Well folks, here we are: the true end of the “Re-watch.” I’d like to take this moment to say I’ve enjoyed having you all along, and I hope you will join me when I talk about the further comics. (Also, here is a direct link back to the first half, if you missed it. )That being said, below is my continued three-time-frame analysis of the movie, and obviously, spoilers abound. And, um, sorry for the length of this thing. I had a lot to say.
River’s Revelation, Haven Again
Aboard the ship, they crew talks about what to do, and Jayne has to storm off before Zoe loses her cool and guts him. He then tries to kidnap River, but she beats the crap out of him again and then manages to show the crew what Miranda really is, a planet deep in the rim. Oddly, the histories have nothing to say about it, although what little people remember from over a decade ago indicates it was a failed colony due to a terraforming event. They think about going to Miranda, but decide against it as it is in the middle of Reaver territory. The crew makes their way back to Haven instead to think.
There, they find the place blown to bits and Book dying. Before he dies, Book again implores Mal to find something to believe in. The crew wonders why only one ship was sent and why they aren’t waiting for Serenity, and Zoe realizes that the Alliance did not know where they were going; they sent an attack to every place that has ever sheltered them. Alas, not a single one was spared.
As Mal is watching the security feeds from the various places, showing the ruin, the Operative takes all the feeds over and more or less tries to blame Mal for their deaths. He then reveals that he is trying to build a better world, and River and Mal’s deaths are inherently required for that. So is the Operative’s, but he seems to embrace this. Mal cuts the feed then marches out
Thoughts
On my first watch through (which again, was before I knew the series existed), these scenes were pretty routine. The crazy psychic has a vision that explains her neurosis then enough lucidity to convey this to the hero, and some old friend dies and galvanizes the anti-hero into becoming a hero. Altogether, the conveniently timed moments may have been a bit much. I mean, seriously, must every dying man with something crucial to say only live exactly long enough to say it? Yes, it is poetic, but still overdone. I am actually oddly reminded of Independence Day as a great counter-example, where the first lady has her moment with the president, then doesn’t actually die chronologically until a bit later. That, I think, was one of the most moving death scenes ever. Book’s, alas, was pretty stock.
Which is why when, after having seen the series and then having no clue why Book was even on Haven and not the ship, I was actually kind of upset over this death. As I mentioned in the first half, I understand thematically why Book had to be on Haven, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And while his dying words were conveniently timed, they, along with his early speech to Mal, were quite a bit more impactful knowing more of Mal’s backstory and lost faith. But hey, this is a Whedon story, and he loves to kill beloved characters.
The River scenes didn’t read all that much differently post-series. I did enjoy the small callback to “Ariel” when Jayne lamented that there was no chance of a reward just before his fight with Mal and Zoe, but otherwise, there just wasn’t much here that relied on the series. And, honestly, that was good. It is a simple scene, but honestly, I think it did all it needed to do in re-conveying all of the information without making it seem too repetitive to fans of the series. And just to say it, post comic-book, the scene read the same to me, too.
Book’s death is different for me post-comic, though. Both in his assertion that Mal doesn’t think of him as part of the crew and Mal denying it to the fact that Book shot down the ship that killed him. After a fashion, I almost feel sorry for him. While I agree with Mal that self-defense is a fine reason to kill, Book was trying desperately to not be of that mindset and failed. In the end, it was not Mal’s direct influence that made Book fail at his religious conversion, but just old habits and conflicting ideals.
And yes, I have purposely been holding off on the Operative’s little speech. From the get-go, I have waffled on my feelings on this speech, and I can’t say the series or the comic ever changed the flip-flopping. Yes, I can understand the insanity-of-belief that makes a person think they can build something righteous and good by being evil, but on the same token, I am firmly of the belief that no sane person thinks they are evil. So here we get into a question of what exactly is the Operative and perhaps—if we take it as just about given on the most popular theory regarding Book’s past—what was Book?
Inara comments that the Operative is a man of belief, and that he is also very intelligent and methodical. To listen to him talk, he has really been slurping the Alliance Kool-Aid that is probably part of the “creation” of an Operative. On the same token, I just have to wonder how he thinks he can build a good world when it will be ruled by the people who are just as evil as he is (under the auspice that they order him to do evil things). I do not even pretend to think that he would believe that his “sin” stops on his hands; he seems too smart for that (and I think later in the movie proves it). So, in short, I guess he is insane, which makes the later Heel-Face-Turn a bit odd.
