Serenity- contains SPOILERS
Oct. 1st, 2005 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
collwenOk, if you haven't seen it yet... you HAVE to. Even if you haven't seen an episode of Firefly. It was good that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marnen was with us, because he had not seen any Firefly and still was able to follow what happened, and said that it was a good movie.
And of course this isn't all of it, but it's what I first thought out...
DO NOT READ THIS FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE
Really, I'm warning you... don't read further because you will hate yourself for it...
Ok, some of this I've stated inpurpura's thread on this, but I'll say it on my own...
As I said last night to the group of us who saw the movie together (myself,marnen , ioldanach, purpura, fallenlibrarian, and saurval), I love Joss and I hate him...
---------------
Good gods, I cried for Book, and I was sobbing for Wash and Zoe (her trying to get Wash off the spike).
Book died the more traditional death of the good guy who was just in the wrong place. I love that he was able to banter at the end. It's also interesting that the movie was the first time that he mentioned being Christian. In Firefly, I don't recall anyone actually saying the word "Christian." We know he was a Shepherd and a preacher, but the actual religion wasn't mentioned and who knows what happened to the religion over 500 years and leaving Earth. I also like that his history is still an unknown.
Wash... this was the harder death to accept. And I think it's meant to be. Book was older, had a more sordid past hinted at, and died while trying to defend his home and people. Wash had just wrecked the ship in a crash landing, but kept everyone alive. There was just that moment where we're coming down from the rush of the landing, he starts to give his line "I am a leaf on the wind" and *boom* (ok, so it wasn't an explosion, but that sudden) he's speared. Poor Zoe... she went through something very similar to Wash when she was injured in Out of Gas, but with the knowledge that it was actually hopeless. I loved the funeral where everyone else was in black and she was in white.
I also liked the fact that they didn't take down Wash's dinosaur figures from the pilot's station even when they were fixing up Serenity to get off of Mr. Universe's planet.
---------------
Katie made a point that there was a nice parallel between the movie and the true pilot episode- "When the Operative is watching the Reaver-hologram-message, did anyone else notice that his eyes never blinked? I think this was a moment like Mal's in the un-aired pilot, it was to mirror the moment when that man lost everything he held to be true... that he believed in."
I agree... he definitely lost his faith and belief in the Alliance when he saw how they betrayed what he saw as his life's work. The same as Mal did when the Independents surrendered.
Although Mal lost everything but still somehow didn't lose his personal belief that a person should be able to do his or her own business and not be interfered with (as long as it's not interfering with someone else). It'll be interesting to speculate if the same goes for the Operative- if he still believes that humanity can achieve a "world without sin" without the need for him (a self-admitted monster to clean up problems) or chemical/psychological imposition by others.
---------------
Mal without his shirt and the pants riding down just a little... man he's hot...
the same for Simon at the end... god, that boy has muscles that I wouldn't have expected from the way he dresses...
I like how Serenity still has a couple on it, with Wash's death. And in sort of a cyclic way- an older established couple now taken over (in a way) by the new love relationship.
And Kaylee gets it in the engine room, just like how she got on the ship in the first place. Although River's face popping out to see what the commotion is was precious. It was also precious to see the "The only thing I regret is not being with you" followed quickly by Kaylee's resolve to get out of this alive, because she'll get to have Simon if they do survive. The hell with dying, she's fixing to get laid!
And it'll be interesting to see how things go between Inara and Mal. I loved the how he knew it was a trap- the fact that they didn't fight. And her reaction to being told that he came for her, not a fight.
---------------
I had a feeling something would bring Mal over the edge, once Inara accused him of carrying out a personal war against the Alliance. Mal's response ("When I go to war, you'll know.") left no doubt that it would happen. I know the minute he went to war- the look on his face when he shut the link to the Operative after seeing everyone on the other planets dead. (On a side note, I hope that ornery Patience is still alive, and the mudders. I didn't catch all the planets that the Operative hit.)
---------------
River...
Oh goddess.... I love River. And I think she's fixed, well, as fixed as she can be. "I'm alright." Something clicked for her, to balance the combat monster, the psychic, and the girl genius, when Simon was shot. And I cheered when she opened the doors and she was alright. I don't think she got much of a scratch on her either, even fighting all those Reavers. She was a scary fighter when up against a bunch of regular people, but the Reavers... good gods the fact that she not only held off or killed one, but a whole group of them.
If the experiment with River was successful- I could see her being an uber-Operative. I think that's what the Alliance was trying for, an Operative/assassin with psychic abilities, but the augmentations weren't balancing properly and then she was taken from their control by Simon.
