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Serenity - SPOILERS! Consider yourself warned!

LondosHair

LondosHair

Regular
Absolutely, without a doubt the finest movie I have seen in a LONG time. I haven't gotten goosebumps at a movie in years. Too much going through my head right now to put down in any semblance of order, but off the top of my head:

Big space battle = GOOSEBUMPS
River was FANTASTIC
WHY WASH???!?
Mal and Jayne were never funnier... or badder... or better... than in this movie.
Inara is still hot... for Mal. :) Can't wait to see how that ends up... got to see a little different side of her too... it was very interesting.
Kaylee - FINALLY! And she's still 110% cute. Didn't see much of the "always happy" Kaylee, but I suppose it wouldn't have lasted long in this particular story anyway.
Book -- it was meaningful.

This movie was 99% perfect. I'm confused as hell about Wash.

Was Mr. Universe a little nod to that guy on Buffy who made his own fembot?

Reavers were every bit as scary as I'd hoped, and more... finally an explanation behind their existence!

I saw Serenity with friends ranging from series die-hard fans to one guy who had never seen a lick of Firefly. Everyone absolutely loved this movie.

You know that list of great sci-fi writers? Yeah, the one that includes JMS, Roddenberry, Asimov, Bradbury, Peter David, the Reeves-Stevenses, etc.? I finally added Joss Whedon to that list tonight.

If you haven't seen it yet (and obviously don't care about spoilers)...

GO SEE THIS MOVIE.
 
Man, that was awesome. Serenity is an excellent movie, I highly recommend it.

One neat callback I noticed: when they were showing the devastation of the other places the Alliance hit, Whitefall was one of them. Looks like Patience (from the pilot) got nuked.

The explanation of the Reavers was very neat.

Was Mr. Universe a little nod to that guy on Buffy who made his own fembot?
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Might have been, I was preoccupied trying to figure out where I'd seen him before.
 
I'm still in shock from this. Basically I can't praise it enough. I was wearing my "JOSS WHEDON IS MY MASTER NOW" t-shirt all day; when people asked how I liked it, all I could say was "Read the shirt..."

I'll cheerfully admit that I felt there were a few pacing flaws. But Joss has said that he basically took what he'd planned for season 2 of the show and boiled it down to a movie. Imagine the suspense and the tension he could have built. So basically you can lay blame for the movie's failings directly at the feet of Fox. (And isn't it satisfying to be able to do that?)

I loved how they told Book's backstory so elegantly. And his death was touching.

Wash's death was a sucker punch to the gut.

For a moment I thought River was gone when I saw the Reavers had her, but then they cut back to her fighting, and I thought, "She's going to do it." And she did.

I loved the theme of belief.

Some fine allusions to other films: a nice little nod to "Butch Cassidy" in the bank robbery and to the beginning of "Empire Strikes Back" when they're scattering the decoys.

And now it seems that River is deadlier, more capable, and more stable than ever -- and truly loves Mal and Serenity. I don't believe there's a power in the 'Verse capable of stopping her now....


Like I said: I loved it.
 
I dug it, too. The word that best describes this flick for me is "fun." It's a really good time at the movies. Any flaws were taken as the film/series' charm.

Get yourself a bag of popcorn and enjoy.

I loved how they told Book's backstory so elegantly.
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?? Did I miss something? All I remember about his "backstory" is that he refused to tell it to Mal.

Why was River healed when she found about the Big Secret? Isn't a crucial chunk of her brain still missing?
 
To your questions, GKE:

Book talks at great length about how Operatives think, work, etc. -- and then when Mal says "Someday you'll have to tell me how you know so much about this," Book just says, "No, I don't" in a way that to me very much implied that he had told Mal about his past, just moments before. Book was an Operative: I'm almost certain of it.

Why River was "healed" -- I'm not convinced she was. However, she's a) learning how to control herself better, I think, and b) a major destabilizing influence on her (the Miranda catastrophe) has now been brought to light and in a way rectified. I imagine that if we ever see our heroes again, River will have moved from one of Joss Whedon's character categories to another -- from "crazy girl" to "just very strange." To put it in terms of Buffy characters, my guess is River's moving into the Anya role: she'll do things differently but she's not totally bonkers.
 
Ah, Book as Operative? Interesting. Would have a certain symmetry to it: Operatives are big believers, and as Book is obviously someone inclined to passionately pursue faith, he just transferred it to religion.

By the way, the actor playing the Operative is a rising star, watch out for him. Got his big break in Amistad and was in a Spike Lee and Dirty Pretty Things. Also the actress that played the woman in the recording who told them about the Miranda tragedy is in lots of stuff.

Just to clarify- River was actually on Miranda and was hit by the chemical thing that killed everyone, right? And yet she survived...
 