That then makes a person wonder about Book, again on the “if he was an Operative” line. It explains Books rabid devotion to belief, but you have to wonder, was Book as fanatical as the Operative, perhaps even constantly going on about making better worlds? It would have been nice for there to have been some line dropped from him about how you can’t make a world better or something. Or, who knows, maybe I’m barking up a red herring. Guess we’ll find out when the comic comes out (I hope.)
Mal starts a war. To Miranda!
Mal storms out of the ship and starts barking orders that confuse and disgust his crew. String up the bodies across the ship, damage the engine to look like it is out of control, mount a gun, and find red paint. They are going into Reaver territory, to Miranda. Zoe gets extremely cross at the idea, and Mal draws his gun and shuts them up, saying that the Alliance has left them no choice, and anyone who doesn’t want to help can stay, but further arguing will get anyone shot. He then guns down the still-living Alliance pilot in cold blood and storms back into the ship.
So it is that Serenity, now dressed up like a Reaver ship, starts towards Miranda. Around the planet is a massive Reaver fleet that looks more like a ship graveyard and apparently emits a radio chatter that sounds like tortured, screaming people. The ship manages to sneak through with the ruse intact and make for a beautiful blue planet. Back on the Operative’s flagship, he hunkers over his command station with a nervous lackey standing behind him.
OPERATIVE: Define “disappeared.”
On Miranda, the crew is surprised to find the planet in pristine condition. They head for a weak beacon, the only source of power they can find on the planet (ignoring later lights that pop on), and the crew is again surprised that the planet is not only stable, but dotted with large, advanced-looking cities that are empty. They head for the beacon.
On the way, they start to find corpses that show no signs of why they died. By happenstance, they find a sealed office building that still has very well-preserved corpses. Simon looks the bodies over through the windows and realizes that no one died of anything particular. It was as if they all just laid down and never got back up. During all of this, River is twitching, and then she freaks out about how the entire planet is like this and that she can feel them all. She begs them to get up and then asks for God to make her into stone.
Thoughts
Mal’s transformation into War-Mal was actually pretty poignant to me, and it has only gotten more so the more Firefly I have taken in. And I think it isn’t because Mal became some sort of badass that snapped out of his mopey post-war melancholy. I think it is because he is hurt and angry and doesn’t know exactly what he is doing, but has been strengthened enough to just keep going. Which, with what we know of the Battle of Serenity Valley, it makes sense. I support my reading of Mal with a scene I didn’t put in the above recap, just before they pass through the Reaver fleet, and Mal walks off alone and into Inara’s old shuttle, where he, well, not cries, but has a moment of doubt and sorrow where you can tell he wants to. Also, he snaps at Inara after the Jayne-Zoe stand-off that he is a ship without a rudder, and maybe not the best leader, but the only leader they have. At least he knows he’s up that one creek without a paddle.
The world of Miranda is freaky. I mean like, you could make an entire psychological thriller movie on this world. I recall reading somewhere that Whedon said Miranda was supposed to be around the end of season three, so I have to wonder what kind of mind-tripping episodes would have entailed them getting to and exploring the planet. This, my friends, is the kind of stuff nightmares are made of. You can keep your gore and “pop-out-of-nowhere” horror, the eerie suspense thing is all I need.
That being said, there is one thing I wonder over on Miranda post-series. Why are the dead talking to a mind-reader? Yes, I know that Whedon never hammered out how River’s telepathic powers worked, per se, but I always had the read that she was just normally telepathic, a more or less sci-fi thing. Yet, this and the episode “Bushwhacked” have her reacting to the dead. Perhaps that is just part of Whedon’s world, but it also makes me wonder what River’s reaction to the “dead” man in “The Message” was getting at.
A Secret Revealed, A New Heading
The crew makes its way to a beat up ship that is crashed right into a wall. Inside, we see it is a research and rescue vessel. River walks up to and activates a holographic recorder, where they see a female doctor giving a tearful report about what happened on Miranda. Apparently, the Alliance had used Miranda as a grand experiment of an airborne drug called the Pax (peace in Latin). It was supposed to mellow people out, and boy did it ever. They became so mellow that they just laid down and died. But, a small percent had an adverse reaction and became massively aggressive. They became the Reavers. She tries to absolve herself, but before she can, and before she can even kill herself, the Reavers break into her recording studio and knock her off camera. We can still hear her screams until Wash turns off the recording. River vomits, and Simon kneels next to her.
SIMON: River.
