Subtle yet interesting show observations -- post yours
POSTED BY: AnimalM0ther
UPDATED: Friday, December 7, 2007 19:19
VIEWED: 121753
PAGE 37 of 40
I just noticed today when re-watching Safe that when Jayne is raiding Simon's bunk, he is wearing a stethoscope! Sorry if that was obvious to everyone else but I just noticed and I laughed my pants off! So perfect, so Firefly!
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Love Chaz
*Firmly grasps the Chain of Command*
What?
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Firefly has not only fantastic writing and acting, it also has incredible storytelling that comes in many different forms -- in words, expressions, visual images, and the way all those elements are combined.
I just watched OiS in high-def last night (on UHD) and caught a couple new-to-me things. I hope I'm not duplicating anybody's observations -- 'cause that would mean I read them and forgot!
In the opening sequence, after River runs out of the "very very crowded" cargo bay, Mal confronts Simon. Among the things he says is that (paraphrasing) Simon might have been shot, and since he was the doctor, who would patch him up?
That led to two thoughts. First, by that point Mal had obviously accepted Simon as an official crew member, namely, the medic. Second, though... Simon did get shot! As it turned out, the answer to Mal's question was Zoe (though she wasn't real happy about it, being more used to putting bullets in than taking them out).
Another little touch in that sequence (which I think has been mentioned before) is that just after Mal says to Simon "we're very much alone out here", the camera pans up through the hull and pulls back to show that we are, in fact, not alone at all.
And finally, in the galley scene, Mal cuts off the discussion of River's weapon skills, saying, "What we got here to deal with is the larger issue. And the larger issue is we got someone on board this ship might be a danger to us." At that point, the camera pans up (again) to show Early landing on the hull... making Mal's statement exactly true but in a completely different way than he intends.
Just wonderful.
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I'm pointin' right at it!
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In Badger's gorram den, he says "What were you in the war? That big war you failed to win. You were a sergeant, yeah? Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds. Balls and bayonets brigade."
In the deleted scene "Operative tracks mal" on the screen it say:
Rank/Grade: Sergeant
57th Overlanders
Balls and Bayonets Brigade
What a shiny detail.
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Quite a lot actually. Even in Serenity the movie! During the funeral for Wash as the camera pans over Kaylee and Simon... look closely at her necklace. It's the word that's closely linked to marriage!
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Quote:
Originally posted by mattcoz:Quote:Maybe, but I think she just couldn't stand the thought of him with another woman. Then again there are supposed to be a lot of hints about her past, so who knows.
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
One last one, something I know others must have noticed. Inara is angry at Mal when he "hides" in her shuttle to get away from Saffron, but did anyone else notice how she snapped completely when he started talking about children? Even though she mentioned it first, it seems to send her over the edge. I don't know why, but that little exchange alone is enough to convince me that either she had a child she was forced to give up, or she can't have children at all.
THAT WAS KINDA MY THEORY ON INARA TOO!!! Although I took that snappy moment to mean that maybe Inara wanted to have children with Mal.
Also I got my theory about Inara/Child from Heart Of Gold. When Petaline is having the baby she says "This is just a moment in time, step aside and let it happen" I thought that probably had meaning and also when Jonah is actually born you see Inara's face and she just looks so happy, she's almost radiant.
"Joss is Boss"
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I can't remember if anybody has posted this up already, such a long thread! But in the BDM when the rest of the crew are making their stand and Mal is leaving to go to get the signal out, as he runs away all he does is look at Inara. It's like he's trying to imprint her face into his memory, in case he dies. Then the next time you see her there are tear tracks on her face.
It took me ages to notice this because it's all in the background but I really wish it wasn't Nathan and Morena are so good at holding conversations with their eyes that it would have been a brilliant moment if you could see their faces as they looked at each other.
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O.K. this is another thread I wish I had time to read all of, but obviously don't, so my apologies in advance if I am bringing something up that has already been beaten like Patience's horse.
For some who've followed my other posts, you may know I'd finally gotten my wife on board. Yay for me. Bigger yay for her. Well, we finished watching all the episodes, and in watching them with her (my third time through) there are two things I noticed for the first time:
1) When they are all returning to the ship in Jaynestown, Jayne is in the center of the frame and strongly lit; his hands are facing somewhat back and you can see that they are still covered in blood.
2) When Kaylee walks into the infirmary in The Message, I believe Tracey's heart monitor speeds up. Kind of on the nose for Joss, but there. Given the prevailing silence at the time in the scene, I imagine I was supposed to notice sooner, but the thing had been beeping long enough I think I'd blocked it out by then.
I'm pretty sure there were one or two more things that I noticed for the first time, but I forget them, now. Oh well, they'll be waiting for me the next time.
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book
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I think the reason you find their theory/interpretation so ridiculous, is you are so stuck in your own interpretation - of words as much as the character - that you fail to realize others can have perfectly legitimate reasons for their interpretations. I'm not sure why, though. It actually surprises me how narrow your focus is, as if you aren't even allowing yourself to consider the possibility there could be another logical interpretation. :
Quote:
Well, Nandi describes Inara as focused, ambitious. That doesn't suggest outside pressure but rather actual free will.
Like hell it does. Well, it can, rather, but plenty of people can be "focused" and seem "ambitious", while basically having been semi-forced into such behavior patterns in childhood, often without even really realizing it. Given that we've never seen Inara's past elaborated on, and may never see it elaborated on, either of you two's interpretation of the "focused and ambitious" comments is an equally valid interpretation.
