Super SPOILER FILLED Serenity thread

[Fedifensor]

Wash's death serves so many purposes.

It is done to give a sense of urgency to the film. To make you worry that ANY or ALL of them will die in the finale. It makes you sit at the edge of your seat.

In other words, shock value.

It is done to show realism. If you do crazy suicide missions like this, sometimes you die.
It makes you believe that this is a real. Not another happily ever after fairy tale.

Yes, realism. Realism that a reaver ship not only specifically targeted a ship that was unpowered and obviously going to crash (which would have been a no-survivor crash had Wash not activated the backups at the last second), but followed through said unpowered dive closely enough to shoot a grapple at it a mere 10 seconds after it crashed.

No, realism would have had someone die in the gun battle on the ground. Having everyone survive that wasn't very realistic.

It is done to make you feel emotion. Very few movies actually affect the audience, and many Firefly fans cried for Wash.

I didn't cry...I didn't really have time to cry, even if that was my inclination. My comment in the theater was, "that was lame," a feeling that remained in the background as I watched Zoe do her ice queen/death wish thing.

And most importantly it is done because Wash's character arc was over.

On the series, he was the normal guy. He wasn't in the war, but he married into this strange "family" and found a home. But he always felt inferior, he was the comic-relief, and the pilot nothing more. He wasn't a soldier, he wasn't a hero, and he was definitely treated as a second-class crew member.
In War Stories this all comes out and is mostly resolved. His problems with Mal and Zoe's relationship are settled. He is at peace with his role.
In the movie, he finally gets his chance to be the hero. To be their equal. To prove to them that he belongs. He is a leaf on the wind.

And apparently, he's not needed because River can probably pilot the ship as good as him, if not better. As far as his story - resolving his past does not mean his character arc is over. Using that argument, Zoe should have been killed a long time ago, and River should have been killed by the Reavers.

Joss knew he needed to do all these things.
Make people feel, make people believe, make people sit at the edge of their seats.

No, he really didn't. Killing Book showed he was willing to kill characters. The more likely explaination was mentioned earlier in this thread - the actor couldn't commit to future projects, so Joss wrote him out.

And he tied everything together so suddenly, so brutally, so beautifully, that many people are so emotional about it that they're angry about it.

This could very well be the best and most complete death scene ever. It works on so many levels.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Dying from an unexpected chest wound delivered by Reavers who somehow chose to follow a ship in uncontrolled free-fall and get in firing range a few seconds after the ship crashed does strike me as beautiful. It was an obvious writing-out of the character, with minimal recognition of his death afterwards - a 30 second gravesite scene shared between the three characters that died, and about two lines of dialogue.

 

[Rykion]

My thought was that she wanted to die, but after being hit, instinct kicked in and she went back to safety.

Actually, Zoe went down. The others went out and dragged her back to the barricade. I don't remember her ever trying to return to them.

 

[Storm Raven]

Dying from an unexpected chest wound delivered by Reavers who somehow chose to follow a ship in uncontrolled free-fall and get in firing range a few seconds after the ship crashed does strike me as beautiful.

You keep wondering why the Reavers would do something like this. What has caused you to think that the Reavers would generally behave in a rational or sensible manner?

 

[Dagger75]

This thread has gone on too long without someone trying to stat-out the characters. Did someone already do a thread like that, and I missed it? Or are we simply being direlect in our duty to be obsessively geeky?

If it hasn't been done in recent memory, how about we stat out the crew as 32-piont-buy 10th-level D&D 3.5 characters?

Spider

www.serenityrpg.com Go buy the RPG for Serenity, all the stats are in there. Same with Firefly, The Operative, Reavers and the big city looking ships from the show.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

You keep wondering why the Reavers would do something like this. What has caused you to think that the Reavers would generally behave in a rational or sensible manner?

The thing that always gets me in book or movie threads is: what makes you think that PEOPLE would generally behave in a rational or sensible manner?

Anybody remember the runaway bride? How about the folks who killed themselves because the comet was coming? When was the last time you saw somebody eating, talking on a cell phone, and driving simultaneously? How many smokers do you know? Have you ever known somebody in an abusive relationship? Remember stock market bubbles? How many overweight Americans are there? When was the last balanced budget? Who keeps the Psychic Friends Hotline in business?

It doesn't take a psychotic cannibal to make bad decisions.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I didn't cry...I didn't really have time to cry, even if that was my inclination. My comment in the theater was, "that was lame," a feeling that remained in the background as I watched Zoe do her ice queen/death wish thing.

I've had a similar disconnect of reaction with folks over the infamous "red wedding" scene in A Song of Fire and Ice... A lot of people point to it as a triumph of realism, but for me it took me out of the story as a seperate "reality" and made me so completely aware of the arbitrary decisions the author can make that I lost all investment and all but the most casual interest in the rest of the book.

I think trying to establish a feeling of reality with a shock death is a fine line to dance. It has a chance of revealing the hand of the author and making the rest of the events seem more scripted, not less.

 

[Jeremy]

Wash's death serves so many purposes.

It is done to give a sense of urgency to the film. To make you worry that ANY or ALL of them will die in the finale. It makes you sit at the edge of your seat.

It is done to show realism. If you do crazy suicide missions like this, sometimes you die.
It makes you believe that this is a real. Not another happily ever after fairy tale.

It is done to make you feel emotion. Very few movies actually affect the audience, and many Firefly fans cried for Wash.

And most importantly it is done because Wash's character arc was over.

On the series, he was the normal guy. He wasn't in the war, but he married into this strange "family" and found a home. But he always felt inferior, he was the comic-relief, and the pilot nothing more. He wasn't a soldier, he wasn't a hero, and he was definitely treated as a second-class crew member.
In War Stories this all comes out and is mostly resolved. His problems with Mal and Zoe's relationship are settled. He is at peace with his role.
In the movie, he finally gets his chance to be the hero. To be their equal. To prove to them that he belongs. He is a leaf on the wind.

Joss knew he needed to do all these things.
Make people feel, make people believe, make people sit at the edge of their seats.

Joss knew he was ending Wash's character arc.

And he tied everything together so suddenly, so brutally, so beautifully, that many people are so emotional about it that they're angry about it.

This could very well be the best and most complete death scene ever. It works on so many levels.

Well said.

Those were the character reasons to end the character, and like someone else said, the world changes, if everything always returns to the status quo you never have any development.

There were also actor reasons to kill the character.

Wash's death bummed me out for a long time after each viewing. But that is another sign of how good the movie is. That some actor in some special effects shot made me feel and made so many others feel, and that we're discussing it right now... Some fictional happening to a fictional character in a 2 hour movie...

That's mighty powerful stuff.

 

[Fedifensor]

You keep wondering why the Reavers would do something like this. What has caused you to think that the Reavers would generally behave in a rational or sensible manner?

If they were acting on instinct, or savage rage, there were a LOT of targets closer and easier to get to. Serenity went right through the center of the Alliance fleet. Targeting Serenity doesn't make sense if the Reavers were acting rationally, and it doesn't even make sense if they were acting irrationally.

 

[Warrior Poet]

it doesn't even make sense if they were acting irrationally.

Huh?

 

[sniffles]

I have a friend who's really worked up over Wash's death. He loves Whedon's shows and loved the movie, but if he met Whedon on the street he'd probably yell at him for killing Wash. He's not normally a fanboy type but he admits he'd like to get on a Firefly forum and scream bloody murder.

I like it when a creator isn't afraid to kill important characters. Making it shocking was good for me. It reminded me just how high the stakes were for the whole Serenity crew. It made me really really hate and fear the Reavers, where before they were just sort of an abstract threat.

I also seem to find Shepherd's death a lot more distressing than many people do - my friend above, for example. Shepherd was Mal's moral compass to a certain degree; notice how Mal went back to him for help even though he was no longer a member of the Serenity crew. His death helped to give Mal his own internal moral compass back, I think. Did it occur to anyone that one of the corpses they strapped to the ship might have been Shepherd's?
That possibility made the whole scene even more disturbing for me.