Just to clarify- River was actually on Miranda and was hit by the chemical thing that killed everyone, right? And yet she survived...
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No, she read the mind of a parliamentarian who came to look at her. The Operative pointed this out at the beginnning, how stupid was the doctor, exposing high government officials to a psychic. But since the memory was buried in her subconcious, she couldn't really deal with it, which accounted for a significant amount of her craziness. Should a sequel happen, and I want one to happen, even without Wash, we should see a slighty more stable River.
 
Yep, she's definitely less damaged than she was. Not 100% "normal" but not as crazy as she was.

Regarding allusions etc, on the UK Browncoats forum we had a wee conflab about similarities to The Tempest / Forbidden Planet. Reavers as creatures of the ID/Caliban, plus a lot of the themes about language / power / freedom / servitude etc.

VB
 
She was getting more and more control of herself even during the show, and with the Miranda incident brought to the surface she's taken another big step on the road to recovery. At least she's not liable to be susceptible to subliminal messages about the world again.
 
Well, I got back not too long ago from having gone to see Serenity as one part of a birthday present from my best friend.

I most definitely loved the movie. It wouldn't be a Joss Whedon story if he didn't kill a character I loved. The theater I was in was pretty full (though it wasn't a particularly large theater room), and the the majority of the audience had MANY audible reactions to the film. There was a LOT of laughing, and I think pretty nearly everyone in the theater jumped when Wash gets killed. I could handle Book dying, though wishing there had been more time for us to learn more about Book, but Wash dying really hit me. After that, pretty nearly every time a character got injured, I started worrying they were going to be the next to die. I loved Inara's bow and arrow. I loved Kaylee's desire to live after Simon told her he regretted having never been with her. Once we were shown that planet Miranda had Reavers between it and the rest of the worlds, I figured that the Reavers had been created by the Alliance instead of having developed naturally, but it was an interesting twist that their creation was a side-effect, for lack of a better term, of the Alliance's attempts to pacify humanity. The Reavers were pretty damn freaky, and seeing River fighting them makes me kinda wish to see a Buffy movie now too.

So, yeah, I loved the movie. I'm gonna go sometime in this coming week to see it again.

Super shiny!
 
I saw Serenity this afternoon and enjoyed it completely. I love the way it tied most of the loose ends together.
Book was definitely an Operative, the remaining mystery (probably unsolved) is why he "retired". Religious indoctrination seemed to be deeply ingrained into Operatives, the two we're aware of were both "obsessed" with Honor and Sin, in different ways. Books death surprised me, wash's floored me ( good thing I was sitting down) and I'm not sure I approve, but then, I wasn't asked.

I also appreciated the intro introducing the "firefly universe". It is definitely one solar system, not our own, and Faster Than Light is not in evidence. All in all a satisfying film.
 
I liked that they put in the movie the explanation of the setting being just one rather large solar system. That's something I never quite understood in the series. I didn't think there was faster-than-light space travel in the show, but couldn't figure how they were moving from one solar system to another otherwise. Also, in the series, comments like those in the exchange between Malcolm and Badger in the pilot (Mal: "The world never stops turnin'." Badger: "That only matters to people on the rim.") never quite made sense to me viewing it as a many solar system setting, but it makes plenty of sense in a single giant solar system setting.
 
Wow, I'm pretty stunned. Amazing movie. Sad 'bout Wash and Book.

sometimes when something's broke it can't be fixed.......
 
Now that I've had some time to sleep on it and think about it today, I've pretty much come to the decision that Wash's death soured the last 15 minutes of the (otherwise fantastic) film a bit too much.

I dunno why Whedon killed Wash off... I really can't figure it out. I know Alan Tudyk is doing more and more these days in movies, TV, and even starring in the Monty Python-based Broadway show right now, but if he isn't gonna be able to contribute more to another Firefly project in the future, does he still have to be killed?

I had just come to terms with Book's death (which I wasn't too happy about at first). It was meaningful, and served as a turning point for Mal. But Wash's death was totally senseless. Not only that, but it came after the white-knuckle battle scene and Serenity's descent to the planet below, losing both thrusters and taking a hell of a lot of damage in the process. Just when we let out a collective sigh of relief, Wash is killed so quickly that we're left literally breathless. Too much of a shock, I think -- it was all I could think about for the next 10 minutes, until River started kicking some Reaver ass. Even after that, though... I was confused over Wash's death, and I still am now.

Will there be a Serenity sequel? I'm not so sure now. It was left a little open-ended, much like Star Trek Nemesis was, but I still have a nagging feeling that Joss's story has finally been told to his satisfaction, based on some of the things he's said in interviews about a possible sequel. Basically that Wonder Woman is his next project, but he's always aware of the "possibility" of a sequel. He also gave a very JMS-esque line about finally having his story told, and if he doesn't get another opportunity to go into the Firefly universe, then he's still satisfied.

I would love to see another Firefly movie... but without Wash and Book, I honestly don't know how it could possibly live up to the standard that Serenity has set.
 
