What I'm really getting at is that a lot of Job's fame is not the result of what you think it is: hard work and vision. A lot of people work hard and have vision. But if you work hard and have vision in an industry that's not en vogue it doesn't matter.
You point out all his hardwork and vision in the 80's, but the fact is that the same people that cared then are the ones that care about that now - practically nobody. Computers were not real part of mainstream culture in the 80s the way they are now. They were important then in the way the space program was important: evidence of what we as a collective people could do with tech. But nobody owns their own shuttle yet, and practicaly everyone has a PC/digital camera/mp3 player. Nobody owns stock in NASA, a lot of people own stock in Apple, nobody watches movies made by Neil Armstrong, but Jobs founded Pixar.
What I'm getting at is not that Stever lacks either talent, hard work, or vision, but that we attribute these things to him more because of where he is than because of who he is. ANd I don't mean to argue that this is definitively true - just that I'm a bit skeptical of your point of view and though I'm open to being shown that I'm wrong you haven't done it yet.
When I see MS do something stupid I don't generally blame Bill Gates. I mean, the day to day vulnerabilities, the crappy design, the shoddy interfaces, none of that can really be attributed (in my understanding) to Bill. The anti-competitive practices and other 'big picture' stuff, sure, but the nuts and bolts stuff? In a round about way of course if Bill is hiring the poeple that are hiring the people that are hiring the people that are doing stupid stuff it's ultimately his fault - but there's a lot of other input.
Maybe Steve just has a much more powerful impact on his own company than CEOs do in general, but I've always figured that CEOs did more with broad-picture stuff and were somewhat disconnected from the detailed operations. We just blame the CEOs or credit the CEOs for things that, in a lot of ways, seem to be beyond their control because as humans we're always looking for something concrete to pin blame/honors on.
But I've never been a CEO and I haven't studied Apple. I'm a little reluctant to believe that any one person can really be credited with stuff as diverse as the iPod, Final Cut Pro, the Mac Mini, etc and still have time to run around making speeches all the time.
I've heard a lot of people say that a lot of (presumably other) people hang on Steve Jobs' every word. But somehow I've never met anyone who actually did seem to hang on the words of Steve Jobs. The buzz around Apple products seems grounded in reality - the buzz around Jobs seems like manufactured press.
He's like the CEO equivalent of Paris Hilton: everyone's sure he's famous, no one's really sure what he's famous FOR. No really, there a ton of sex tapes going around the internet - that's not enough to make someone famous. As far as I can tell Paris got famous because she was famous. As far as I can tell, Jobs is famous for the same reason: because he's famous.
Why is it insightful to point out that MS is using market share to their advantage? That's what big companies do - just as small companies use their advantages (nimbleness in the market, aura of being elite, etc). The size of a company is just another asset to be used in business maneuvers. Whether or not its monoplistic is another question.
If MS were producing the HD-DVDs and had a monopolistic stake in the media format marketplace, then it would be monopolistic. But MS suplies neither the software nor the hardware for HD-DVDs. They don't have a monopoly on DVDs, DVD players, and they're not going for a monopoly in NG-DVDs or NG-DVD players either. MS is clearly trying to sabotage Sony because they are competing for real-estate in the conosle space - which is scene as a pivotal battle to see who gets to take over the living room. And MS is not a monopoly there either: Sony is the current console king.
Although MS clearly wields a lot of clout in these areas, it's not clear to me that they have monoplistic power (directly or indirectly) in the arena they're trying to influence. Since they don't have monopoly power and don't benefit directly from the outcome it seems to me that this isn't an example of monopolistic practices at all. It may not be nice, but I don't think it's monopolistic or illegal.
I think that the public we have today is much different than the public that existed during the early OS wars. At that time OSs were relatively obscure and the general public neither knew nor cared what was going on.
This time around the general public tends to realize that MS is monopolistic (if not a monopoly) and Windows-alternatives (from Linux to Mac) have a large chunk of the public mindspace.
So now the public is both better informed and more invested in technology - I think we can trust them to at least make a better decision (if not the best decision) during this round of format wars.
I didn't say that either. Go read it again. I said it was "fuck you" to the fans who were existentialists. And, if Joss is a nihilist like you say he is, than I'm dead right.
I know that messageboard and flame wars aren't noted for their fine distinctions, but please read all of what I say. If you thought I said Whedon gave a big "fuck you" to the fans, that explains why you think I was going over board - but it's just not what I wrote.
