a Ron Gilbert interview on interpretation could be canon, when he himself doesn't want his view to be canon.

Edited November 5, 2023 by ThunderPeel2001

[s-island]

I just wanted to see how much you would waffle on to get the last word.

 

[ThunderPeel2001]

13 minutes ago, s-island said:

I just wanted to see how much you would waffle on to get the last word.

 

Ha. Thanks. I have little to do this evening, so you got me... but it was interesting to think about.

[Remi]

5 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Not sure I follow this, l

Correct. 

[DimDunckel]

Well, as the thread title says, it didn't intend to debate canonicity as it plays out in the narration (if so, I would have to include RtMI on top of all that came before), but intent. That's why interviews matters.

 

There's no doubt that, when developing the first game, the secret Gilbert had in mind was "it's all a theme park". Then the idea of referencing or revealing that secret during the game itself took a back seat. It insipired the game title, anyway 🙂 Surely, one is left to wonder if Gilbert intended MI2's ending as a deliberate "spill-out" of the secret or, else, if by that time he no longer cared and just wanted to have fun with some weird twist.

 

I stand for the first option. In a 1990 interview about SoMI, he said:

 

Quote

This isn’t a historically accurate game. In fact, you’ll see when you play that there are a lot of anachronisms, like the vending machine at Stan’s used ship yard. They’re there to add humor to the game of course, but they also have a secret, deeper relevance to the story – but I’m keeping that secret for the sequel.

[ThunderPeel2001]

23 minutes ago, DimDunckel said:

Well, as the thread title says, it didn't intend to debate canonicity as it plays out in the narration (if so, I would have to include RtMI on top of all that came before), but intent. That's why interviews matters.

 

There's no doubt that, when developing the first game, the secret Gilbert had in mind was "it's all a theme park". Then the idea of referencing or revealing that secret during the game itself took a back seat. It insipired the game title, anyway 🙂 Surely, one is left to wonder if Gilbert intended MI2's ending as a deliberate "spill-out" of the secret or, else, if by that time he no longer cared and just wanted to have fun with some weird twist.

 

I stand for the first option. In a 1990 interview about SoMI, he said:

 

 

I guess I really don't follow you then, because you seem to want to reveal some secret "intent" beyond what the games say, and beyond what Ron Gilbert has said?

[DimDunckel]

10 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

I guess I really don't follow you then, because you seem to want to reveal some secret "intent" beyond what the games say, and beyond what Ron Gilbert has said?

 

Ron Gilbert said what he had in mind as the secret when he developed The Secret of Monkey Island. I'm simply wondering if MI2's finale, when it came out, was deliberately conceived to reveal (or at least foreshadow) that secret or it was some "let's do something weird" sort of thing.