Little things you noticed in Serenity

POSTED BY: christhecynic
UPDATED: Monday, January 23, 2006 22:41
VIEWED: 21046
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CHRISTHECYNIC

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 4:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kozure:
A minor costuming detail that bugs me when I see it is that Jayne's shirt when he's in the Maidenhead has a complete hodgepodge of rank insignia - his shoulder slip-ons indicate he's a corporal, but the insignia on his chest shows that he's a Sergeant First Class. I suppose this could be some creative sewing by Jayne to make his shirt look more impressive, but it bugs me nonetheless. Jayne's indicated in the past he never fought in "no war" - the shirt seems to be a private security uniform. Could be surplus, could be just Jayne sewing on a bunch of insignia on a uniform shirt. He's also put pilot's wings on the left front shirt pocket.

Someone not-me figured this one out. Those are trophies (apparently he gave up on getting an ear.) I guess that you'll see at some point that he also stole the security firm insignia from the guy he knocked out in the bank as well. He never fought in a war, but that didn't stop him from stealing the rank markings of people who did.

DONCOAT

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 4:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kozure:
Probably everyone notices these lines, but I find it particularly poignant when you know the movie well enough:

THE OPERATIVE
There's a lot of innocent people in the air being killed right now.

MAL
You have no idea how true that is.

Just to make it explicit, this line of Mal's has at least two equally-poignant meanings.

First, of course, is the reference to Wash.

But Mal may also be referring to another set of "deaths in the air": the Reavers who are dying in the space battle.

How can Reavers qualify as innocent? Mal answers that in his next lines: "I know the secret. The truth that burned up River Tam's brain..." Mal knows that the Reavers are innocent victims of the Miranda experiment, just as much as the people who did lie down.

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I don't disagree on any particular point.

SAMEERTIA

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 4:41 PM

How many Big Red Buttons did people find?
I think I'm at four...

ANDRE83

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 4:47 PM

Nah, its only in reference to the reavers. Wash has nothing to do with that. He is long gone, and wasnt killed in the air anyway.

Jayne: All those years of preacher training, getting knocked out by one bounty hunter
Book: Oh, dont get me wrong. I gave him a hell of a fight
Jayne: Epic i'm guessing

JERRYT

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 7:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by misbehavin:
One of the little things I noticed is in the scene where Zoe and Mal discuss why he pushed that villager off the Mule. The sound and lighting are perfectly tied to the ship leaving the atmosphere. Behind the conversation, you hear the buffeting of the ship and the side of Mal's face is lit toward the red end of the scale. Then there's a shot toward the bow where you can briefly see yellowish light from the cockpit. At the exact second the buffeting sound stops, the light on the side of Mal's face shifts blue. Wash comes down from the cockpit and behind him you see the cockpit is now dark against the black of space. There was definately a lot of love that went into the making of Firefly and Serenity - it shows through in details like this.

That is one of my little nits with the movie.

Spacecraft don't burn leaving the atmosphere, just on re-entry from the speed/friction. I could see it if they were doing a full burn like in the pilot when they were running from the Reavers, but I wouldn't think normal takeoff thrust would provide enough speed to cause this.

Of course, maybe Kaylee hot rodded the engine to provide enough speed to cause this on takeoff.

JerryT
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"I'll be in my bunk"

CHRISTHECYNIC

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 8:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by jerryt:
That is one of my little nits with the movie.

Spacecraft don't burn leaving the atmosphere, just on re-entry from the speed/friction. I could see it if they were doing a full burn like in the pilot when they were running from the Reavers, but I wouldn't think normal takeoff thrust would provide enough speed to cause this.

I think they might have been pulling a good old fashioned, "Run like hell," after all there were Reavers. If they aren't going to be chased on account of running I'd think they'd want to get out of there fast.

Same goes for leaving Miranda, they're in a hurry.

You'll notice that they don't burn when leaving the atmosphere other times, so I think it's safe to assume they were going very, very fast.

-
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Btw, I have nothing against someone spotting a mistake, but if there is an explantion that makes sense I prefer to go with that.

DONCOAT

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:05 AM

Actually, the amount of frictional heating during ascent is a function of several factors. It is most definitely a consideration in the design of actual spacecraft, though less so than the heat of reentry.

To achieve Earth orbit, you have to gain a velocity of something like 15000 miles/hour. You have to lose the same amount to return to Earth. The difference, of course, is that virtually all the braking is done by atmospheric friction so you don't have to burn fuel to slow down (which means you don't have to lift that fuel into orbit).

During ascent, you have some control over where you gain most of that speed. That is, you can accelerate relatively slowly in the lower atmosphere, where the air is thickest, and gain most of the speed after you're above most of it. But there are limits and tradeoffs. Practical spacecraft do get going pretty darn fast while they're still low enough to experience significant frictional heating. They're just designed to deal with that heating during that time. But exposed human bodies aren't. They would certainly be incinerated and/or torn to bits if they were, for instance, strapped to the nose of the Shuttle during launch.