RIVER: I’m alright. (pause) I’m alright.
The crew, highly disturbed, makes its way back to the ship. There, Mal talks to the crew in the galley. Mal reveals that he intends to make the record public, to let the ‘verse know what the Parliament did on Miranda.
MAL: Sure as I know anything I know this: they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people . . . better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.
They decide that they need to go to Mr. Universe, as he’d be able to force it onto every screen for thirty worlds. The crew voices some worries: the Reavers, the aAliance, the fact that the Alliance probably knows about Mr. Universe and will see it coming. Mal, though, has an idea.
They send a wave to Mr. Universe, who quickly agrees to do what they want. As they sign off, it is shown that several Alliance troops and the Operative are standing over Mr. Universe. Mr. Universe turns to the Operative and asks for his thirty coin, but is instead run through by the Operative’s sword. The Operative then orders the equipment to be destroyed.
Thoughts
Well, on my first viewing, the revelation of the Reavers was both expected and not. On the level of “of course the evil empire Alliance made them” was kind of being blatantly telegraphed. On the other hand, the way they were made was interesting. Usually the trope takes more of a “super-weapon gone wrong” not a “we tried to make them peaceful, oops.” On one hand, you can almost pity the Alliance scientists. The Pax is a similar problem with the concept of genetic engineering. Sure, the technology sounds awesome (and for the record I am pro-genetic engineering), but what happens when you deal with something you don’t fully understand? I have to wonder what kind of lab tests the Pax had. With the Reaver-option being a tenth of a percent, I can see them not having seen it until they had several thousand (million?) in the test pool. But really, would the Pax, if it worked right, be so bad? To give an example of it supposedly working right, see Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and the “chora trees” which successfully mellowed people out and ended war.
Anyway, post-series, the Alliance having made the Reavers just makes all the more sense, and that it was done with the Pax just fits too well. After all, they are out to “enlighten” the worlds. (Oddly reminds me of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender.) But it still brings up a sticky question that Serenity ignores. Why is a desire for peace bad? Are we not fighting two wars, more or less, to try and enforce peace? Did we not occupy Japan for sixty years to force a chill-pill down their throats? I hate to say it, but there is something to be said for “forcing peace,” as much as it seems contradictory. Heck, even John Locke (the philosopher, not the bald dude) said that society will only behave when some behemoth military force that cannot be overcomed forces it. (i.e., our governments).
With the comic, I have but to ask a single question: Where the heck are the Reavers!? Whedon did so much in the comic, and they couldn’t even mention the Reavers in passing? Seriously? I mean, it isn’t like the durn comic was meant to be intelligible to anyone except existent browncoats, so it isn’t like he’d have to exposit what a Reaver was. Ugh.
On River’s above quoted line, DO NOT LIKE! I am friends with my psychologists, and even have two in the family. Having a repressed memory (implanted or otherwise) suddenly brought to the surface doesn’t result in a quick vomit and then an enlightenment of “being fine.” Yes, when River is being assaulted by the “Reaver brains” in the bottleneck fight, she freaks out, but I think that was just her psychic powers being overwhelmed with the carnal hate of the Reavers, not her being “crazy.” So, in short, the movie is implying that River’s crazy is completely cured when she sees the holo-tape. WTF? Pre- and post-series, this irritates me. Again, poetic, but it breaks my suspension of disbelief. A little less “black-and-white/I’m broken-I’m fixed” would have been nice. I can understand that a two hour movie just doesn’t have time for all of that, but they could still at least not make it just a crazy swing.
A space battle, a leaf on the wind, and the final showdown
Back above Miranda, Serenity slowly makes its way back through the Reaver fleet, although with a hair more attention pointed at them. Just before they get through clean, Mal blows one of the smaller ships up with the cannon, causing the entire fleet to turn and chase.
Above Mr. Universe’s world, the Operative and his fleet wait. Serenity comes through, and the Operative waits a moment to jibe how Mal isn’t even bothering the change course in the face of the Alliance fleet. Just then, an officer tells him they have new readings, and the Reaver fleet appears behind Serenity. A rather large, bright space-battle ensues, and the Operative’s ship is destroyed, but not before he manages to escape to the surface in a life-pod. Wash manages to land the nearly destroyed Serenity at Mr. Universe’s compound, despite the Reaver ship chasing them.
WASH: I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar.
He then is quickly and brutally killed by a projectile that smashes into the cockpit. The crew flees, and everyone sets up to make a last stand at a bottleneck while Mal goes on to get the recording transmitted. Mal sees the destroyed equipment and dead Mr. Universe and receives a message from the Robo-bride about a second setup ready to go at the press of a button. Mal leaves, and the Operative comes through shortly after and stumbles across the message, too.
In the chokepoint, the crew talks in the moments before the Reavers bust through, and Simon professes his love for Kaylee, which gets a funny reaction from her and inspires her to a “Aw hell with this, I’m living!” The Reavers soon break through, and while the crew makes a valiant stand, they can’t hold them off. Zoe is gashed badly in the back, Kaylee gets some sort of needle-things in her neck. They retreat beyond the blast doors, but the rig-up job fails to close them completely, and Simon gets shot. River then tells Simon it is her turn to take care of him, jumps through the blast doors, beats some Reaver butt, throws the med-pack back through, then closes the doors from the outside. The last the crew sees of her, she is being dragged into the middle of the room by Reavers.
Down by the generator, Mal finds the equipment, but the Operative is there, too. Mal says he is going to reveal the secret because the people need to know, and that he is willing to die for his belief of that. They have an epic fight, which ends with Mal hurt but on top, and the Operative immobilized and forced to watch as Mal starts the recording playing.
Back at the chokepoint, River recovers and completely hands it to the Reavers in one of the most graceful burly-brawls I have ever seen. The blast doors open and the crew is shocked to see River standing. A wall then explodes and Alliance troops storm in. The Operative calls them off, though.
OPERATIVE: Stand down. It’s finished. We’re finished.
Some time later, the crew holds a funeral service for the dead, and then they start to put Serenity back together, although Simon and Kaylee seem to often get distracted in the engine room (that supposedly took 29 takes!). Just as they are about ready to leave, the Operative comes and talks to Mal. He says that the Parliament may or may not come after him again, but that his report says the damage is done and there is no longer a need. However, they should know by now that the Operative is no longer their man. They part ways, and Mal sets up to start flying the ship, although he notices River is over in the co-pilot seat. As they take off in the rain, Mal tells her the most important rule of flying.
MAL: Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘verse, but when you take a boat in the air that you don’t love she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down, tells you she’s hurting before she keels, makes her a home.
RIVER: Storm’s getting worse.
MAL: We’ll pass through it soon enough.
Thoughts
And thus ends the movie. Well, okay, a part of the ship flies off and Mal asks “What was that?” But yeah. I’ll admit I’m still a little confused over Mal’s last speech. Yes, I get it and agree with it. I have heard many-a-sailor say similar. But, um, how does that thematically fit in? All three me’s are wondering. It was still sweet though.
So, yeah, most of this is fight. It was a clever fight, followed by a hopeless fight, followed by two bad-ass fights. But still, fights, and I can’t say I have much to say beyond “nice choreography.”
The Operative’s change of heart somehow doesn’t seem all that genuine to me. He is a monster by his own admission. The Parliament made and uses him. I don’t see why the creation of the Reavers would have really been all that traumatic to him. If he is as rock-solid a believer as he seems, he should have taken that as part and parcel. Parliament is flawed: it is human. Part of making “a better world. All of them, better worlds,” is occasionally making a bad world as you figure out what works and what doesn’t. Not that I’m defending Parliament, but all I’m asking for is some internally consistent zealotry.
By the way, what is it with TV-to-movie space-operas that have to feature the ship being torn to shreds? There isn’t a (good) Star Trek movie that doesn’t do it, and here we see it too with the near destruction of Serenity and subsequent death of Wash. Although they really did subvert the emotional impact of the ship’s kabloomy with them getting it all repaired in the end.
And to my before and after point of view: Wash’s death. When I hadn’t seen the series, I was like “huh, bummer.” In fact, it meant so little to me that I forgot it happened. Which means it was a surprise to me when I watched the movie again after the series. And I love how it was just so sudden. Mr. Universe and Book both got dying words. But Wash? Gone, just like that. I’m not usually one to enjoy that kind of “gore,” mainly as a “meaningless death” is one of my lifelong fears, but for Wash here, it did everything it was supposed to do. Also, I guess it wasn’t all that meaningless, in the end. He got them to the ground safe and in the end helped to undermine the Alliance and save his friends.
As to the rest of my movie feelings, about the only other thing I have to say is (again): Reavers. As I mentioned early in the re-watch, I found the Reavers interesting and was very disappointed that they didn’t at least have more passing reference in the series. I am not asking that every episode have Reavers, or even Reaver references, but at least an occasional comment about Reaver territory would have been nice. It seems that the Reavers were supposed to be important, vis-à-vis Whedon saying this would have been the end of season three, so why did they more or less completely disappear from the verse after “Bushwhacked”? Just a minor gripe, I guess, but still it bugs me.
Of course, that is the post-series feeling. When I first watched this, Reavers worked just fine. They were terrifying and fit in with the rest of the “Alliance” imagery we were given. Although I did wonder how this savage human-turned-animal managed to limp around in the clunker spaceships they had and why they hadn’t actually gone about killing themselves.
And, as a post-script, I do need to retract my comment about the “shrunken verse.” In a deleted scene I just remembered to re-watch, Inara is talking to another Companion, and it is made very clear that she is on a fringe world where Companions aren’t all that respected. In other deleted scenes, I am fairly glad the “extended Operative parting” was left out. Mal’s “what a whiner” was kind of off-putting to it all and would have tipped the dramatic moment a bit too quickly and deeply into comedy.
And that’s a wrap. Take five. Thank you all for reading, and I hope any of you who found Tor.com due to this re-watch stick around and check out some of the other totally awesome content we have here. As I said last post, I will be covering the other comics once they get to me, but I can’t guarantee that will be by next Tuesday. Also, I have found out that Browncoats: Redemption, a fan-made film set three months after Serenity is due to premier at Dragon*Con, so I’ll let ya’ll know how that is. Thank you all again, and remember to aim to misbehave.
Richard Fife is a writer, blogger, and lives in constant fear and hope that River Tam will show up and beat the snot out of him. You can read more of his ramblings and some of his short fiction at http://RichardFife.com.
Thanks for a great ride. Any chance of a review of the Steven Brust fanfic of the Serenity universe?
River made more sense to me in the two instances you didn’t like. On Miranda everyone is dead, but she is (artificially) very very sensitive and empathic. Being amid a planetful of dead people would creep many out, and for her this is amped up to 11. Or 20. And her post-vomit “I’m all right” just felt to me like a denial- she isn’t fine, but you can’t help and she’ll manage okay, okay? Fine.
The “Pax” might sound good, but you are applying this overcontrol to your citizen-subjects without their approval (have any members of Parliament subjected themselves to the stuff?) nor knowledge of the effects. Nobody during testing acted like the Mirandites? Noone cared if drive, hopes, dreams, creativity could be affected? I don’t think anyone was tested besides lab mice, and an entire planetary population was used as such. The ‘verse needs a successful revolution.
The Operative, I think, had his world view and his image of the Alliance. Miranda is evidence that the Browncoats were more correct than the Alliance with regard to trying to control your population too much, and that (tens/ hundreds of thousands/ millions) of citizens were killed by his employers. Evidence of how wrong your side is will definitely affect one’s motivation.
I also don’t see much difference in the views of the Operative and the elder Mr. Tam vis-a-vis the Alliance.
Thank you for the re-watch! see ya at Leigh’s!
One thing that made me like “Serenity” less than the series is that it took the ambiguity out of the Alliance. In the series, we see the Alliance from its fringes, and most of the characters have some reason not to get along with it. But there are also indications that the government as a whole isn’t really a Big Bad– it’s just a big government.
Sometimes it’s delivering medical care to disaster victims, sometimes it turns out to be involved in some terrible scandals and abuses. But the center is civilized, prosperous, mostly under the rule of law, and possibly even democratic. Pace Mal, lot of the abuses we see along the Rim are the result of decentralization, and letting local powers have things too much their own way, rather than because civilization has crushed everything into its own image.
In the series, the Alliance isn’t terribly sympathetic, it’s pretty much always impersonal, and it’s invariably an obstacle at best for our heroes. But its agents mostly operate according to law rather than pure force, and many of the ways they interfere with Mal and co. are completely legit. (Except the Blue Hands, but they aren’t IIRC clearly working for the Alliance in the series, and they clearly don’t expect normal law enforcement to cooperate with their methods.)
We know how Mal feels about the war, but the historical analogy was presumably intended to suggest (to at least some of the audience) that the Alliance may have had its points too. Inara, for one, thinks so, though IIRC we never hear her reasons.
“Serenity” replaces that ambiguity with an explicitly supralegal Operative, apparently fully authorized by Parliament, who goes around killing anyone he feels like after giving a little speech, and a government which does nonconsensual medical experimentation on entire planets with an eye to brainwashing their entire populace.
We can say all that complexity is still there in the background, but Whedon made a fairly deliberate decision not to put any real hint of that into the movie: no more Alliance troops delivering medical supplies or cops being murdered for inadvertently seeing a secret. (The doctor is killed by the Operative, but he was doing human medical exprimentation himself.)
“Firefly” was about some compromised but likeable people trying to avoid being ground up by the system. One that’s not wholly good or bad, but is too big to be completely fair, and which each has individual reasons to hate or fear. “Serenity” was a plucky band of rebels versus the Evil Empire. I have no problem with the latter story, but I’ve seen it before, and I had grown interested in the former one.
Loved the re-watches! Very insightful, and definitely got me thinking about why I liked the series and what I didn’t like about it. Haven’t read the comics, and due to my being broke I probably won’t for a while, alas.
I say, next time we do Farscape. 88 episodes and a 4 hour miniseries OF AWESOME.
:D
-elliesaurus
Just a theory that I found made the operative more comprehensible to me. This may be a completely incorrect correlation to me but the more I have looked at it the more it makes sense.
Book is a retired Operative. it explains his ungodly high level of security authorization, his willingness and ability at same, and his despair with that part of himself.
My guess is that the operatives are trained/bred/ cloned? to believe in the Alliance, and someone like Book is what occurs when inevitably they realize that the cause they serve is unjust.
Just a theory, just a thought.
I always assumed River’s “I’m alright” bit was driven by the ghosts. They ramped up their intensity during the playback, then released her at the end. Some of them may have even headed for the light, now that someone had learned their story. Being a medium isn’t always easy; not every ghost is as pretty as Patrick Swayze.
It’s not Canon, but not wanting the fun the end, might I request continuing with My Own Kind of Freedom, A Firefly Novel
by Steven Brust?
I probably watch this movie once every few months just for kicks. So sad this show went away.
Unfortunately I can’t watch Mal and the Operative’s fight among the whirring blades without hearing Sigourney Weaver yell “This episode was badly written!”
Anywho… regarding River’s speedy recovery. The way I look at it, The Alliance did two different things to River. One was physically interfere with how her brain worked. Simon started the process of repairing that damage in “Ariel”. It was a realistically slow journey – just think of the difference between the hysterical River in the pilot and the River who outwitted Early in “Objects in Space”. The other thing The Alliance did to her was give her a traumatic memory – the Miranda/Reaver secret. As with a “normal” traumatic memory, when River was finally able to tell someone the secret, the harm of the memory was reduced. The speed of her recovery was a little… immediate, but as it was a film rather than a series I give them a little leeway in that regard. So I view River’s dramatic “I’m alright” statement as not a quick fix, but the final stage of a journey that began in “Ariel”.
Many thanks for a highly enjoyable re-watch.
The Operative – I read him as a man prepared to do evil on a personal level (kill people) for the greater good – a stable peaceable society. His belief is philosophic and he can do evil and regret it as necessary. However, when he sees the scale of the Pax disaster and realises that the Alliance is the direct and sole cause of the reavers, that is when his faith fails and being the absolutist he is, he turns totally. Anyway, that’s how I read it.
Wash’s death – I watched the film having seen the series on DVD and was genuinely shocked by this. It still upsets me on re-watches. It ‘works’ though in that it did put the survival of the other characters into question and so ramped up the suspense immensely which I believe was the intention.
Thanks again.
i always thought river’s recovery was due to finally understanding the images in her mind. she had gleaned bits and pieces that were incoherent and overwhelming. the only part she could understand was about a planet called miranda. it wasn’t until they played the holo-tape that river understood what was in her head.
when they hit mr. universe’s planet she’s still overwhelmed by the nearby reavers’s thoughts. it’s simon’s injury that focuses her and sends river into action.
(the projectile that kills wash is a harpoon from the reaver ship that chased them down to the surface.)
i think the truth about the reavers is a just one step too far for the operative. he’s as scared of them as anyone. look how he panics when they’re fleet emerges from the cloud. it’s the only time he loses his composure in the entire movie. reavers are a whole other something to him and to know that they were just people and this was done to them is maybe more than even he can overlook.
what confuses me is why do the reavers take to living in a colony in orbit around miranda instead of on the planet itself? how do they socialize well enough to form crews and raid other planets? seems like they would have killed each other off by now.
“So, in short, the movie is implying that River’s crazy is completely cured when she sees the holo-tape. WTF? Pre- and post-series, this irritates me.”
She’s not cured, she comes to the realization that her craziness is based in something real. (as Sofrina pretty much said.)
” It seems that the Reavers were supposed to be important, vis-à-vis Whedon saying this would have been the end of season three, so why did they more or less completely disappear from the verse after “Bushwhacked”? Just a minor gripe, I guess, but still it bugs me.”
It bugs you because we only got a half-season of Firefly. Occasional references like that would build up well for season three. Hell, they were for me and I was ecstatic that we got the backstory in Serenity. (Pity the Blue Gloves weren’t addressed as well.)
“The Operative’s change of heart somehow doesn’t seem all that genuine to me.”
Why not? He’s a classic example of someone who thinks they’re undertaking a task for the betterment of the future. C.F. North Ireland’s “Hard Men.”
Once he realizes that he’s part of an operation that’s doing more harm than good, he’s out. I guess he finds another calling and takes up with a crew somewhere…
Thanks so much for the re-watch, it’s been brilliant reading along – I found it just in time that I finished the Serenity First Half post a day before you posted this one, so the timing’s been perfect for me. :)
Someday, someone will remake this series, and I bet it’ll be brilliant. :D
I had a wonderful time re-living my favorite SF series and the movie.
About Wash’s death: I had seen the entire series twice before the movie came out. One the Larry Niven list, one post forgot to mention “Spoiler” and I found out that Book dies in the movie. This saddened me for a couple of reasons. However, when that giant wooden spike skewered Wash, I was stunned. If the intent was to reach into my chest an pull out my heart, Mr. Whedon certainly did his job.
When Wash died I started laughing for some reason….but after watching the series a few times again and then watching the movie i was pretty upset. But Book’s death choked me up on the spot, and I REALLY got upset when Simon went down. That was an awesome moment though, with him and River – actual tears which doesn’t happen often when I watch movies.
I always felt like the kind of jerk-off, serious Mal was the one intended originally by Joss, and I do like him like this…like not “like him” like him, but find him more compelling….but I can see why the studio wanted him lighter in the series, b/c he’s harder to like in the film. But I’m glad we got to see the more originally intented Mal character here. I just wish the film had been long enough to have more character interactions for the rest of the crew, you know?
Great reviews, all of them, btw,
It isn’t just them. This is “the Scouring of the Shire”. This is the alternative to “and they all lived happily ever after”. No, they didn’t. This hurt. Friends and lovers died. “Home” was destroyed or drastically changed. That’s also why Wash died, I think.
Consider how you’d feel if after they’d gone through all of this, they just flew off into the sunset, everybody’s fine, Serenity’s untouched, ho-hum. Bad day at work, dear?
I think this was as dramatically necessary as Frodo and Samwise returning to find a disaster right at home, in order to avoid the feeling you get from fairy tales as you get older. You realize they’re a con, that the bad guys may not have won, but they did permanent and irrevocable damage in the process, nobody can ever make it all just go away, and nobody ever lives happily ever after.
I also enjoyed the re-read, thanks for taking us through it despite interruptions including a trip to hospital. I’d also like to agitate for the inclusion of Steven Brust’s story, acknowledging that it’s not canon.
i loved the tv series and the movie. Any news about a sequal???? Please, please, please! Patti
after re-reading the original post, i have to reconsider my thoughts on river. since we actually agree about river’s reaction to the reavers, i have to wonder more about the nature of river’s insanity. she seems to be someone so distracted by the information coming through her third eye that she is largely disconnected from the real world. i’m thinking of the episode where she walks through falling flower petals to pick up a branch that is actually a gun. simon rescued river before the experiments on her were complete, so who knows what she would have been like in the end. i tend towards mal’s more mystical notion that she “sees into the heart of things.” maybe river really does hear the dead speaking and she only got peace when the crew had played the last recording. it’s not really clear to me why she says “miranda” when the operative broadcasts the on-switch code. she was in no hurry to get there prior to that… i don’t want to think that about this one. this movie is too much fun even for me to punch reality holes in it. river is a great character and the chance to see her go all out and show some of that government training is too good to miss. the image of her standing there, “surrounded by the high-piled bodies of her enemies,” looking like she might she dispatch the soldiers next… come on! drink the kool-aid.
on your question about what’s wrong with peace: nothing, if the people agree to it. however, the alliance instituted it for their own aims. they did it to make controlling the people easier. what kind of peace is it if you have the free will of the people in order to achieve it? pax is far worse than a military occupation because no one even knows what their up against. those who are unwilling to comply don’t have the choice to leave. it is a sort of enslavement to force docility on people. the alliance didn’t take the pax, did they?