Sheesh - if you're going to read ridiculous things into metaphors all the time no wonder you're going to think everyone's crazy. Take a philosophy course sometime - they'll be talking about all sorts of ridiculous scenarios that could never happen because they help examine a point.
Thanks for the post. Golias is starting to accuse me of being a character out of a Stephen King novel, so it's nice to have a little back-up on the whole "deaths were pointless" issue.
Also - your point about Jane is totally valid. There's the one scene where he's like "Book always said..." and I'm like "WTF?" Since when did Jane EVER listen to Book? I'm sure that in Whedon's head there's a lot of plot and character development that eventually led to Jane changing his selfish ways, but since he skipped it all completely it makes Jane seem extremely out of character in the movie when he's suddenly into self-sacrifice all of a sudden - which is the OPPOSITE of everything we've ever seen about Jane.
I couldn't agree more - if he'd done a 2-hour episode (like the pilot) people would have gone nuts to see it. But from what I hear Firefly was never what Joss wanted it to be, he always wanted it to be darker and Fox made him lighten it up. If this is true then I guess it's explains why Joss's other works suck so much and is the first evidence of Fox doing something right.
A tribute to "Nausea"? Which is written by Sartre! Who is a French Existentialist and NOT an objectivist at all. I'll admit I haven't read "Nausea" but I have read much of "Being and Nothingness" and I can tell you Sartre was NOT a nihilist by any stretch of the imagination!
Look, I'll take a listen to the commentary, but if Joss thinks he's writing a tribute to Nausea and objectivism at the same time - he's confused. He needs to turn to Ayn Rand or something for objectivism. You can't even Google "objectivism" without ending up at a Rand Institute site - and what the connection is betwen objectivism and nihilism I'm not even sure.
It sounds like you and Joss both need to get your philosophies straight.
Dude, I may be a persistant debater, but at this point I think only one of us is starting to sound crazy. In my circle of friends it's not uncommon to get worked up debating questions like whether sci fi is inherently better than fantasy or what some element of the movie Big Fish really meant.
So for me, as a passionate fan of Firefly, it's no biggie to state what it is that I think went wrong with Serenity and why.
But I'm totally cool with us disagreeing and even though I stand by my analysis for the most part (I don't have time to review everything and sometimes I make mistakes in my haste to post fast) I completely understand that you think Wash's death helped the movie out. That's cool, we disagree - life goes on.
Correction: It's a staple to kill disposable henchmen.
Firefly/Serenity is an interesting case. To fans Wash was indispensable. So for fans, it was successful to shock them. But those fans are the same ones that were fans OF THE TV SHOW. And therefore a lot of them - not all of them - were not happy to see their TV show treated like a common action movie.
Because newbies to the show had no way of knowing how indispensable Wash was - and so as far as they were concerned he was as dispesable as any of the characters from Predator that weren't Ahnold.
So you've got three groups of people.
1 - Newbies benefit little from seeing Wash die. They have no reason to suspect he (or anyone else) won't die, and so this doesn't really alter the movie for them.
2 - Whedonites who expect Whedon to hurt them so good. They should also not need any reason to fear the safety of the entire crew - they know his MO.
3 - Firefly fans who love the TV show and don't know much about Whedon. These guys are the only ones who have any reason to suspect that Wash et al are invulnerable. You'd think offing Book would clue them in. But killing Wash does show them "anyone can die". Trouble is, this is basically an attempt to turn them into Whedonites and as it turns out a lot of them don't like Whedon's universe where random people get killed in ways that serve the "in the moment" feeling of the movie but serve no greater purpose. When Wash gets toasted you think "anyone could die" but guess what - that only works the first time you see it! The 2nd and 3rd time it's pointless. So in the long range, killing Wash was pointless. It just made one viewing more exciting, and cut off the possibility of ever seeing him show up in a show again. A lot of Firefly fans considered this a bum trade.
I still don't know why the same people who lecture me on Whedon's MO are the ones that are like "OMG! Then I thought ANYONE could die!" If they knew Whedon's MO, and they STILL needed to see Wash die to know anyone could die - then they must be really, really dense.
While your point might be a valid "realistic" argument for a series set in the present or past, I think it fails to pass muster for one set in the future
A valid point - but then one would expect to see death treated much differently in the future if this were the case. I don't see Firefly/Serenity do that. Besides which my point is meant to be general to American TV/film, not exclusive to Firefly/Serenity.
