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Sorry if it's taken me a while to reply.
I'm not sure why totally ridiculous skills in one type of combat don't suggest totally ridiculous skills in another type of combat.
I feel they were in a different league of ridiculous. But I will go on to expand.
The first is the second part of the pilot, when Simon is explaining basically that River is amazing at everything she does, including physical action (such as dancing, which isn't all that far from martial-arts ass-kickery).
OK... to me, a doting, indulgent brother's praise of River as "amazing" is far removed from me seeing her take down perhaps 100 Reavers.
Perhaps we're going to come up against this same distinction in my argument vs those who don't agree with me on this point (on a fan-board we'd be the River-basher and River-gushers or whatever -- the River defense squad vs the River attack force) ... I accept entirely that seeds were planted and hints were given, but I think there's an enormous leap between everything we're shown and told (with qualifications, eg. I wouldn't trust Simon's opinion of River as gospel) in the TV series, and what we're shown in the film.
You guys accept and embrace that leap, while I find it more problematic. You can call me stiffly literal, I could call you naively gullible. Nevertheless, I think we should try to just welcome this difference of opinion, as it doesn't really matter if I read it differently to you; maybe it just suggests interesting alternative angles.
Combine that with badass pistol skills (and those aren't lucky shots, so it's not akin at all to Luke blocking a couple shots from a remote) and you have a pretty convincing argument for River's rather remarkable ability to kick the crap out of people.
Here I disagree and would suggest you're misreading Star Wars, too.
Luke isn't blocking the remote by luck, that's the whole point. He is sensing and tapping into his own potential with the Force. He's showing his uncanny abilities. He blocks three blasts from the remote in a row, I think, with the visor of a helmet blinding him, so that's almost exactly equivalent to what River does.
But what River does to the Reavers in the movie is almost exactly equivalent to what Anakin Skywalker does to the Sand People in Attack of the Clones -- takes down a whole tribe of vicious savages alone.
The difference between River-TV and River-movie is the difference between Luke Skywalker, a totally-untrained novice with potential, and Anakin Skywalker, who has spent maybe 15 years training under Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and is at the top of his game.
Kovacs. To be fair the series got axed half-way through the first season so it's not really correct to say that River "gun-fu" abilities hadn't been properly developed as a narative in the tv show. We don't know what the rest of the season would have shown us do we?
The episodes that did get made were building up River as a programmed assassin. Little things like her zen shooting in War Stories indicated what they might have been doing to her. But getting cancelled before you've even got going has a knack of knocking the narrative out from under you.
I find this and the rest of your post a totally acceptable explanation, actually.
However, I didn't realise the main action of the film takes place 8 months on from the Jubel episode. If that's so, it begs further questions for me, like why Mal is still talking about Simon and River as if they're semi-stowaways, rather than entirely valid members of the crew... he's still treating them like he did in the pilot, as unwelcome guests.
Ya see, that just comes off as such a stiff reading. It's the danger of the character you're supposed to respond to, her ability to do things which can't be easily explained, things that hurt. Before this point we've established that she's psychic, we've established that she was the product of a secret, sinister government project, a product that's being hunted by some very nasty, very dangerous fellas with blue hands - the kind of fellas that hunt very dangerous prey.
I don't mean this to sound like a dig, but, imo, River's badassness is only a leap if you're a complete literalist and lack any intuitive feel for where the story's probably going.
Or maybe I've been a Whedon fan for too long and have merged with his mind.
Like I said above, swings and roundabouts... maybe I'm too literal, maybe you're giving it too much benefit of the doubt because of your fan investment. That's all good.
But note that you do have to explain it in terms of "where the story's probably going". Maybe again this is the gap I wasn't filling in... I wasn't assuming that the movie takes place months after everything I saw in the series. I wasn't giving the narrative that long gap to make up what I saw as the discrepancy between River-TV and River-movie.
If it's the case that 8 months has passed, then OK it's more plausible.
I maintain that River's role in the TV series and in the movie seem quite different. She seems a far more major character in the latter, which may be related to Inara and Book getting relegated and the soap-ensemble format being broken up a little in favour of the focus on Mal and River. |
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I don't know, maybe I'm just less immersed in Whedon's style and in the TV series than you and some others on here, but it didn't seem so naturally apparent to me as it did to you, obviously.