My thoughts on Serenity *SPOILER*
POSTED BY: j6ngo1977
UPDATED: Thursday, December 29, 2005 04:26
VIEWED: 9293
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As for River standing in the middle of the room...
I like to think she either kicked the last Reaver into the button that opens the door or, even better, she pushed the button and quickly jumped into position to look really uber-cool (I know I would if I'd just taken out a bajillion angry men and women single-handedly and they were strewn at my feet, just to ram the point home to my crew that I totally rock and they should all be in awe of me. I'm pretty sure I'll never get the chance to do it though.)
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OK I just have to add my two cents about the deaths in Serenity. Some of you are talking about the neccesity of the deaths...well death is never nessicary which may be a point Joss was tryin to make...or not but its a thought. Book's death I agree was almost needed to fuel Mal's character to put it all on the line. Wash's random death saddedned and surprised me, but in all honesty I think the story could have been propelled without the death of Wash. It was far too quick and random, but I suppose that is Joss's way (ex. Tara) to keep us on our toes. Ultimately though I think the Serenity crew is the heart of the story and taking out one, nevermind two characters messes with the whole fiber of the thing. I don't think Joss would kill characters off without having a true purpose for it or without plans to bring 'em back. Another reason I say this is because there is more that needs to be told especially about Book. We never learn his past and I think that past is a key aspect of the whole Firefly/Serenity storyline. It's not Joss's nature just to cut somethin off without explaining what happened which is really why the BDM was made to begin with. He couldn't let it go without sayin where it went, and that's exactly what he did with Book. If firefly does continue in some way I gurantee Book will come back in some fashion to tell his backstory, and going with this idea who's to say Wash won't either? I guess we'll have to wait and see and I see that this post is far too long as it is so I'll end it here...
-Dan
Ain't that just shiny?
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DanielFrye: I'm with ya on the Book thing - his story was one of THE most interesting of the whole crew's in the TV series. Before even knowing that there was a movie coming out, my wife and I watched through the DVD set of the series, and after it was over, we started talking about our questions that we most wanted answers to. Tops on both of our lists was "Who the heck was Book in his previous life?" "What's Book's backstory?" That would've provided at least a whole season's worth of episodes, just exploring how and why Book came to be a Shepherd...
My personal feeling is that he was once an Operative. He knows sooooo much about that world and how it thinks and works, and he says that Operatives truly believe in what they are doing; they'll kill people without even asking why, just acting on blind faith in the Alliance and their mission. The Operative's exchange with Mal at the end of the movie tends to bear out something along these lines - he tells Mal he'll never see him again because there's nothing left to see, indicating that his eyes have been opened to the fact that he is a hollow, empty shell. He sounded to me like a man about to take the first step on the journey of a thousand miles, searching for his lost soul and some sort of redemption. Seems like just the kind of journey Shepherd Book might have undertaken at some point in his murky past...
Of course, Joss being Joss, that's far too easy and obvious an explanation, and nothing in his universe ever seems to fit together as neatly and easily as I think it will - which makes it all the more entertaining to watch, in my opinion. Most shows get boring to me because I can figure out where they're going. Joss always manages to surprise me, and usually manages to upset me at least a little bit with some of his nastier surprises. I admire the man for that ability.
As for River opening the door... I just take it that River's abilities and knowledge are so far beyond us that locks and such don't really even exist for her except in the sense that they're simple puzzles, easily solved. Sure, Kaylee might have rigged the lock so a Reaver couldn't open it, but how do you rig it so RIVER can't figure it out, when even she doesn't know how much she knows? If math, physics, martial arts, and gunfights are mere child's play to her, what challenge can a simple lock offer? Of course, if that's the case, why didn't she simply walk out of the Alliance's secret facility on her own? Hmmmm...
For Wash's death, I'll take it on faith that there's a bigger reason for it than we've seen. Will he be back? My bet is that he will, at least in flashbacks or "prequel" form, but it would seem a lot harder in THIS Whedonverse to bring someone back from the dead... Same goes for Book - there's still an awful lot we don't know about him, and it's very "un-Joss" to leave such a rich story just hanging.
