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Serenity: The Firefly Movie (spoilers within)

 
  

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Hydra vs Leviathan
21:47 / 26.12.07
Just saw Serenity, never having seen any of Firefly. I liked it, but it did feel like it was kind of over-compressed, like it was originally much longer but had loads cut out, which i'm guessing is the effect of trying to make a film which stands alone and stays in something resembling continuity with a foregoing series. Didn't know anything about the peripheral characters, they just felt like fairly generic peripheral characters to me - Inara presumably Mal's ex, the preacher guy an old mentor or protector, etc.

Some stuff didn't seem very clear, and felt as if the bits needed to explain it were cut out - it didn't seem obvious to me that Mr Universe's base was on the same planet as the preacher guy's village until very near the end, for example. And it defied suspension of disbelief just a bit too much when everyone was near-fatally injured, yet miraculously returned to perfect health by the end of the movie (whereas a scene containing a bit of uber-medical-tech, or at least a bit of evidence of convalescence, could have satisfied that). But, overall, something that felt like i'd like to see more of it, but a bit frustrating for that same reason.

the female ass-kicker has been a cliche since people started walking out of T2 talking about Linda Hamilton.

The female ass-kicker has been a cliche since at least Ellen Ripley, surely...

River actually reminded me of Cassandra Cain more than of anyone else. From reading this thread it seems that she doesn't do anything particularly uber-flip-outy in the series, which is a bit disappointing. While the female character who is all shy and quiet and kooky and vulnerable most of the time, but can flip out into an unstoppable killing machine, is a bit of a cliche, i'd like to see more of her being like that - perhaps incomics or anime, rather than live-action film. I'd like to see Glau as Batgirl, as well...

As for Fillion... he's got to be Harrison Ford's long-lost secret son. Would be awesome to have him playing Indiana Jones Jr instead of that Shiar LeBoeuf guy who's reputedly going to be in the upcoming Indy-passes-on-the-mantle flick.

Mal seemed to have a bit of a blindspot against headshots, tho. There were at least 2, arguably 3, times when he could really easily have shot Chiwetel Ejiofor in the head, but seemingly didn't even think of doing so. Maybe there was something in the series where the character expresses distaste at shooting people in the head or some sort of honour code about it or something, but in the movie it just seemed like a particularly glaring case of Plot-Induced Stupidity.

What struck me is that, were this real life, the Alliance, and by analogy our own governments, would be happy to have found a combat drug that turns its civilians, never mind the soldiers, into the ultimate infantry assault weapon. Drop a battalion of reavers onto a rebel planet and it won't be a problem much longer. This is analagous in my mind into research into super-soldiers - removing all that pesky need for sleep and compassion for the other side that interferes in military planning.

Well, until you [assuming "you" to be a bog-standard banal-evil governmental entity] want to actually do anything useful with that planet. You've just filled it with completely chaotic evil warriors who will rape, torture, murder and eat you as indiscriminately as they did the planet's inhabitants. Unless you have overwhelmingly superior weapons to the Reavers, in which case, you didn't really need them anyway.

The Reavers just seemed like a bog-standard Chaotic Evil plot device race to me - like zombies or Xenomorphs, but a bit more techy and human-looking. Actually i thought they might have been influenced by the Chaos forces from Warhammer 40K. Also that film with people being possessed by the alien ghosts on Mars (might actualy have been called "Ghosts of Mars"). Yes, i could see the Al-Quaeda parallel on a superficial level, but really that's a story at least as old as Frankenstein in fiction, and as old as religion and war in reality.

But no people with visible Chinese origins, which I find bizarre to the point of vastly undermining the credibility of the universe.

I kind of thought River looked a bit like she was mixed-race European and East Asian. But a look at Summer Glau's article on Wikipedia says that she's German and Scots-Irish (whatever "Scots-Irish" means in the US). But you're right, there really ought to have been Chinese-looking people if there are reasonably "pure" European-looking and African-looking people. Thinking about it, if i was casting a movie set in the far, far future, i'd seriously think about having everyone or nearly everyone played by actors who are mixed-race enough to make it not immediately obvious what their actual ethnic origins are.

Is there any truth in the rumour that George Lucas originally wanted all the main characters in Star Wars to be played by East-Asian-American actors, but the studio didn't let him do so?

Unless, of course, it's a leap back or (much) forward in time, to explore another Slayer's story. That could rock.

...Fray?
 
 
Saturn's nod
07:20 / 27.12.07
... having everyone or nearly everyone played by actors who are mixed-race enough to make it not immediately obvious what their actual ethnic origins are.

Funny, reading this I realize that I saw/read pretty much everyone in Serenity/Firefly as mixed race & including some East Asian - are they not? *blink* I will try to observe how I drew that conclusion when I watch again.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:48 / 27.12.07
I think that might be the acting - people expressing a scripted cultural diversity not necessarily reflected in the casting choices of the actors themselves. So, for example, River and Simon Tan are presumably supposed to be at least somewhat Chinese in origin.

The source materials draw a somewhat dodgy divide between administration (centred on the planet Londinium, which is largely populated by descendants of the English-speaking American (or, given some of the accents on display, British) colonists) and business (Sihnon, which is largely populated by descendants of the Chinese settlers). This is a bit questionable to start with, but one could then explain the largely white and American-accented cast by saying that they are located in a primarily American-descended area of space.

Ultimately, though, the logic of the series isn't going to hold up. It's an American television series written and produced largely by white Americans and put on by the Fox Channel. So, yes.
 
 
Feverfew
15:13 / 24.03.08
Boink.
 
  

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