Now, of course, all this applies to current technologies. Presumably things will have changed by the time of Firefly, so maybe they would be able to ascend relatively slowly up to an altitude where heating would be minimal (hence the skeleton-only results). This would cost a lot of extra fuel, certainly, but perhaps that's acceptable. What's harder to accept is that they'd be willing to take the extra time to do this. It could take a couple hours to get out of atmo if you had to keep it under, say, 50mph.

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I don't disagree on any particular point.

UNSARDONIC

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:19 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by misbehavin:
the side of Mal's face is lit toward the red end of the scale. Then there's a shot toward the bow where you can briefly see yellowish light from the cockpit. At the exact second the buffeting sound stops, the light on the side of Mal's face shifts blue. Wash comes down from the cockpit and behind him you see the cockpit is now dark against the black of space. There was definately a lot of love that went into the making of Firefly and Serenity - it shows through in details like this.

Yup...

Joss (in his feature commentary - HIGHly recommended) constantly gives props to Jack Green (the DP) for being the genius behind the subtle & expressive lighting, giving away tons of details on how he did it and, also, how efficiently he did it, vs. how lengthy (read, "expensive") the same process would have been on any other shoot.

Now, for those of you little-thing-noticers who haven't visited imdb's "Serenity" pages yet, I've taken the liberty of including their trivia listings here(with), below (andsoforth) etcetc... etc:

TRIVIA FOR SERENITY (2005)

* Universal Studios took the unusual step of allowing early previews of the unfinished film. The 5 May 2005 previews were held in 10 cities, the 26 May 2005 previews were held in 20 cities, and the 23 June 2005 previews were held in 35 cities. An early preview was also held on the Gold Coast, Qld, Australia on Friday 22 July 2005

* Two wrecked ships are shown with the registration numbers C57D, a reference to Forbidden Planet (1956). [UNSARDONIC: Joss does seem to like to pay tribute to his influences - bless the man for his eclectism (which, as I have mentioned in another post, is its own reward) - I mean, "Forbidden Planet" is as seminally formative as movies go for today's modern science-fiction. One trope I might mention (speaking about his influences) (because I haven't see anyone else do this one yet) is... did you notice how the planet/town where the bar fight sequence occurs, the one outting River(?), looks like the section of "Blade Runner" where Deckard has his noodle-bowl lunch? I almost expect Rutger Hauer to come stalking through with raccoon-eyeshadow makeup.] Jayne points out the first one as they explore. The second is the rescue ship, the source of the beacon.

* A coffee maker seen in Serenity's dining room/kitchen is an F.A. Porsche Design coffee maker made by Siemens.

* The futuristic-looking handcuffs used on River are in fact Clejuso Number 13s, the second heaviest handcuffs currently in production.

* When the Operative reviews Mal's file, it shows his Date of Birth as 9/20/2468. 9/20/2002 is the day Firefly premiered.

* The keyboard Mal uses to transmit the signal from Mr. Universe's basement is a Micro Innovations Web Office Pro Keyboard.

* One of the video clips playing on the monitors in Mr Universe's base is the Blue Sun commercial from the "Firefly" (2002/I) episode "The Message".

* This is the first film for which a digital cinema distribution master was made using the new DCI standards using JPEG2000 compression and a 12 bit 4:4:4 XYZ color space.

* During the intro scene, the teacher says in Mandarin, "Please, quiet down a bit."

>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<
Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.

* SPOILER: According to the Q&A with Joss Whedon and the cast after the premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, there were at least 20 separate takes of the final make-out scene between Simon and Kaylee in the engine room, with take #20 being the one used in the final cut.

* SPOILER: During the funeral scene, Kaylee wears a medallion with the Chinese symbol for joy/happiness/cheer, a symbol often used in weddings.

I dunno... somethingsomethingsometing "or your friends will think you're a stupid, inbred stack of meat."

:biggrin"

ANDRE83

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:10 PM

Ok, this is Serentiy (the pilot) but still :P

I just noticed that when they first land on Perephone, Kaylee tells Mal that she needs a new catalysor (no idea how to spell it). But he refuses. This is the same part that busts in episode 8 :D

Its all your fault Mal!!! :P

Jayne: All those years of preacher training, getting knocked out by one bounty hunter
Book: Oh, dont get me wrong. I gave him a hell of a fight
Jayne: Epic i'm guessing

JAYRO

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:49 PM

In one of River's flashbacks, we see the teacher telling the children to lie down, and the class obeying without fuss. Is this her subconscious brain interpreting or 'acting out' what it knows about the Miranda population?

Also, River is the only one who rebels againt the teacher's command - she has an 'aggressor' response, just like the tenth of a percent who turned into Reavers. Is this a metaphor, or is it suggesting that River, had she been raised on Miranda, would have become a Reaver herself?

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"We're meddlesome." - River Tam

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