Mike
Grrrrr. Arrrgghh.
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As much as Book's and Wash's deaths were grievous to us fans, I hope that Joss will not bring them back. Sure, flashbacks and prequels are okay, but no "they didn't really die" or "they were miraculously recussitated" stories, please.
I hate it when writers kill off fictional characters, then bring them back. I hated it when they did it with Jean Grey in X-Men (and just about every other instance where it's been done). A writer just doesn't kill off characters he's so painstakenly developed without good reason. To bring them back as an afterthought is criminal. They should've left Jean Grey dead, and I hope Joss doesn't bring back those he's killed off.
As much as I enjoyed Wash & Book, it would hurt the story to bring back a character once they've been killed. (One exception I can think of that actually worked, and didn't cheapen the story, was Doyle's return of Sherlock Holmes.)
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I don't think Joss would be so tacky as to bring them back from the dead :D. I mean sure, he did it in Buffy I'm pretty sure (I never watched it episode after episode) but then again the show deals with the occult and heaven/ hell etc. so its not AS far-fetched.
__________________________
There's no show I'd rather see, than the one with Serenity.
You can't take the sky from me...
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It's hard to know what I think about the deaths of Wash and Book, primarily because I'd been exposed to spoilers about their fate before I acquired the DVD; same goes for the origin of the Reavers. Given that their deaths didn't have quite the shock value they should have because of my prior knowledge, it's Book's death I have the biggest problem with. Not that I liked him better than Wash; I don't, I like all the crew. My ambivalence over Book's death relates more to the fact that, in the movie, he was introduced, had a scene, then he's dead. It all seemed so...washed-out and two dimentional, somehow, and not nearly up to the standards of Firefly.
The suddenness of the two deaths, that I could accept; it turns the standard hero death scene completely on its head and does accomplish the task of putting the survival of the entire crew in doubt. Maybe my misgivings stem from the movie format, itself. I had the vague impression that Joss might have been attempting too much because of the 'larger' format and that because of that, the tight focus we've come to know and love from the series was somewhat diluted. It's annoying, really, this absence of a complete 'wow' reaction to the BDM on my part and at the same time not being able to pin down the exact reasons :)
I'd give the BDM a 6.5 or 7 out of 10; it didn't suck, but it also doesn't rank up there in the top quality category, either.
Oh, and this is most definitely NOT the only cancelled series ever to be made into a movie; Star Trek accomplished that feat in 1979. Serenity, IS, however, a member of a very select club in the particulars of how it managed to get to the big screen.
If you can survive death, you can probably survive almost anything.
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Quote:
Oh, and this is most definitely NOT the only cancelled series ever to be made into a movie; Star Trek accomplished that feat in 1979. Serenity, IS, however, a member of a very select club in the particulars of how it managed to get to the big screen.
.
Of course how could I forget the mighty Star Trek. Apologies for the oversight it was Christmas day. I'd been drinking allday Im surprised what I wrote made any sense .LOL.
I totally agree on Books death It just didn't feel validated.
I did like how the end was played out when Mal was fighting the bounty hunter. When Mal was getting his ass kicked I expected River to turn up and then a big finale fight follow but this never happened and Mal eventually went on to win. That was nicely done.
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I have to disagree with the character’s not changing. Movie River is not the same as TV River. And it’s a major change, because it reverses the whole theme. Where Firefly was about the underdogs struggling to survive in the pond, Serenity is, to some extent, Buffy in space. River’s transformation from helpless victim to superheroine changes the whole dichotomy. Now that’s not a show stopper. I liked what they did with River, but I’m not a River man. I thought her and Simon made a good subplot, but the story was always about Mal, his crew and the Serenity, not a super chick fighting demons. And I thought the River scenario hurt the credibility of the movie. Look, I’m not sexist, but a 90 lb girl cannot put enough force behind a punch to do the kind of damage River was doing. I’m sorry, but as a physicist, I have to call bullshit. It was one thing for Buffy to do it, she was supposed to be some kind of supernatural superheroine, River was not. River was just a girl with, perhaps, some kind of psychic powers derived from surgical manipulation, but making her also magically strong is dumb. There I said it, sue me.