---------------
Marnen had a point about the Reavers that I hadn't thought about until he brought it up... The fact that they're so crazed and animalistic (sort of like the Infected in 28 Days Later) doesn't work that well with the fact that they are still coherent enough to pilot and run ships. This is also something not discussed in the show. We never see them in a situation that would confirm that they can keep it together enough to fly. That's one thing I'm not quite sure how to answer, other than it might be a berserker rage they go into. Almost like River going into her fighting mode, but she's been trained enough that a combat sense and sensibility are instinctual. But he still isn't sure about them showing enough capacity to be able to run their ships.
---------------
Marnen had another plot hole that I think I was actually able to fix. For a planet to be as dead as Miranda was (in terms of power), how was it able to turn back on when the crew was in that square? I proposed that the planet's power system was set up to fill a battery and the city ran off the battery. If the battery was full, the generators wouldn't need to run. They probably tripped a passive sensor, or hit a pressure plate, as they moved through the plaza, that turned something on.
Marnen also didn't know how the woman who made the report had not been effected by the PAX gas. But I worked it out. For one, it wasn't obvious to him that that the ship with the beacon had crashed into the planet (it did look rather clean for a crash, then again, the crash was 12 years ago, so the debris may have been cleaned away by storms or some automatic cleaning systems that were no longer active). I figure that once the people on the planet died and the Alliance lost contact with them, they sent the rescue ship who blasted through the Reaver screen and crashed onto the ship, then got killed by the Reaver ship who followed them down.
He also was surprised to see that once the crew thought that there was poison involved that they didn't go through decontamination and go right back into suits, in case it was a new airborne agent that they couldn't pick up on the scanner (and it was airborne, to find out later). Perhaps the thought was that if it's airborne, they're already screwed, or that it might have been in the water or somewhere else. Or now that the population wasn't alive, the agent was not continually pumped into the air, or the supply had run out in the 12 years since the report. It also looks like it might have been an agent that only was toxic if enough built up into a system (basically, the planet was overdosed).
Then again... he tends to tear movies apart. These are the only 3 things that he could think of, and one was pretty well cleared up, one discussed a bit, and one that I can't come up with a solid answer for (but it is consistent with the series... does anyone know if Joss ever explained the Reavers being able to pilot ships?). And they weren't enough to turn him off to the movie as a whole.
---------------
There's a lot of cycles here- the operative talking about love at the beginning of the movie while looking at the holograph of Simon and River, and Mal talking directly to River at the end of the movie about love. (Which is something that I just saw Katie comment on...)
And the last perfect moment- the panel coming off the ship during liftoff at the end of the movie. Gods, they just fixed up the thing!
marnen was with us, because he had not seen any Firefly and still was able to follow what happened, and said that it was a good movie.And of course this isn't all of it, but it's what I first thought out...
DO NOT READ THIS FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE
Really, I'm warning you... don't read further because you will hate yourself for it...
Ok, some of this I've stated in
purpura's thread on this, but I'll say it on my own...As I said last night to the group of us who saw the movie together (myself,
marnen , ioldanach, purpura, fallenlibrarian, and saurval), I love Joss and I hate him...---------------
Good gods, I cried for Book, and I was sobbing for Wash and Zoe (her trying to get Wash off the spike).
Book died the more traditional death of the good guy who was just in the wrong place. I love that he was able to banter at the end. It's also interesting that the movie was the first time that he mentioned being Christian. In Firefly, I don't recall anyone actually saying the word "Christian." We know he was a Shepherd and a preacher, but the actual religion wasn't mentioned and who knows what happened to the religion over 500 years and leaving Earth. I also like that his history is still an unknown.
Wash... this was the harder death to accept. And I think it's meant to be. Book was older, had a more sordid past hinted at, and died while trying to defend his home and people. Wash had just wrecked the ship in a crash landing, but kept everyone alive. There was just that moment where we're coming down from the rush of the landing, he starts to give his line "I am a leaf on the wind" and *boom* (ok, so it wasn't an explosion, but that sudden) he's speared. Poor Zoe... she went through something very similar to Wash when she was injured in Out of Gas, but with the knowledge that it was actually hopeless. I loved the funeral where everyone else was in black and she was in white.
I also liked the fact that they didn't take down Wash's dinosaur figures from the pilot's station even when they were fixing up Serenity to get off of Mr. Universe's planet.
---------------
Katie made a point that there was a nice parallel between the movie and the true pilot episode- "When the Operative is watching the Reaver-hologram-message, did anyone else notice that his eyes never blinked? I think this was a moment like Mal's in the un-aired pilot, it was to mirror the moment when that man lost everything he held to be true... that he believed in."
I agree... he definitely lost his faith and belief in the Alliance when he saw how they betrayed what he saw as his life's work. The same as Mal did when the Independents surrendered.
