* SPOILERS * Will There Be Sequels and Will Non-fans Understand *SPOILERS*
POSTED BY: Litwolf689
UPDATED: Sunday, October 9, 2005 01:06
VIEWED: 12998
PAGE 3 of 5
Quote:
Originally posted by chapter11studios:
P.S. About the whole thing with Wash. It broke my heart, made me gasp audibly (along with the rest of the crowd) and really drove home Joss's point: the stakes are real here. People die. It was an amazing, noble death that really moved me because I care about the character. And for that, I think Joss deserves to be commended, not criticized.
*is speechless about how perfect that statment is* omg, I never thought of it that way. It is just too true.
Anyway, Im glad you all seem so confident about non-fans. Now im feeling much better. Glad to know that non-fans still enjoyed the movie.
To those who brought non-fans with you to the screenings, how did they take Book and Wash's death? Were they confused about the characters of Inara and Book, because they were not explained that well, at least that's what I thought.
Slightly off topic, why do you guys think Book left the ship? We know why Inara left but why Book.
"Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FREAKIN' SHOW! I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damnit." ~Joss
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I've read alot of people who thought Zoe didn't show enough emotion when Wash died. I saw plenty of emotion. There was the denial of his death when she is pulling at his corpse yelling at him to get moving. There was grief and the distain for life in general when she is suicidaly trying to kill the reavers in the final battle. And finaly acceptance when she is talking to Mal at the end about the spaceworthiness of the ship. In that sequence I believe she is also refering to herself. I saw plenty of emotion. She is just a hard character who doesn't need to cry to show pain.
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I thought Book's and Wash's respective demise would have meant very little to the uninitiated fan. We got to see so little of Book, that newbies didn't get a chance to know him... and his secret died with him, so it left me kind of empty. Wash's death seems unneccesary. I felt there were only a few reasons why each would have happened. They were an impetus for the crew to be angry and to have a right to seek revenge without hesitation. They allowed for Ron and Alan to go do other things in RL. I personally believe that Joss didn't want to kill either of them. That he did it either because of pressure from Universal or from Ron and Alan... or both. It won't mean as much to newbies. It's like in Star Trek when the random crewperson who went down for an away mission was killed. You didn't have any attachment to them, so it meant little along the way. But for fans, it should have meant everything, but because it was so unneeded for Wash to die and so unsatisfying when Book does, it meant too little to fans. It should have meant more. I wanted newbies to get to know both of those characters first. The movie didn't let them. Book could have been just about anybody who died along the way, and Wash was just the pilot who got a few chances to make jokes and a final safe landing before his rude end. I loved the movie. Don't get me wrong. But in it's present state, there won't be a need for a sequel. Sorry my first post in a spoiler thread had to be negative. I have lots of good things to say too.
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Inara: Who's winning?
Simon: I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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In Reply to ManiacNumberOne:
The deaths were pointless? Maybe to non-fans but not to us Browncoats, or at least me. Did you read what Chapter11Studios wrote? The crew of Serenity is in a war. There are always causualties. Maybe Book's death was confusing to non-fans but it was a warning to Browncoats that no one was safe. It was a typical Joss thing to do.
By the way, did Wash's death remind anyone else of Tara's from BtVS? It kinda did for me.
"Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FREAKIN' SHOW! I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damnit." ~Joss
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I agree with you, Litwolf689... had I said pointless. Fortunately though, I said needless, which is an entirely different matter.
Neither of those charaters needed to die to satisfy the ends of the movie. Unless, of course the ends of the movie were as I said above... other than serving only one master. Joss tried to please everyone, and in doing so failed to completely please anyone. I'm not saying that about the whole movie, mind you. I am only referring to the deaths of Book and Wash. I think the biggest casualty in this war, was not tying up the loose ends with Book's character and relegating Wash to minor character status by having him die... how he died.
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Inara: Who's winning?
Simon: I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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I finally figured out what the movie really was.
"Buffy in Space" The movie was all about River being a slayer.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Litwolf689:
In Reply to ManiacNumberOne:
The deaths were pointless? Maybe to non-fans but not to us Browncoats, or at least me. Did you read what Chapter11Studios wrote? The crew of Serenity is in a war. There are always causualties. Maybe Book's death was confusing to non-fans but it was a warning to Browncoats that no one was safe. It was a typical Joss thing to do.
By the way, did Wash's death remind anyone else of Tara's from BtVS? It kinda did for me.
i agree. also, i would like to point out that joss does things like this to make us, the fans, feel. it really is similar to tara's death in that way. some of us are angry and some of us are just sad, but we're all feeling something strong. joss doesn't give us what we want, he gives us what we need. we needed wash's death (and also book's) to give us that intense rush of emotion that is such a part of the whedon package. plus, this is joss we're talking about. maybe we also needed these deaths to set up some grand story in future movies!
~lissa, spwhore
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I truly do not believe that Joss was the reason behind Book's or Wash's death. It just was not true to his way. Joss had set up way too much background and suspicion in the series for Book to die off so cursorily. We didn't even get to see the actual death. (Not that I want to see death, but if it was gonna happen, at least show it to me.) Shepherd Book could have been almost any shepherd in the movie. For the new fan, there simply wasn't enough setup to justify killing him to gain an intense emotional response from it. For those already initiated into the Firefly world, we didn't get enough. We didn't find out who Book was in his past, all we got was a moment between Book and Mal that alluded to Book's past. For the uninitiated, It means less to them to watch a character die, if they don't know them. The budding fan felt as little for Book's death as they would have for the other miinor characters who died, that we also barely got to see. i.e. Patience, Badger.
As for making me feel, well I felt. I felt throughout the whole movie. Too much really. It wasn't needed for Book to die for me to feel, and Joss doesn't need to kill off characters to achieve that end anyway. He is a much better writer than that, and we should give him the credit he deserves as a writer and recognize where he wasn't able to do what he wished.
Either Ron Glass wanted out and so did Alan Tudyk, or Universal demanded their token deaths for the big screen, or it was due to the more likely combination of both of those ideas.
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Inara: Who's winning?
Simon: I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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A couple of points:
It is my firm belief that Wash was fated to expire sometime in Season one, had FF continued. His and Zoe's relationship was too good to survive long in Joss' creation. Bumpy, sure...but the biggest of those bumps was, IMHO, resolved handily when Zoe picked Wash, without a moment's hesitation, in War Stories. Relatively smooth sailing from then on, and even the prospect of a bambino. It had all the marks of funereal foreshadowing. My money's on Zoe being Great With Child for S2....
Book: I'm pretty convinced that the Operative was Joss' way of giving Book a backstory without giving Book a backstory. All the moreso with that character's fate at the end: to disappear into the black, his Beliefs shattered, to try and re-establish some sort of meaning, or melt away in the trying. Book was an Operative. The Abbey was where he went to re-calibrate his moral compass (scrambled by events in the War?). Haven was where it led, and Serenity was his ride. His parting gift to Mal was the weapon with which to defeat the Operative...by which I don't mean (just) the cannon (nice symbolism, that), but the Belief which gave him the strength to cancel out the Operative's absolute conviction.
Interestingly enough...It seems River got to become Serenity after all. I look forward to seeing our girl perform the whimsical, adroitly balletic feats which she will coax from her.
Though still bleeding internally, I did love this film!
Department of Redundancy Department
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