On the other hand, I liked Wash’s death. I thought that was an important twist. Wash was a throw away character. He was a sidekick and he had no real story to tell. The only reason Wash was even memorable was because of how well Allan Tudyk played him. So killing Wash punctuated the storyline without sacrificing anything crucial to the story and that only made the movie better. Tudyk’s excellent acting talent will be missed but the loss of the character Wash will not affect the show drastically and it creates a plausible device by which River, as the new pilot, becomes a functional member of the crew.
Book’s death, I think, was a mistake. Although I understood why they did it, there were too many untold stories to kill off Book. Better it would have been for them to find some way of getting more use of out of Wash’s death, which I think was way underplayed. I do see the Obi-wan analogy, but I also think it was forced.
I thought Jewel made a better Kaylee when she was a little plumper, but all in all I wasn’t disappointed with Kaylee. Simon, Zoe, Jayne and Mal did not seem to suffer any noticeable transformations to the big screen.
I was happy to see some use of automatic weapons by the crew. I’ve always thought that the strict adherence to the image of the late 19th century small arms was a little overdoing it. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense that in a future in which firearms remain common weapons for fugitives and petty criminals, the only weapons they have available to them are revolvers and pump and leveler actions. It sort of belies the proliferation of automatic small arms. But that’s a small thing.
I wasn’t displeased with the movie, but I make no bones about it, I preferred the show on TV. I think Firefly may have suffered upon transformation to the big screen. It might have lost some of its raw honesty and became more of the kind of theatrical flashy superhero stuff that Hollywood loves so much. Still, I don’t think the transformation was that bad. They stayed true to the original in most cases and where they departed, it is hard to tell if that was done for Hollywood’s sake or if that is the direction the show would have taken if give a few seasons to mature. The real problem is that there are just too many important characters, too many sub plots and too complex of a theme to tell in a movie. This is a story that can only be adequately told in a venue in which each arc can be drawn out in episodic fashion.
Also the Star Trek comparison is a poor one, I think. Star Trek was canceled in 1969 and did not go directly to a movie. In fact it was 10 years before the movie came out and when it did, the set, the characters and the even story had undergone considerable changes. In effect the 1979 Star Trek movie was a rerendering of the 1960s tv show, much as superman and batman movies. That’s completely different from Firefly being canceled
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I've read the "buffy in space" thing in lots of places now, mostly by ppl who didnt like the film, and i just dont see it. I mean, how many river's action scenes are there?. As far as i remember, the one in the pub where she start randomly to kick peeps and the one against the rivers (correct me if i'm wrong, i havent seen it many times... yet). I think that the history is much more based arround Mal, and the crew as a whole.
About her being "magicaly strong", i think that many of us saw that coming. She read minds, is being followed by some guys who can make you bleed through the eyes with a blue lantern, and killed 3 guys in 3 shoots with the eyes closed... the alliance was making a super killing machine. Of course she had "super habilities" like buffy, just in a sci-fi way :P. reading minds is as impossible as a 90lbs girl hitting so hard, but hey, it's sci-fi. If you make read minds possible, then you make telekinesis possible, then you make a 90lbs girl able to hit as hard as his mind can.. i guess you follow me :)
Well, overall, i loved the film, i felt sad with the deads of book and wash, but prolly we wont see any more firefly :'(, so it's not like we will miss em in future chapters.
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Quote:
Originally posted by j6ngo1977:
The characters have not changed from Firefly which was the biggest worry I had.
Interesting you think that. I thought mal was an unlikable psychopath in the movie. I also wondered why people compared him to Han Solo - I *like* Han Solo.
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