And never sacrificing a series character, to my mind, also sets one up for the dreaded red-shirted security guard syndrome...
Yes, but this is a straw-man because I'm not saying no main characters should ever be killed. I'm not even saying Wash should not have been killed. I'm not even saying Wash should absolutely not have been killed in the 2nd movie (although I don't see anyway that could have been pulled off well, I'm open to the possibility).
All I *am* saying is that I think the specific way in which this specific main character was killed of in this specific movie was a bad all.
Oh, well, I'll go further than that. I think it's an excellent idea to kill of main leads in film/TV from time to time. There are many reasons to do so, and it would be boring if we knew that main leads never died. The question isn't about the general practice, it's about this specific application.
You simply can't pay a writer a higher compliment than to be utterly pissed off at a plot twist you didn't like in one of their stories.
I disagree. What's a better indicator of the majesty of the Cistine Chapel - that it's beautiful from end to end or that (hypothetically speaking) Michalangelo painted a huge smiley face over one of the cherubs?
You'd probably get a much greater reaction from the former than from the latter. And in a sense you would be demonstrating the quality of the artists OTHER work. But again I think this is evidence of the superficiality of this thinking. Because no matter how shocking the smiley face would be I think the Cistine Chapel is better without the stark contrast that would imbue upon it.
The quality of art can not be judged, in my opinion, for the shock value it has. In my opinion shock value is cheap. You watch a movie that shocks and startles you - but does that mean it stays with you? The movies that I really, really love aren't ones that fail to shock me or that succeed in shocking me, they are movies that - years down the road - I can still find myself not only thinking about but also can still feel alive within me. I feel a better person for having seen them. I feel my life enriched by them. Like the Cistine Chapel they may not have a lot of "OMG he just got PWNED!!!!111oneone" moments in them - but they endure because the artist didn't screw up at point B just to show us how really awesome he was at points A and C.
I'm not saying you can't have a shocker that also enriches, but I AM saying that by overemphasizing the importance of shock, tension, etc (the visceral "at the moment" aspect of a movie) you run the risk of replacing long-term value with shock value.
That happens to be the mistake I think Whedon made.
There's a difference between a nihilist/objectivist character and a nihilist/objectivist work. "Objects in Space" had the former, Serenity became the latter. The issue of objectivity is fascinating, and should certainly be addressed in art. But notice that in "Objects in Space" Jubal was defeated by people who utterly rejected that philosophy? By people who cared about one another? That the whole sub-plot was an utterly anti-objectivist plot about learning to accept River into the crew and care about her as a person and not evaluate her as a mere threat? Your parallel between "objects in space" and Serenity serves only to greater CONTRAST the two. That's the great difference between the series and the movie - one depicted nihilism and one became nihilist.
I don't mind watching evil depicted, but I'd object to a work that was actually evil. Not saying what that means, just illustrating that the difference between depicting something and actually being something can be profound even if the words are only slightly different.
I can't really address your reference to "The Watchmen" because I haven't seen/heard/read it. But I stand by my claim - and the fact that you can't distinguish between depciting nihilism and becoming nihilist leads me to believe that you might very well be confusing the difference in this work as well.
Dude, the CAPS LOCK OF RAGE is the funniest thing I've read today! I'm definetely going to use that!
However, I find your analysis of my rant on disability to be somewhat superficial. The fact that I mentioned only phsyical debilitations was not coincidental. I think that as Americans we have a hefty double-standrard in place. We push drugs for depression on TV commercials nonstop. We consider everything from internet use to cell phones addictive. We have no general, all-encompassing phobia of mental illness. It's part of our culture to be infatuated with it. From the mad scientist to the tortured genius we love to delve into the mysteries of mental illness.
So actually my analysis didn't miss River, I just realize that she's the kind of disabled person that's easy to romanticize. She's young, attractive, vulnrable, poetic, mysterious, and above all she's physically whole. Contrast that with how the show would feel if River had some kind of induced Down Syndrome - physical characteristics and all. Doesn't fit, does it?
If anything you're further confirming what I'm trying to say - that American entertainment in this aspect is superficial. What matters isn't "who is disabled and who's not" it's "who's physically different". If you realize that I'm talking about physical disabilities, or at least physically visible disabilities than I think you'll start to see that I'm not missing anything.
The nation of breast implants, a million diets, lipo and botox is far more apprehensive of someone with no arm than someone with schizophrenia on TV. We hide physical blemishes, we treat mental illnesses.