Free will is a surprisingly nebulous concept, of course, and becomes more so with every other huge breakthrough in the science of psychology. Everything we feel and think and choose apparently boils down to neurons firing and hormones flooding and this and that other biological factor. Moreover, what happens in childhood inevitably affects your adulthood - and social pressure is one of those pesky little things that happens to affect most people a great deal, because of course, we are social creatures. Can you rise above it or choose another path than the one society or your family would expect or desire? Well, yes. Otherwise society would stagnate, and never change; we would not have had Women's Suffrage or the Civil Rights movement or the American Revolution if everybody did exactly what society told them to do. But doing so - going against the grain like that - is actually pretty rare, without a catalyst of some sort.
This is actually one of my main problems with your "outside pressure vs. free will" argument.
Inara is a particular type of woman. A very pretty, very charming, graceful woman, from a good family, on a planet that is a Core planet and accepts "Companion" as a perfectly legitimate job choice, nay, a really good, really respectable, high-paying job choice, for attractive, charming young women. And I think we can assume that Companion training is pretty damn expensive, seeing as for one thing, they charge so darn much, and for another, the training apparently ranges from archery and fencing and calligraphy to anatomy (sort of, heh) and psychology and music, and need I go on, really?
In short, we can reasonably suspect, until such point as Joss outright disproves it, that Inara could have had a family not too unlike the Tams - rich, with high standards for their children and a tendency to push education and encourage them to go into high-paying, educated, respectable careers. Note that you can even have your cake and eat it too - Simon, after all, was encouraged to become a successful doctor, but he likes being a doctor and is damn good at it. Inara, as someone pointed out earlier (albeit much differently and in a different context), has often deliberately chosen as clients people who have psychological problems - that stressed-out female politician, that virgin boy in "Jaynestown", you get the idea. Her profession is monetarily lucrative, but she clearly isn't just in it for the money. Nor is she in it for the sex, because she's generally supposed to to service the client, not the other way around. Inara may well have been pushed, however gently, into choosing the profession she did, and her liking it and choosing to go along with it does not disprove this. In fact, considering she literally started her training at age twelve, I think it's safe to assume that at best, she really did have a family with high expectations for her. She may well have thought that the profession she chose was respectable and noble and admirable and wanted
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Here's something I've always thought was kind of a nice touch, in the BDM however brief it was - blink and you'll miss it, hence why I have no problem posting it here even though it's entirely possible to see it the first time you watch the movie (which I did, which probably enhances my opinion of the shot somewhat, I don't doubt). It's in the climax of the film.
Now, many people have cited "my turn" as a powerful moment - and it is. Some have also cited the blood dripping off the Reaver blade in River's hand at the end of the battle, or the way she was backlit, as a small, awesome touch, which they are. But my favorite River moment from the climax is one I am perplexed to have never seen mentioned in such threads.
When River is fighting the Reavers, right before a cut (back to Mal's fight with the Operative, I think), she does this movement that is so beautiful: with two Reaver blades now in hand, and having been punching and beating off the Reavers with what's apparently kung fu (going by what the fight choreography guy said her fighting style was a combination of), we then see her lean down and forward a little on one leg, the other gracefully straight (sort of like a looser, less low-to-the-ground version of the pic they used for the desktop backgrounds), and arc the longer blade forward and then behind her in an incredibly fluid, graceful curve that hits at least two if not three Reavers.
It's perfectly integrated into the fight, is quick, and fluid, and the prettiest damn fight scene movement I have ever seen in a movie, ever, I think. Even the vaguely similar movement you see The Bride do in Kill Bill Vol. 1 is not nearly as beautiful. I filled with elation and I think I almost cried with joy when I first saw it, actually, after worrying for a couple minutes or whatever that she was going to die, and here she is a "creature of extraordinary grace", and the little itty-bitty schizo ninja ballerina is using her dance moves to kick psychotic space-cannibal posterior! And make it look like a perfectly-choreographed dance while doing it (which of course, it really was, because they based the style on a combo of "kung fu, kickboxing and ballet" to create a deliberately "balletic" martial art. My point is, the effect was definitely there, and it was beautiful and seamless and utterly appropriate).
No matter how many times I see the BDM, I can never not anticipate seeing that one shot again. It makes me swell with happiness to see such a beautiful movement, especially in such a triumphant moment for her. I remember my first time watching the movie, in the theater and having been completely unspoiled for it beforehand but having seen all or most of the TV series (and thus become attached to her of course), and the entire climax of the movie, I completely forgot to analyze it, which makes it the first time in years that something had been so good as to get me that absorbed. I mean, by all reasonable logic, I should have just known that due to their arcs, and given storytelling conventions that are conventions for damn good reasons, Mal and River, at least, could not die. But damn it, that harpoon hit Wash, just about the last character I would have expected to get killed off because who on Earth kills off the comic relief just out of the blue like that? (Joss does, that's who), and my brain just froze on me in panic and I forgot to remember that certain characters were almost sure to survive and most of the others were likely to survive, so I was anticipating just about every one of them to kick the bucket in some awful, horribly painful way. So, especially the first time around - I really was so filled with joy, seeing that scene and that shot. The triumph, the grace, the beauty of it. I still am filled with joy, just thinking about it.
Remind me if I ever manage to be directing a movie with action scenes, to get the guy who choreographed that one on the job. XD Then they can be super-pretty action scenes!
Oh, and here's a couple of non-Firefly/Serenity moments
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My cartridge fell out of my gun...
I don't think this has been mentionned yet. In the BDM, when Mal and Inara are entering the shuttle during the get-away sequence, Mal holds a fake grenade is his hand 
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