MAJOR SPOILERS, but I had to say something....

POSTED BY: bassgravi
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 09:11
VIEWED: 20578
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FLECHETTE

Friday, June 24, 2005 8:29 PM

{hug CallMeSerenity hug}

This is one of the few cases where I'm glad I was spoilered over movie plot points - knowing what was coming let me see it thru differnt eyes and I had gone thru the grieving process already.

I could appreciate just how brillantly it was handled and even knowing all that had been lost were done with - I was still on pins and needles over the rest of the cast.

AXEMINISTER

Friday, June 24, 2005 9:33 PM

My boyfriend and I saw the movie last night. He's watched Firefly from the beginning and turned me on to it with the DVDs. We've both waited a LONG time for the movie, so it was disappointing to come away from the screening without the same sense of excitement that we went into it with.

Both of us agreed that the end of the movie was ruined by Wash's death, which came across as a cheap plot device rather than a necessary element to the film. This has been a character driven series from the beginning. If I wanted to see an action flick I'd rent any number of films being churned out by Hollywood, but what we all fell in love with, and what has made us so loyal to this show, was the characters. Killing off Wash felt like a slap in the face to the fans who enabled this show to make it this far.

From a practical standpoint, it will make the difference between whether I see this movie once in the theaters or ten times. Who wants to watch someone they love get killed over and over again? I think Joss needs his fans if the movie is going to make it and we deserved the payoff. We browncoats deserved to walk out of the theater feeling victorious and with Wash dead that victory was entirely diluted. Who cares that Kaylee has sex after that? Poor choices from an otherwise masterful storyteller.

SONG

Friday, June 24, 2005 10:06 PM

My take, as a freshly-converted newbie fan:

Select to view spoiler:

Hugs all around, my friends. It's a shock. Book was my favorite stand-alone character (I'm a real sucker for any depiction of real spirituality in mass-market entertainment). And the Wash/Zoe marriage was at the top of my list of favorite elements in the series. A marriage where the guy is kind of a wuss, the wife is taller (or filmed that way, anyway), and yet this isn't the focus or definition of the relationship? Wow. A marriage where the couple actually has sex and argues and fully inhabits the relationship? This is such a rarity in TV shows/movies, where marriage is the end of the story and never the story.

My heart is breaking for Zoe. She came through the same horrors Mal did during the war, and yet was intact enough to risk real love, and the kind of commitment that requires risk, a faith in a future worth sticking around for. And she proved many times during the series that protecting and loving Wash was her first priority, always. She cannot but feel not only bereaved, but that she failed. She is strong, but she cannot possibly ever be really okay after this.

I hear everyone hoping she is pregnant, but I gottta say, that's awfully fan-fic-ish. Wash is dead. Dead means dead. Dead means it's final, it's over, nothing will make it be less final or somehow okay in the end. Her having a baby, if it were treated as the magic-pill antidote to her grief, rather than as a whole new set of interesting, character-changing experiences, would be kind of ... plastic, somehow.

What this is all evoking for me, somehow, is the Buffy episode where her mom dies suddenly. I'm not a huge Buffy fan and haven't seen every episode, but that one episode is what made me first sit up and take notice of Joss Whedon. His treatment of death, and the way people really experience the death of a loved one, rang incredibly true for me. And knowing that he could do that in a show, that he could take his audience through something so anti-Disney, anti-Star Trek, anti-saccharin formulaic feel-good cliche, helps me to understand why he is asking us all to move into a 'verse where Wash -- harmless, funny, gifted, beloved Wash -- is gone, for no good reason.

That is life; that's the way death happens in real life. I suspect folks who have gone through this in their own lives know this without me saying it, while those who have not, won't understand until, G-d forbid, their own lives lead them through that door.

SONG

Friday, June 24, 2005 10:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BlackDove:
Select to view spoiler:
Zoe in particular showed almost no emotion whatsoever that her husband of the last several years was now gone forever. She was cold in a robotic sense. ... I would have prefered at least one quick shot of Zoe breaking down after everything was over or at Wash's grave, just give us something that shows us her feelings of loss.

I also disagree vehemently with this.

Select to view spoiler:

I felt her grief was immediately and desperately palpable, through the entire Reaver battle sequence. And Joss did give us a scene that showed her feelings of loss, with the exchange between Mal and Zoe that, surprisingly, no one has mentioned in this thread.