Just to clarify- River was actually on Miranda and was hit by the chemical thing that killed everyone, right? And yet she survived...
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No, she read the mind of a parliamentarian who came to look at her. The Operative pointed this out at the beginnning, how stupid was the doctor, exposing high government officials to a psychic. But since the memory was buried in her subconcious, she couldn't really deal with it, which accounted for a significant amount of her craziness. Should a sequel happen, and I want one to happen, even without Wash, we should see a slighty more stable River.
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I disagree, Admiral D., and I'll tell you why:

Sean tells us that River goes to a school he does not know the location of, until she contacts him.

River has a recurring, nightmarish flashback to her school, where she sees the students, and her teacher, lying dead, in the same way the apathetics (that's what they called them in Zardoz) were found on Miranda.

When she gets to Miranda, and sees the recording of what happened, she says she is 'okay now.' This is classic Freudian psychotherapy, where the troubled person remembers and understands what has been traumatizing them, and is suddenly well on the way to recovery.

Of course, she did read the mind of a Parliamentarian. That is when she found out the cause of what she had experienced on Miranda, and knew who to blame. She would not have known that when she was there. They were thinking of it in her presence, because they knew her history.

She was unaffected, and did not become a psychokillercannibal, or an apathetic, because of the portion of her brain that was removed.

I see only one logical objection to this. When she flashes back to her class, they talk about the Reavers (or Reivers, either is correct,) as if they have been around for a while, when they would have just been created. I put this down to her confounding her later knowledge of them with her memories of when they arose. I find that easier to accept than to think that her terrible flashbacks to her school never happened.

I liked the film somewhat better than the TV show, in part because they stayed away from the western stuff. I watched the two hour ep Serenity in anamorphic, before I went to see it from the front row of the largest local screen, with a friend who is a big Firefly fan. He doesn't accept my interpretation either. Oh, well...
 
I have not seen the movie yet, but I did read the book, so I've known about Wash's death for several weeks. I had a similar reaction as LondosHair to Wash's death. I felt it was senseless and unexpected. I don't know what it looks like in the movie, but in the book it is described so quickly and matter-of-factly, I had to read over that paragraph at least twice to make sure I had interpretted correctly and that Wash was indeed unmistakeably dead.

Yes, not every death is gradiose and honorable, but that's in real life. In stories, when you care about a character, saying goodbye should be as significant as the character's introduction and middle development. To just "off" a character so instantaneously for the sake of shock and realism can be a slap in the face if not done correctly.

In the book, although written very well in every other way, I didn't think Wash's death was handled well, so I'm betting it's similar in the movie. It's simply too distracting. It was hard to enjoy the rest of the book because I was still too much in shock.

I'm not as huge a Firefly/Serenity fan as most people, so it's not so much that I'm attached to the character or feel he's irreplacable. For a group of only nine characters they were very diverse, and each one had his or her function, both as crew and as storytelling elements. Wash's function on the ship was as pilot and occasional tech assistant to Kaylee. Granted, River can take over that function now, but Wash's place story-wise is as the geek that so many of us can identify with.

The way Jayne thinks and lives, I can comprehend him being killed instantly, without warning, by a grappling hook through the torso. It may not even bother me so bad. I just think Wash deserves a better sendoff. And more than that, I'd prefer he had survived. Without him, any future incarnation will just be missing something. If there is a sequel, or if the TV show is ever resurrected, I'd say they would need at least 1 new main character, maybe as many as 3, to balance out the crew and the storytelling options. As of the end of this movie/novel, they have a definite void to fill.
 
Yes, not every death is gradiose and honorable, but that's in real life. In stories, when you care about a character, saying goodbye should be as significant as the character's introduction and middle development. To just "off" a character so instantaneously for the sake of shock and realism can be a slap in the face if not done correctly.
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Why do all stories have to do it the same way? Just because that's how we as the mass story-consuming audience have come to expect character deaths to be a certain way does not mean that every story should handle deaths the same way. It gets boring and predictable.

The way Jayne thinks and lives, I can comprehend him being killed instantly, without warning, by a grappling hook through the torso. It may not even bother me so bad. I just think Wash deserves a better sendoff.
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Wash's death is supposed to bother us, that's why it had to be him to die instead of someone like Jayne. It's raw, it's painful, and it hurts. It's because of who he was that makes his so sudden death have its power.
 
If anything, Wash's death let us see Gina Torres go into vengeance mode. All I can say is.... that's one heck of a strong woman.
 
Saw it last night. It was entertaining, but that's about it. I've never seen Firefly, but it looks like it would be entertaining. But I really don't see what the big fuss is about. This is nowhere near the best movie I've seen in awhile. It really just felt like a long, expensive tv episode with serious pacing and editing problems, some horrible tv actors (not all were bad), and horrendous expositional dialogue.

I'm not trying to knock it, it was entertaining, but not worth Wheedon fans jumping up and down and screaming in my face about it (which one friend did to me, and I almost punched her in the face)
 
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