I can see the point about how killing Wash increased tension. I just think that that's an overly simplistic analysis. That's the trouble I get into on these messageboards (and msg boards in general). You score points by being fast and witty - not by trying to really see intricate details. So I'm not arguing that "killing off nice characters is bad" or that "tension and suspense don't matter".
I'm just trying to say that if you think about it carefully and weigh the benefits of killing Wash to the cost - I think it was a bad decision.
First, I think it was a bad decision in the specific sense:
Honestly I really think Simon should have died. I think that would made a much better story. He's already a kind of Messiah-figure to River by giving up his life (his job, family, wealth and status) to try and give her back her life (her sanity). The pieces are all in place for a final sacrifice. It would have been far more poignant - especially in demonstrating that while River may be able to kill hordes of Reavers she lacked the power to save her brother in the end. I think that's a much richer path that the film could have taken.
Furthermore I don't think Simon was an integral part of the crew. He was a fun character, but most of what made him a good character was his caretaking for River - and that was now over. Sure as a doc he'd be useful, but as a character I felt he'd run his course.
Now my second objection. Not only do I object specifically to the decison, but I object to it because of the larger philosophical implications.
You see it may have been more realistic to kill Wash because "anyone can die", but we don't go to see movies to see random. We go to see the complete oposite. We want to see form, symetry, plot and narrative - all of these things are the OPPOSITE of random. If we interpret realistic to mean "like it would happen in real life" we're going to lose what we like about movies - the fact that they are NARRATIVES for what we don't like about real life - that it's utterly meaningless at the core. I don't want meaningless movies, I want movies that HAVE meaning.
Imagine going to a movie where every pixel of every frame was randomly generated. That's "real". Or, if you think that's too much, imagine going to a movie where they just stuck camera glasses on a guy, taped for 2 hours, and put it on the screen. As an experimental flick it would be really interesting - there'd be stuff to talk about what it does to our perception of art. Now imagine that those were the ONLY movies made. Pretty soon it's not so interesting.
And so I'm opposed to "realism" in the sense of "shit happens". There's a place for that in the movie - but in order for it to be good I think you need to place the "shit happens" in the framework of a narrative.
That's one of our greatest challenges as humans - finding a framework for our lives. I think existentially speaking we're not "finding" so much as "creating". We impose our own narrative on our own lives day by day and moment by moment - creating meaning in what we do. We create meaning and we invest it in our lives, friendships, memories, possessions and aspirations. None of those things exist in the "real" world, but they do exist in our narratives. That's how meaning gets into life. And I think that sometimes we fail to make sense of things that happen to us, and art's greatest calling is try and succeed where we may have failed - to show that meaning survives all that life can throw at it. If art has lost meaning, than it ceases to be art. If art has lost the ability to convey meaning than it ceases to be art and becomes "pseudo-intellectual masturbation" intead (read the quote at end of post!).
If you take the opposite approach and give up and see that meaning doesn't matter - then where does that take you? In Serenity it takes you to killing Wash and thinking it was a great idea. But you still like killing Wash because it happens in the greater context of meaning. Wash was somebody
STOP SAYING THIS STUPID STUFF!!! YOU'RE DRIVING ME NUTS!!!
Killing Wash established that "all bets are off." It was just about the last thing any fan of the show expected...
It's also typical of Whedon's M.O.
Pick one please.
And finally: Whedon is not only willing to kill off well-loved characters, he's actually eager for the chance to do so. He's an evil god who never wants his creations to be happy. Bear that in mind when watching anything he makes.
This is what I mean when I talk about misery-loving Wheddonites. You can rest assured that I have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in seeing anything else Wheddon has done.
But you get this through YOUR head - I can like Firefly without liking Wheddon. Just like I can like Star Wars (original and unedited) but still hate Lucas for what he did to the show - both in "improving" the originals and creating the prequals.
If you don't see how perfectly it fits in to his universe to have Wash take a reaver grappling hook (just like the one he pointed out in the pilot episode when a reaver ship passes nearby) right in the chest just as everything looks like it will be okay, then you weren't watching the show very closely. Sensless brutality is the world in which Joss Whedon pretty much always sets his stories.
