What would you have done? SPOILER WARNING

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 11:04
VIEWED: 5036
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CHRISISALL

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by jclast:
Making the Alliance stereotypically evil in the film turned wonderful shades of grey into large patches of black and white.

Just curious, did the BDM say specifically that the WHOLE Alliance or Parlament was in the know about Miranda and the Reavers? Did I miss something?
I think it's possible to see all as SignyM talked about in the original post up top. I never got the feel of it being all-encompassing like in, say, Star Wars, where everyone in the galaxy was involved to some degree or other.
It's a smaller movie the second time around, and better, too.

Chrisisall

JCLAST

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:33 PM

The implication I got was that while only key members of parliment knew about River, they all knew about Miranda.

I could be wrong, but it just felt like Joss was out and out saying: Serenity = GOOD, Alliance = BAD.

I liked the story and figuring out the origination of the Reavers; I just liked it better when the Alliance felt less like an enemy and more like a government.

CHRISISALL

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by jclast:
they all knew about Miranda.

Hmmmm. That was not my impression. Tell ya what- I'll come back with a clearer idea after I see it 3 or 4 more times next week, okay?

Chrisisall fuzzy in the brainpan

STAKETHELURK

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 11:31 PM

Quote:
jclast wrote:
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 12:33
The implication I got was that while only key members of parliment knew about River, they all knew about Miranda.

I could be wrong, but it just felt like Joss was out and out saying: Serenity = GOOD, Alliance = BAD.

I liked the story and figuring out the origination of the Reavers; I just liked it better when the Alliance felt less like an enemy and more like a government.

I don’t feel the movie made the Alliance into an “evil empire,” in fact, the Operative explicitly denies this. I think I’ve got a few things to back me up here:

- The Alliance appears to be a democracy. The opening narration implies that the “interplanetary Parliament” is an elected body. It may be that they only represent the populations of the Central Planets, but that would put them in line with most “democracies” in the 19th Century (US included). And it sure means they ain’t no dictatorship.

- Alliance weaponry. We already know from the series that the Alliance police use non-lethal weapons (the sonic guns). Well, the Operative grabs an officer's sidearm when he’s fleeing his flagship and later shoots Mal with it. The weapon gives off some zappy energy blast, like a taser. So even Alliance soldiers are given weapons designed to subdue, rather than to kill.

- “I was assured this project had full Alliance support.” The Academy holding River is separate from the Alliance, it requires Alliance support to proceed. Sure, it’s sinister, but it’s only a government funded program ran than a government run program.

- The Alliance genuinely wants to help people. They looked upon the border worlds as savage and backward, and they wanted to help so much they forced their help onto the Independents. Not exactly a good policy, but there was no evil intent--only a desire to improve lives. That same desire is what led to Miranda, another crime from good intentions. Whedon seems to be saying it’s good to help people, but it’s bad to force unwanted help upon them. Thus, the Alliance isn’t evil, just tragically misguided.

- The delineation between the Alliance and the Parliament. In the series, there was no mention of a “Parliament” and the Alliance was constantly referred to as a monolithic agency. But in the movie, the characters constantly talked about “Parliament” where they would previously have said “the Alliance.” Not to go all political, but it’s the same as saying “the Administration” rather than “the United States.” The Alliance as an institution is verbally distanced from the crime, rather it is the leadership at the top who are the criminals (and their major crime is simply taking their ideology too far and then hiding their mistake).

As for whether every member of Parliament knows about this, that is left unclear. The Operative speaks of “key members of Parliament.” River babbles about “old men covered in blood. Never touched them but they’re drowning in it.” Mal and most of the others simply mention Parliament in general. It is plausible that “key members of Parliament” were involved in the Miranda disaster, but the whole Parliament has become complicit in covering it up. It is also equally possible that only “key members of Parliament” know about the mess and have used their higher security clearance (they’re “key,” so they get to see more than the rest of the Parliament) to hide their mistake. Either way, the broader institution of the Alliance is not corrupted, only those directing it. Overall, I feel that Whedon successfully preserved the ambiguity of the Alliance in the film. It is still “just a government.” We’ve simply learned more about what it does and how it operates.

JCLAST

Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:38 AM

Wow. I hadn't thought about it like that, but couldn't your argument work for my side as well? All members of Parliament would know about the failed governmental program, but only key members would know about the school/psychic camp they funded?

Thanks for the great reply. The Alliance doesn't seem so indiscriminantly evil now.

JCLAST

Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:38 AM

Wow. I hadn't thought about it like that, but couldn't your argument work for my side as well? All members of Parliament would know about the failed governmental program, but only key members would know about the school/psychic camp they funded?

Thanks for the great reply. The Alliance doesn't seem so indiscriminantly evil now.

SIGNYM

Wednesday, October 12, 2005 1:20 AM

Well, CLEARLY I have to see the BDM again in order to sort out my impressions!

Please don't think they give a shit.

NOSADSEVEN

Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:31 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Once you've saved the solar system where do you go form there?

But that's just it. They didn't save the solar system - they just blew a whistle. In doing so they managed to save (most of) themselves, but one of the things I liked most about this movie is that what they did was indeed a very small thing. It may well lead to bigger things, but it, in and of itself, was not.

The action by the crew of Serenity is just one battle in an ongoing struggle, and we don't even get to see just what kind of an impact it has on the grand scheme. What we do get to see is the impact it has on the characters: Mal finds his rudder. River finds some peace. Simon finds Kaylee. And Zoe...

If that's not human scale, putting the characters front and center, I'm not sure what would be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain't. We. Just.

STAKETHELURK

Wednesday, October 12, 2005 4:46 AM

Nosadseven is right. All the crew really did was introduce doubt. Where before people (like the Operative) trusted the Parliament blindly, now there is doubt at all levels. Parliament hasn’t come crashing down, the Alliance hasn’t been overthrown--all they’ve done is introduce doubt into a previously infallible belief system (am of course referring to the Central Planets, reckon there’s already plenty of doubt as to the Alliance’s intentions out on the Border Moons). The solar system hasn't been saved, just informed.

HKCAVALIER

Wednesday, October 12, 2005 6:02 AM

Hey Signy,

I really like your idea of bringing the story down to life size. I sure would have liked that movie. I'm frankly surprised that fans of Firefly would actually advocate changing the world so radically just to capture the interest of some mythical "mass" audience. WTF? Does no one trust that a real Firefly movie would sell? Are vapid popcorn movies the only things that anyone likes? Weird.

Anyway, for me, the movie plot wasn't really over the top (the set pieces, yes; plot, not so much), it was overblown. The scandal was trivial really. Trivial because it wasn't really incriminating at all. It was a mistake, get over it! A terrible mistake with grave consequences, but a mistake. They shouldn't have covered it up, but governments always cover up their embarrassments. Only hardcore lefties and libertarians are gonna care about this particular "truth."

So here's what I would have done to put the B back in BDM...

In The Tempest by William Shakespeare, Miranda is the name of an enchanted girl who lives with her father on an island ruled by monsters. Her father is a mighty wizard. Hmmmm...

Miranda wasn't the planet (that was a lame one-step riddle in the movie), Miranda was the name of the experiment. River's father was the scientist that headed the project. When Project Miranda went wrong, most of the people died of docility, a significant portion went all reaver, and the infant daughter of the head scientist (exposed by mistake) was unaccountably immune.

The government would have sent the Elder Tam and his family into hiding. He would have had to give up his scientific career in the bargain. His daughter would have been thoroughly tested, but nothing would have come of it. His son would grow into a fine scientist, whom the father would push to reclaim the profession he had to abandon.

Then in adolescence, his daughter would begin to show signs of tell-tale aggression. Terrified that his daughter was finally succumbing to the Miranda Syndrome, and still stultifyingly guilty for the Miranda catastrophe, he lets the government take his daughter away. His gifted doctor son must be kept totally in the dark if he's to prosper in his profession.

Okay, meanwhile, the government, y'see, has been continuing the Miranda Project secretly, trying to create another River Tam. All they seem to be able to do is create more and more reavers which they dispatch to the outer rim to keep the independents in check (now there's a scandal!). In their experiments on the adolescent River, they discover that River's incipient psychic awareness has something to do with her immunity. So they augment it. Y'see, they get the idea that if they can control the reavers in some way they would have a devastating and ever-renewing fighting force. So they work on River's psychic awareness with the express purpose of making her a sender. They're gonna control the reavers using River--and then her brother springs her. Whoopsie!

Now, River has no idea of what they've been up to. She has no idea that she's a "sender." And the Alliance is absolutely desperate to retrieve her as she truly represents an apocalyptic threat to their way of life; she is a terrible weapon that mustn't fall into the wrong hands. All this info trickles out over the course of the movie along with the character relationships as they come up in service to the plot. So at that climactic moment when River tells Simon that it's her turn and disappears into the crowd of reavers, she doesn't kill them, she subdues them; she doesn't so much control them as the government had planned, she reaches out to them, and helps them to "focus" their rage on a specific and somewhat more appropriate target. Even Mal ain't expecting that one!

Haven't quite worked out the climactic battle and how River deals with her tragic pawn of a father, but there's plenty of room for huge climactic battles and psychic foo from River. Oh, and Wash lives.

Anyway, you asked.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We do

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