Mal and his people are just low-life thieves...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 14:32
VIEWED: 39973
PAGE 4 of 17
Quote:
Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:It was right.
Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:
When Mal pulled a gun to shut the crew up, shot a man with his hands held high in surrender, and told the crew to "get to work" in the movie, Was it right and heroic?
Heroic would come later in the movie.
Mal was on the clock; it's frustrating.
Early Chrisisall
Are you saying that frustration and time contraints justify anything?
given a situation like theirs where one of your closest friends was killed by that man, im pretty sure many of us would've shot that man with his arms held high. They dont live on earth, they have a different mind set. Plus, that guy killed Book, and he was a soldier, during WWII the allies and the axis both did not take prisoners for the first few days of combat in Europe. you seem very narrow minded PR. Think of them in THEIR context and environment, they dont live in our everyday lives which is what you are basing a lot of your comments on.
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***someone should make a MMORPG based on the 'verse!***
Geeze i want Firefly to come back!
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Quote:
Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:
Well said, AgentRouka.
Lemmee ask you all this:
When Mal pulled a gun to shut the crew up, shot a man with his hands held high in surrender, and told the crew to "get to work" in the movie, was he still a hero?
To me, that was one of his most defining moments. That was Mal looking out for him and his; doing what had to be done. Was it right and heroic?
Shooting someone who surrenders: In my book that is always wrong. Always.
Threatening the crew, can be argued, was likely not quite genuine and more of a way to harden both himself and them to the situation.
Shooting that Alliance guy? Wrong. Callous, selfish, immoral, testament of how far OVER the line this savagery pushed Mal.
Heroic was Mal when he decided that the message had to be sent out. Then and not before.
My personal opinion, anyway.
Chrisisall --
I defer to what PrincessRohannen replied to you.
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I say shooting the alliance's man was nothing short of justice.
If you play Nationstates.net check out the region Firefly.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bowie:
I say shooting the alliance's man was nothing short of justice.
If you play Nationstates.net check out the region Firefly.
In the way that lynching is justice.
Where that man belonged was a court. With a lawyer in his defense.
That would be what I consider justice.
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yeah, cause sending the alliance men back to them would really have gotten justice. Alliance wasn't about to do justice for thsoe people. There was no cout, there isn't allways. When people are on teh fringes that happens, its something that has always happened threw history, and sometimes those people are wrong, but then so are the courts. There was absolutly no way that man was not guilty. If your going to say no one should ever kill anyone else, even if those peeps killed first, well I think perhaps your watching the wrong show.
If you play Nationstates.net check out the region Firefly.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bowie:
yeah, cause sending the alliance men back to them would really have gotten justice. Alliance wasn't about to do justice for thsoe people. There was no cout, there isn't allways. When people are on teh fringes that happens, its something that has always happened threw history, and sometimes those people are wrong, but then so are the courts. There was absolutly no way that man was not guilty. If your going to say no one should ever kill anyone else, even if those peeps killed first, well I think perhaps your watching the wrong show.
If you play Nationstates.net check out the region Firefly.
Let's just say, I don't believe in "collateral damage".
And who's to say there's no way that man was not guilty? That ship had more than one person in it, obviously, nor do I think that the soldiers on that plane knew the lifestories of everyone on that planet. They got orders to attack an enemy on that planet.
Should they have known the people there were innocents? Where from?
I can imagine a lot of soldier in a lot of wars end up killing a lot of innocent civilians with bombs and the like, without personally wanting to, but because the people who ordered them felt it was okay.
Should all these soldiers be shot at sight by the friends of the innocent victims?
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Quote:The Alliance is responsible for squeezing its citizens, no matter who steals from it.
Originally posted by StakeTheLurk:
However, I would like to remind folks who feel that stealing from the Alliance isn’t a bad thing to ask themselves: where does the Alliance’s money come from? Innocent taxpayers, folks who never bothered anyone. And when you steal from the Alliance, even just a little bit, the burden eventually rests on the innocent folk at the very bottom. It doesn't really hurt the Alliance as an institution, it just squeezes its citizens.
