MovieChat Forums > The Langoliers (1995) Discussion > Were they 'really' Langoliers?

Were they 'really' Langoliers?

posted 11 years ago by just_jesss
7 replies | jump to latest

Yes I know there is no such thing and blah blah blah. It's just that Toomey's description of Langoliers is absolutely nothing whatsoever like the ones that show up at the end actually look like, so I was wondering if those are supposed to really be Langoliers of if that's just a convenient name for them since it was Toomey's worst fear and that's what he kept calling them?

You know the best part? You just wasted 2 seconds of your life reading my sig.

[–] cesarecesarini 11 years ago

They are Langoliers just because Toomey called them as such. But if also his father identified them as Langoliers, they would really be Langoliers.

[–] Silly28 11 years ago

See I didn't get it either. I thought his father just made them up to scare him but then these weird teeth creatures show up. So are they real? How did his father know about them? And why are they nothing like Toomey described?

[–] zharth 10 years ago

I think that either they weren't really Langoliers, and that's just a convenient name the group came up for them, because of Toomy's little fairy tale, or else they may have been some kind of psychic manifestation of Toomy's fear (very Stephen King) - that whatever force it was manifested as Langoliers by psychically feeding off of Toomy's fears. Either way, I don't think the force itself was really the same thing as Toomy's fairy tale monsters, because his dad apparently never mentioned anything about them being temporal creatures that swallow up the past. Although, on the other hand, there's a definite similarity between the Langoliers that chase after lazy children and gobble them up, and the creatures that eat up the past. Maybe it was just a coincidence, though.

[–] ychild 10 years ago

I agree. The Langoliers that Toomy's father talked about are a made up thing in order to scare the kid. Anyway, the past eating/deleting itself (that's what truly happened, imo) manifested as those creatures because that was more or less the idea that the group of survivors had about what would that mysterious approaching danger look like. They definitely got that idea from Toomy, but every one of them formed their own image of the so-called Langoliers, therefore the manifestation was something similar, but not quite the same as Toomy has described (a consensus, of a kind).

Still, the idea that in the past, somehow, the thoughts are partially shaping the reality (its appearance, to be more precise) remains. Otherwise, i would never accept a literal existence of a creature of any kind that makes sure the "yesterday" is gone, by eating it.

...Sorry if i messed up my point with my bad English.

[–] langolieron 10 years ago

I don't think "the Langoliers" as Craig Toomey described them actually exist in that universe. They were just something made up to scare a child, but in the story they serve a narrative purpose by foreshadowing the entities the passengers encounter. It comes full circle and they ironically consume Toomey in much the way the Langoliers of his nightmares would.

[–] Jedi-Dan-D 10 years ago

They're not the "Langoliers", the Langoliers are just made up things by Craig's sadistic father to scar him into getting better grades.

What the creatures are; the Lord created them to "eat" the past to make room for the present and thus have been eating the world since the beginning of time (or likely every body in space has their own army of creatures, so Earth had them since it's formation during the bombardment period when the planets and solar system was formed).

The creatures are close enough to what Toomey thinks are Langoliers and it's as good as anything to call them, as most people never see them due to going with the natural flow of time, and the few who do travel into the past are eventually killed by them.

[–] star_in_the_zenith_79 9 years ago

It just occurred to me, but maybe the Langoliers are sort of symbolic of the story of Lott's wife in the Bible, symbolic of how a person should never look back, or dwell on the past. Because in real life when people do dwell on the past or are unable to move on from things that happen to them, it can consume them as a person.

Its like Mr Jenkins said, you can't go back in time to change bad things that happened, they are done. So dwelling on them only consumes you and ruins your future, leaving you unable to move on with the rest of the world.

So the Langoliers might be symbolic of the past devouring a person who dwells on what is done and can't move on.

Good stuff here don't you think? of course, an army of mean looking pacmans on steroids is not really a delicate way of putting it, but an effective and compelling one nevertheless. I don't know if that's what King intended, but its a neat possibility.