Although Mal lost everything but still somehow didn't lose his personal belief that a person should be able to do his or her own business and not be interfered with (as long as it's not interfering with someone else). It'll be interesting to speculate if the same goes for the Operative- if he still believes that humanity can achieve a "world without sin" without the need for him (a self-admitted monster to clean up problems) or chemical/psychological imposition by others.
---------------
Mal without his shirt and the pants riding down just a little... man he's hot...
the same for Simon at the end... god, that boy has muscles that I wouldn't have expected from the way he dresses...
I like how Serenity still has a couple on it, with Wash's death. And in sort of a cyclic way- an older established couple now taken over (in a way) by the new love relationship.
And Kaylee gets it in the engine room, just like how she got on the ship in the first place. Although River's face popping out to see what the commotion is was precious. It was also precious to see the "The only thing I regret is not being with you" followed quickly by Kaylee's resolve to get out of this alive, because she'll get to have Simon if they do survive. The hell with dying, she's fixing to get laid!
And it'll be interesting to see how things go between Inara and Mal. I loved the how he knew it was a trap- the fact that they didn't fight. And her reaction to being told that he came for her, not a fight.
---------------
I had a feeling something would bring Mal over the edge, once Inara accused him of carrying out a personal war against the Alliance. Mal's response ("When I go to war, you'll know.") left no doubt that it would happen. I know the minute he went to war- the look on his face when he shut the link to the Operative after seeing everyone on the other planets dead. (On a side note, I hope that ornery Patience is still alive, and the mudders. I didn't catch all the planets that the Operative hit.)
---------------
River...
Oh goddess.... I love River. And I think she's fixed, well, as fixed as she can be. "I'm alright." Something clicked for her, to balance the combat monster, the psychic, and the girl genius, when Simon was shot. And I cheered when she opened the doors and she was alright. I don't think she got much of a scratch on her either, even fighting all those Reavers. She was a scary fighter when up against a bunch of regular people, but the Reavers... good gods the fact that she not only held off or killed one, but a whole group of them.
If the experiment with River was successful- I could see her being an uber-Operative. I think that's what the Alliance was trying for, an Operative/assassin with psychic abilities, but the augmentations weren't balancing properly and then she was taken from their control by Simon.
---------------
Marnen had a point about the Reavers that I hadn't thought about until he brought it up... The fact that they're so crazed and animalistic (sort of like the Infected in 28 Days Later) doesn't work that well with the fact that they are still coherent enough to pilot and run ships. This is also something not discussed in the show. We never see them in a situation that would confirm that they can keep it together enough to fly. That's one thing I'm not quite sure how to answer, other than it might be a berserker rage they go into. Almost like River going into her fighting mode, but she's been trained enough that a combat sense and sensibility are instinctual. But he still isn't sure about them showing enough capacity to be able to run their ships.
---------------
Marnen had another plot hole that I think I was actually able to fix. For a planet to be as dead as Miranda was (in terms of power), how was it able to turn back on when the crew was in that square? I proposed that the planet's power system was set up to fill a battery and the city ran off the battery. If the battery was full, the generators wouldn't need to run. They probably tripped a passive sensor, or hit a pressure plate, as they moved through the plaza, that turned something on.
Marnen also didn't know how the woman who made the report had not been effected by the PAX gas. But I worked it out. For one, it wasn't obvious to him that that the ship with the beacon had crashed into the planet (it did look rather clean for a crash, then again, the crash was 12 years ago, so the debris may have been cleaned away by storms or some automatic cleaning systems that were no longer active). I figure that once the people on the planet died and the Alliance lost contact with them, they sent the rescue ship who blasted through the Reaver screen and crashed onto the ship, then got killed by the Reaver ship who followed them down.
He also was surprised to see that once the crew thought that there was poison involved that they didn't go through decontamination and go right back into suits, in case it was a new airborne agent that they couldn't pick up on the scanner (and it was airborne, to find out later). Perhaps the thought was that if it's airborne, they're already screwed, or that it might have been in the water or somewhere else. Or now that the population wasn't alive, the agent was not continually pumped into the air, or the supply had run out in the 12 years since the report. It also looks like it might have been an agent that only was toxic if enough built up into a system (basically, the planet was overdosed).
Then again... he tends to tear movies apart. These are the only 3 things that he could think of, and one was pretty well cleared up, one discussed a bit, and one that I can't come up with a solid answer for (but it is consistent with the series... does anyone know if Joss ever explained the Reavers being able to pilot ships?). And they weren't enough to turn him off to the movie as a whole.
---------------
There's a lot of cycles here- the operative talking about love at the beginning of the movie while looking at the holograph of Simon and River, and Mal talking directly to River at the end of the movie about love. (Which is something that I just saw Katie comment on...)
And the last perfect moment- the panel coming off the ship during liftoff at the end of the movie. Gods, they just fixed up the thing!