But it still brings up a sticky question that Serenity ignores. Why is a desire for peace bad? Are we not fighting two wars, more or less, to try and enforce peace? Did we not occupy Japan for sixty years to force a chill-pill down their throats? I hate to say it, but there is something to be said for “forcing peace,” as much as it seems contradictory.
A desire for peace is not bad but there is something like going too far. What the Alliance wants to do is essentially to take away free will and (via PAX) turn everyone into docile worker drones. In short, they want to take away freedom and the very essence of humanity: emotion.
Would you want to live in that kind of world? I wouldn’t. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”
re: insta-healing of River
As several others mentioned already, I am in the “River is not fixed” camp. All she has gotten rid of are the immediate effects of the suppressed Miranda memory. But she is still a broadband psychic Very Large Array with constant unfiltered input on all frequencies.
Together with Simon’s efforts which might have had some measure of success, the events of the movie have made her more lucid (or maybe just extended and increased her lucid spells) but she is ultimately still broken.
re: Heel-Face-Turn
The Operative believes in the idea of necessary evil. Just like you mentioned that “forcing peace” is not completely without merit. But he doesn’t think of the Alliance as evil, he believes in the society they want to create as something good. And since River was a threat to that society he was willing to do whatever was necessary to get rid of that threat. He didn’t even know what the information in River’s head was that made her a threat, he was told that she was and he believed.
But he is, in a way, a man of pure logic. Taken to this extreme one might take it as insanity but not the loony underpants-on-your-head variety. His insanity is rooted in pure mathematical logic: The lives of few vs. the lives of many. As long as the goal is worth it it is always the many over the few.
So the way I see it, he didn’t react to the Alliance creating Reavers with a “Oh no, they made Reavers! Those evil bastards!”. It is the revelation of the Alliance plan that accidentally led to the creation of the Reavers that he reacted to. The Reavers themselves don’t even come into play in his reasoning. He discovered that the ultimate goal, the society the Alliance wanted to create, the very thing he had been fighting for was evil. Not a peaceful utopia for humanity but a world of mindless automatons.
If that had been his idea of good he would have gone on. But as it turned out, even within his moral code the Alliance plans were evil. The only logical conclusion for him then was the Heel-Face-Turn.
But really, would the Pax, if it worked right, be so bad?
I was curious about this statement. Let me give a long story about this. Actor Paul Darrow was asked about the resumption or continuing of the television series “Blake’s Seven”. He suggested that Firefly was a modern continuation of B7. (if the reader is not familar with this series – a loose fast hand comparision would “Star Trek meets 1984”).
When I first watched Serenity – I was strongly reminded of the B7 episode “Traitor” S04E03. If you really want to know what the end result is if Pax worked, try that episode.
Take away free will and life itself becomes meaningless.
If certain emotions get taken away from you, what is left of you? Your partner cheats on you and you don’t get angry? What does that say about the value of this love? How deep can a love be without the full range of emotions? We only function properly with negative emotions to accompany our positive ones. Take the negative emotions away and you hollow out everything that’s left. Why did the people on Miranda just lie down and die? Because even positive attributes like ambition are fueled a good deal by negative emotions like anger and jealousy.
Yes, anger and hate and all that can lead to horrible things but guess what, most of the time they don’t. They’re part of our nature and we get to choose how to deal with them. Free will is the very thing that makes us human, that makes us more than just another animal.
Could PAX do away with a lot of pain and suffering? Yes. Do I want to live in a PAX-world? Not in a million years…
I wish you guys had talked more about Jayne. I know he didn’t really have any defining moments but there were some tidbits that showed how much he does care about the others.
I always took River’s ‘I’m alright’ for ‘I feel better’. Miranda coming out doesn’t fix her but it helps a bit.
Of course River isn’t cured. But with Miranda out she feels better, much better. River isn’t really hearing the dead, she’s picking up psychic residuals of literally millions of deaths. That’s probably what she was doing in Bushwhacked too. The residuals of the Reavers carnage must have been horrific.
Peace is good. Achieving peace through inadequately tested psychotropic drugs is very not good.
The Operative is not insane, he’s a fanatic. And he wouldn’t be the first to believe that a noble end justifies any means. What’s amazing is that he’s still flexible enough to accept evidence that his cause isn’t so noble after all.