Actually I AM watching it very carefully - and that is why I dislike it so much. Here's something for you to consider:
the world has gone nutty and contemporary art always paints the spirit of its times. Rodin died about the time the world started flipping its lid. His successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition and they copied that part. What they failed to see was that the master told stories that laid bare the human heart. They became contemptuous of painting or sculpture that told a stories --they dubbed such work 'literary'. They went all out for abstractions. Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right --for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror. What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience. These laddies who won't deign to do that -- or can't --lost the public
This is the story of what happened with Serenity. Wheddon is very smart, and he's alwayss flirted with the border of nihilism. But what he had in Firefly was NOT nihilism - it was existentialism. It was the portrayal of a universe devoid of meaning but it was also the portrayal of men and women who through sheer force of will imposed meaning on that universe.
Consider Simon's arrival on the ship. When he asks why Mal came back for him Mal replies "'Cause your one of my crew. Why we still talkin' about this?" There is no rhyme or reason to whether or not Simon is part of the crew. Mal simply imposes his reality on the universe.
It is this imposition of the human heart onto the unfeeling universe that made people love Firefly. Sure - the universe was crappy and dangerous but Firefly (the ship) was warm and full of light because the crew made it so. The depiction of a nihilistic universe was a contrast to the existential power of the human soul - and this message resonated with viewers.
But in Serenity by killing Wash Wheddon stepped over the line into nihilism. There is no room for the human heart in nihilism - is is destruction and absense of meaning. In the death of Wash the warmth and emotion of Firefly is subsumed in the cold chaos of the cosmos.
Whether you like this or not isn't a factor of whether or not you can understand the philosophies involved - nor is it a factor of which is more "real". If you are a nihilist, if you get a thrill out burning meaning out of existence than this tickles your fancy. It's a big "fuck you" to every thing that humans care about as far as narrative and meaning are concerned. But if you wanted the existentialists to win out - if you believe that the human spirit can imbue a senseless realm of chaos with order, meaning and narrative then killing Wash is a stab in the heart.
Besides, I don't believe that Wheddon is a nihilist. If he was, then we wouldn't have the ending that we do - where Mal says "we're flying, it's enough". That's existentialism coming back.
The trouble is that you can't rectify nihilism and objectivism with existentialism in the final analysis. Objectivism is the ultimate denial of existentialism. Both start with a world devoid of meaning - existentialism imbues the world with meaning, objectivism denies that possibility.
As long as Wheddon holds the two in dynamic contrast throughout his stories - which he does in Firefly - propoenents of both can enjoy the series. But when he tries to allow both to win out - as he does in Serenity - than the existentialists will jump ship.
If we redid the the works of Homer and Shakespear, everyone would live at the end, else how would we have Season Two of Hamlet?
Yes and no. If Homer and Shakespeare were a TV series - yes. This is why I like miniseries (which usually have a capped number of seasons/episodes) best. They have time to do more intriciate plotting than a movie, but since they also have a finite point you lose the incentive to sacrifice long-term story for short-term ratings. But look at American movies: we kill anyone and everyone.
This is especially true in sci/fi action movies. The exception is star trek - which was really just a franchise even when it was a movie. But other sci fi movies always involve killing off large numbers of the cast along the way.
Thus the problem I have with saying "once Wash died - anyone was fair game". If we're looking at it as a movie then this is a moot point - anyone's fair game anyway. The only people who would think the cast was NOT fair game are those who knew the cast from Firefly and we're seeing Serenity as an add on to Firefly. So the people that might not have had the tension Wheddon was looking for are by and large the SAME PEOPLE that like wash so much that to them his death is not worth the increased tension.
It really comes down to a question of sensitivity. If it takes abrupt killing of a beloved character to make you feel the tension of the movie then, in my opinion, maybe you've become a little too desensitized. But at the very lesat you need to realize that if you weren't feeling enough suspence until Wash got speared - that doesn't mean other people weren't. Personally, I got all the tension I needed before that point.
And lastly, I think the whole tension/suspense card is WAY overrated. If suspense was really critical to watching the movie, we'd never watch it more than once. We don't watch movies just to see how they end. If that were true - there'd be no repeat viewings in theaters and no market for DVDs. And there would never be book adaptations either.
But we DO like to watch our favorite movies again and again. The Matrix isn't any worse of a movie after I've seen it 4 or 5 times. This shows me that again - the question is NOT uncertainty OR suspense - it's immersion. And for me and many others killing Wash did not lead to a greater sesne of "being there".
I don't know the #s on this, but I have a suspicion that you're wrong. As I've stated before, Americans don't like to see amputees, quadrapelegics, etc. They make us uncomfortable. When you're dead you're a hero forever, when you've lost a limb you're a hero for a limited period of time - then you're disabled.
