You Can Take the Silver Screen from Me

[trenchcloak]

Saw lots of Firefly reviews that might nominate Joss for godhood, but I gotta say I disagree. I will keep this spoiler-light, and would appreciate any comments do the same. It's a good movie, but it lacks the soul of the series. Bad points listed below, as the good points would be spoilers.

Comments

[trygve]

What were the deus ex machina's, I don't remember them.

[reasie]

Mal's invulnerability to the Operative's 'special move' and Simon's "safe word" to stop River - both were employed to get the heros out of a seemingly impossible jam, and were explained LATER. Rather like saying "oh I had a parachute under my seat the whole time".

Strikes me as just plain sloppy writing. They could have established either ahead of time, or hinted at their posibility - for example, show that Mal had other physical war injuries of a nerve-damaging sort. I see slapstick there. Or show that Simon had other secret knowledge of River's condition, or show Simon using extreme means to control River.

eh. for what it's worth.
I know I'm picky.

[trygve]

Ahh, yeah, I hadn't really noticed those, but you're absolutely right. Those parts were sloppily written. Maybe it was just a case of bad editing cutting the requisite information? Probably not, but eh.

But no, that's not picky of you, that's a very valid complaint.

[trenchcloak]

I'm planning on watching the series again. I wonder, if like the Star Wars sequels, I've become blind to any bad writing it might have.

[trygve]

It has plenty of bad writing. The explanation of the reavers was the worst part of it, though I was very grateful they finally remedied that (not as well as they could have, but well enough) in the movie.

[trenchcloak]

Agreed. I like the reavers as enigmatic horror source. They could be feared because we didn't know what they were capable of, or why they did what they did. We can fear those things we imagine they (since they aren't necessarily human) can do. but not anymore. Reaver society should implode on itself, so the way to defeat them is leave them alone.

[tygerdsebat]

Froggy specifically asked why the agressors didn't take advantage of the submissives, and my only (very weak) argument was that the people slowly stopped caring, so maybe the others slowly got more agressive, by the time they were killing people, the others were already dead....

Or the others never left their houses, so the agressors never interacted with them...

But that one group they looked at appeared to be at work, so that kind of messes up the whole "they stopped going to work" thing...

[trygve]

Well, he did have manly manly scars on that manly manly chest of his ;)

(shown when talking to inara)

[tygerdsebat]

Well, he did have manly manly scars on that manly manly chest of his ;)

(shown when talking to inara)

I could have sworn I was logged in....ugh