Congruently, Mal is responsible for his own decisions regardless of what hardships the Alliance has brought him. I think he recognizes this. He's not forced to steal from the Alliance, he often admits the he just likes to.
Mal chooses to live the life of a 'low-down thief', and you can see the responsibility of that decision wear on him. "It's what I do, darlin'. It's what I do." It is what he does, but it is not who he is - and thus we have our tragic figure, our anti-hero.
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Ain't. We. Just.
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Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Let's just say, I don't believe in "collateral damage".
And who's to say there's no way that man was not guilty? That ship had more than one person in it, obviously, nor do I think that the soldiers on that plane knew the lifestories of everyone on that planet. They got orders to attack an enemy on that planet.
Should they have known the people there were innocents? Where from?
I can imagine a lot of soldier in a lot of wars end up killing a lot of innocent civilians with bombs and the like, without personally wanting to, but because the people who ordered them felt it was okay.
Should all these soldiers be shot at sight by the friends of the innocent victims?
While I wouldn't say you're technically wrong, you're looking at this entirely too rationally. It's easy to look at something like this and say that when you're not the friend of the innocent victims who died just a few minutes before. However, if you ever encountered a situation like this, where your friends, innocent civilians, are brutally slaughtered by soldiers, and you encounter one of those soldiers just a few minutes after you've watched one of your friends die, how do you know you wouldn't do exactly the same thing? How can you say that in that moment of rage, grief and anger, you would be rationally thinking about how this guy might not be guilty and you should just take him back to have a court of law deal with him?
The same goes to Princess: you're looking at this in an entirely too black-and-white fashion. Can you say that if you were in a kill-or-be-killed situation, or if someone you love was, you wouldn't kill the other person because you know it's wrong? If so, I applaud you. You're certainly a much better person than I could ever hope to be.
As for whether or not they're heroes, I think they are. They're ordinary people struggling to do what's right. They make mistakes sometimes, sure, because they're not saints. But that doesn't mean they're not heroes.
"I'm having one of those things - a headache with pictures."
"Of course I'm right. And if I'm not, may we all be horribly crushed from above somehow."
Like books? Go to this thread: http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=14862
to find out how to buy mine!
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Quote:
Originally posted by queenofthenorth:
While I wouldn't say you're technically wrong, you're looking at this entirely too rationally. It's easy to look at something like this and say that when you're not the friend of the innocent victims who died just a few minutes before. However, if you ever encountered a situation like this, where your friends, innocent civilians, are brutally slaughtered by soldiers, and you encounter one of those soldiers just a few minutes after you've watched one of your friends die, how do you know you wouldn't do exactly the same thing? How can you say that in that moment of rage, grief and anger, you would be rationally thinking about how this guy might not be guilty and you should just take him back to have a court of law deal with him?
I'm not saying that I would be immune to mindless rage in that situation.
However, that very human response is the reason courts were invented in the first place. The victim (and their friends) are not impartial and will exact revenge rather than justice.
Killing that man was a human and easily understandable response. But it was a wrong thing to do, an immoral one.
Quote:
As for whether or not they're heroes, I think they are. They're ordinary people struggling to do what's right. They make mistakes sometimes, sure, because they're not saints. But that doesn't mean they're not heroes.
Why do they need to be heroes for just living, though?
Heroes for getting out the Miranda word, sure.
But heroes for just... living their lives the way they do? That makes the definition of "hero" awfully wide. That means I'm a hero for surviving on a small paycheck, when I think that makes me merely an ordinary person. Hell, I don't even have to steal to get by. Does that mean I deserve an award?
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If you enjoy Firefly and don't know what the Libertarian political affiliation is, you should check it out.
Browncoats exist outside of the verse :)
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