It would be interesting to take a look at the #s of soldiers that fought in a modern war from the US, then look at the # that were killed, the # that were OK, and the # that were permenantly injured. I'm guessing that the rates for permenant injury are going to be significantly higher than what's reflect in our entertainment. Of course it would be hard not to be - there are practically none reflected in our entertainment.
I can only think of one movie that has actually looked at this issue at all without being one of those dramas where the disability IS the plot - and that's Forest Gump. Part of the brilliance of the movie, in my opinion.
All I'm trying to demonstrate is that people who are calling out for "realism" aren't really thinking through what they mean. And that American could probably do with a bit more realism in our entertainment - but that it involves more nuance and not just a higher body count.
So in a series with many season and even more deaths of major characters we had ONE instance of a permenant injury?
How is that supposed to help your point again? If I say something's really rare and I'm like "when was the last time it happened" and EVERYONE gives me the one and only identical example - who's really making the successful point?
The on advantage to having to repeat myself is that I get a little more economical as time goes by.
1 - Joss kills character.
Big freakin' deal. So did Homer (Illiad and Odyssey, not Simpson). So did Shakespeare. I have nothing against killing main characters.
2 - "safety net" and "this is better than knowing..."
You suppose two things.
A - Uncertainty is an essentially good part of experiencing art.
B - Uncertainty trumps all else when experiencing art.
As for A, I think you're missing the point. The point is NOT uncertainty anymore than it's realism. We like to be surprised and we like to feel like a movie is real beause we're seeking immersion in the world. Uncertainty and "realism" are only means to that end.
And furthermore you don't actually want either uncertainty or realism. By "realism" you tend to just mean "darker". As in "more people die, more bad things happen". But the fact is that you're still operating in the same binary "live or die" paradigm as Hercules and Xena. Either characters fully recover from inury or they die. Shifting the odds from death to life doesn't make the show anymore realistic because the entire either/or option is the real problem. In REAL combat there are many injuries for every fatality - and many permenant injuries for every fatality. But Americans get uncomrtable around amputees and quadra/parapelegics - so we just erase that entire continuum and stick with "live or die". Your notion of realism is just a superficial idea that the more people die and the more things suck the more the movie is real. That's not reality.
And you don't actually want open-ended uncertainty either. You're ALREADY working within a narrow, formulaic paradigm of American film/TV where characters either live or die. OK, one Buffy character lost an eye once - that just proves my point. We have one permenant injury to what - dozens of deaths? Hundreds?
And now for B. Even IF you could prove that somehow you really did want uncertainty (which would be something like Mal getting the disk inserted at the last moment and there's a read/writer error, or the power conking out in Serenity and they all asphyxiate in their sleep - but you don't want REAL uncertainty and randomness like in real life, you just want more tension) Even IF you could prove that, how do you prove that because film X has more uncertainty it's better than film Y? Maybe film X has crappy characters and stupid dialogue and so we don't care about the uncertainty?
Conclusion:
I'm not trying to tell you that Buffy sucks, or that Serenity is inherently inferior to Firefly. If you suddenly had a change of heart and thought that, I wouldnt' feel successful. What I want to do is challenge you, and others like you, to really THINK about what you mean when you say that you want uncertainty or realism in your movies/TV. Because most of what I hear is just nonsensical and upon analysis falls apart. And THAT'S depressing.
Your points are entirely valid. If you only care about the movie there's nothing wrong with killing off Wash or Book. So if that's what matters to you - we don't really have a disagreement.
I was just really, really hoping for the movie to be popular in order to bring back the TV show. There's no use arguing whether it's better to want the movie to succeed in its own right or whether it was better to want the TV show back. All I'm saying is that most fans were there because they were trying to save a TV show, and so for us it was sad to see Wash go. If you are content with movie, cheers.
Slashdot Mirror
What I'm really getting at is that a lot of Job's fame is not the result of what you think it is: hard work and vision. A lot of people work hard and have vision. But if you work hard and have vision in an industry that's not en vogue it doesn't matter.
You point out all his hardwork and vision in the 80's, but the fact is that the same people that cared then are the ones that care about that now - practically nobody. Computers were not real part of mainstream culture in the 80s the way they are now. They were important then in the way the space program was important: evidence of what we as a collective people could do with tech. But nobody owns their own shuttle yet, and practicaly everyone has a PC/digital camera/mp3 player. