Mal Reynolds compared to Han Solo
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Monday, August 30, 2010 19:38
VIEWED: 6737
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I hated that they did that, Jacen Solo was my favorite character gorramit!
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On the positive side, Mal would at least survive. Narrative law. Nothing else has killed him, and two chaotic good characters might accidentally end up fighting each other, but have heroic immunity against death, and so can't ever kill each other.
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I've heard Joss talk on this and he describes firefly as "The Killer Angels with the Millenium Falcon" so I think we gotta defer to His superior knowledge.
"I really am ruggedly handsome, aren't I?"
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Originally posted by Bytemite:Quote:
Originally posted by BlueEyedBrigadier:
until the events of the New Jedi Order, where he loses Chewie and his youngest son. Then the eventual fall of his elder son to the Dark Side...
That sounds sucky to me. I'm glad I didn't read that...
It was. It was like they were just trying to put some angsty shock value of killing off a likeable popular character so people would feel the horrors of entire worlds being destroyed more personally and go darker and edgier for the mov- Oops!
While I'm certainly not saying that the NEW JEDI ORDER series was GOOD (I actually think it was quite terrible), Chewbacca wasn't killed off fo "angsty shock value." Chewbacca was killed off for pretty much the exact same reason as Wash: "This is real, people. Things can change, and people WILL die."
At the time that NJO was written, the Original Trilogy characters had been with us for the better part of a quarter of a decade, largely unchanged. You can kill off as many members of the Rebellion as you want, but in the end, they're all just red-shirts. To show that they were serious about the Star Wars universe changing -- and about things being potentially serious and scary -- they had to kill off a major character.
www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."
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Quote:More stuff I have to get...*sigh*
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
And yeah, much as I love the OT, Star Wars just isn't as good without the EU. It's where you really get to see the roller coaster of Han's life.
The laughing Chrisisall
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On the main topic of the thread, I've often described FIREFLY as "what STAR WARS grows up to be."
FIREFLY is intended to be enjoyed by the same adults who enjoyed the Original Trilogy as kids, and it succeeds smashingly, I think.
I don't know that comparing Han Solo to Mal Reynolds is really fair because they're intended for different audiences.
While Mal and Han make an interesting (and pretty obvious) comparision, how about Inara and Leia? I mean, sure, Whedon's original intention was that Inara would be a rough and tumble whore, but the end result of the Mal-Inara dynamic is basically a more nuanced, more "adult" version of the Han-Leia dynamic.
www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."
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"This is real, people. Things can change, and people WILL die."
Right. Angsty shock value.
I was pretty much deliberately comparing Chewie's death to Wash's. I really do think that the "sudden death = reality" is an example of a widely used but very ineffective literary device.
The problem is, without sufficient lead up to the death, sudden death IS just a shock thing, and lessens the emotional impact on the viewer/reader. When the viewers/readers reminisce about the story, they and their friends won't be admiring the heroic/tragic/beautiful nature of the character's death or drinking to the sad but satisfying send off the character got, they'll be complaining about how pointless it is.
This also has a tendency to introduce plot holes rather than make things more real. In both cases, the stories had people with precognitive abilities. Plot holes.
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Quote:Okay... A.C. Crispin's? Brian Daley's?
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
the EU
Both? Others? Help me out, Cy.
The laughing Chrisisall
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I just happen to disagree strongly with the assertion that a "meaningless" death is lazy storytelling.
People die pointlessly all the time, especially in warfare. People die due to friendly fire, or because the supply lines aren't what they should be, or because they wandered off in the wrong direction, or stepped with their left foot when they should have stepped with their right.
In the case of both Chewbacca and Wash, the writers were re-establishing previously existing ground rules. The fact that there was not grand fanfare surrounding the deaths does not make it "lazy writing" (both deaths were written VERY intentionally, with a VERY specific overall story goal in mind), not does it "demean the love the fans have for these characters."
It plays on the Batman rule: No matter how much peril the writers put Batman in, the audience will always remain detached, because the dude's name is on the front cover SO WE KNOW HE'S NOT GOING TO DIE.
By showing that major characters can die fairly quickly, easily (and, yes, "pointlessly"), the writers are establishing a dynamic where we have more emotional state in, and attachment to, the survivors.
Just because you personally may disagree with that intent doesn't make it lazy or bad writing.
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I was pretty much deliberately comparing Chewie's death to Wash's. I can't tell if you noticed, or if you were objecting in particular to my calling it lazy storytelling. Which it is.
For the record, comparing Wash's death to Chewie's is flawed on multiple counts. Wash dies "for nothing", whereas Chewie sacrifices himself to save his best friend's son.
In a technical sense, Wash's death is well-written, whereas Chewbacca's (in which he waves a defiant fist as a moon crashes into him) is poorly written. (Not "lazy", but poor).
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What they should have done, rather than focusing so much on the core characters, Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, is brought in new characters every time there was a new threat. Instead, they kind of let the universe stagnate a bit too much, and had to resort to "shaking things up" in a way that probably turned off a number of fans.
I am assuming that you are not particularly familiar with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, because bringing in new characters every time there's a new thread is EXACTLY what the EU does.
I will also assume that you are unfamiliar with marketing and franchising, or else you would understand how silly it is to suggest that it would be a GOOD idea to write books that focus on the likes of Unar Thul, Tycho Celchu, Danni Quee when you have Han, Luke, and Leia available. You need look no further than the anger and annoyance directed at the addition of Ahsoka Tano as a major character in the CLONE WARS saga to see this principle in play.
I am not saying that the EU has been handled properly, by the way (I think most of the Original Trilogy expanded universe stuff is pretty lousy--although the Prequel Trilogy stuff is generally quite good), but merely pointing out that introducing tons of new characters is not the way to go.
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I don't have problem with character death, but jeez, at least have a poignant storytelling reason for the death if you're going to kill off a main character. Otherwise it's just a cheap emotional blow for the readers. They're not going to be saying, "oh man, wasn't that a heartwrenching moment when this character died so heroically/tragically/beautifully," instead they say, "what the crap? That was pointless." It's making a mockery of the emotional investment they have in the characters and story.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, which I am entitled to disagree with.
I'd like to say more, but I'm really at a loss for how to respond to the viewpoint that a death should be designed around making the audience say "Wasn't that a heartwrenching moment when this characted died so beautifully?"
So I suppose if Wash has been dressed prettier, his death would have been okay?!?
www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."
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Quote:Mainly, I think it's the same audience, minus the young'uns for Firefly.
Originally posted by GWEK:
I don't know that comparing Han Solo to Mal Reynolds is really fair because they're intended for different audiences.
The laughing Chrisisall
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