They've held the funerals, they've repaired the ship. Mal asks Zoe, "Is she going to hold together?" and Zoe replies, "It's shaky, but she'll fly" (or words to that effect). The camerawork and the actors' delivery make it perfectly clear that both characters are talking about Zoe in her bereavement; she is deeply shaken, but she is moving forward. I think this is totally in character, and that a scene with Zoe weeping with her friends would have been artificial. And a scene of her weeping alone would have been almost pornographic.

Maybe I'm just sensitive that way. Earlier in the film, the brief glimpse of Malcolm's grief for Book almost undid me.

GAMBIT3

Friday, June 24, 2005 10:54 PM

Quote:

They've held the funerals, they've repaired the ship. Mal asks Zoe, "Is she going to hold together?" and Zoe replies, "It's shaky, but she'll fly" (or words to that effect). The camerawork and the actors' delivery make it perfectly clear that both characters are talking about Zoe in her bereavement;

To quote you: I vehemently disagree. I never saw this scene as referring to Zoe. Much less as "perfectly clear" that they were talking about Zoe. Not even clear. Not even nebulously so. Plus, from all the people I've talked to, I haven't talked to anyone that has seen it that way.

Quote:

And a scene of her weeping alone would have been almost pornographic.

Come again? How would a scene of a widow crying for her husband be considered porno? I fail to see this completely.

__________________________
http://www.gambit3.com

SIMONWHO

Friday, June 24, 2005 11:08 PM

The "She'll hold together" scene is so obviously about Zoe that it's almost beyond subtext into just text. It's not even vaguely subtle.

The fact is, I watched the last fifteen minutes thinking "Surely Joss isn't crazy enough to kill off everybody, is he? Surely no more will die?" And yet the answer came "He just killed the nicest, most liked character, the one who was closest to being a self-portrait. He might."

That's why I feel bad for those who have been spoiled. Not just that they have the surprise of Wash's death spoiled for them (Book, given that he is a) old, b) religious, c) a repentant sinner and d) black, has had deadmeat stamped all over him since the pilot) but also that nobody else is going to die. Someone complained that they didn't want a generic action movie. If Wash hadn't died, that's what it would have been. Instead there's this huge emotional jolt. What it means at the box office, I don't know. But it is a better movie for taking that chance, of that I'm certain.

TDTMF

Friday, June 24, 2005 11:39 PM

-----------------------------------
Both of us agreed that the end of the movie was ruined by Wash's death, which came across as a cheap plot device rather than a necessary element to the film. This has been a character driven series from the beginning. If I wanted to see an action flick I'd rent any number of films being churned out by Hollywood, but what we all fell in love with, and what has made us so loyal to this show, was the characters. Killing off Wash felt like a slap in the face to the fans who enabled this show to make it this far.

From a practical standpoint, it will make the difference between whether I see this movie once in the theaters or ten times. Who wants to watch someone they love get killed over and over again? I think Joss needs his fans if the movie is going to make it and we deserved the payoff. We browncoats deserved to walk out of the theater feeling victorious and with Wash dead that victory was entirely diluted. Who cares that Kaylee has sex after that? Poor choices from an otherwise masterful storyteller.

--------------------------------

that sums up my feeling exactly

td

mal to jayne: well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle

SIMONWHO

Saturday, June 25, 2005 12:00 AM

How did Wash's death affect the plot? If it didn't then it couldn't have been a plot device.

RKLENSETH

Saturday, June 25, 2005 1:00 AM

What you all are missing...

Select to view spoiler:

Wash was the sacrifice. One of the deeper themes in the movie was sacrifice and freedom. Mal knew that they couldn't resist the Alliance without losing someone. In fact they could have lost everyone but they had to take the chance or everything would be lost. With Book's death, Mal found his faith and beliefs that he had lost at Serenity Valley and the resolve to do what he believed right: Getting the signal out. Wash was in the end the sacrifice that of Mal's cause. Ever heard the phrase that freedom isn't free.

Plus this opens up so much more plots. Zoe after Wash. Zoe and Mal's relationship. Plus there wasn't anything left with Wash's character. We knew everything about him and his relationship with Zoe. His death now changes all of that. Now there is more story to tell.

Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.

FLYINGTAMS

Saturday, June 25, 2005 2:13 AM

Yeah opens up crap plots. I wanted something light and funny - more of the series. This sounds bad. If he's lucky I'll see it once, but I strongly suspect never again.

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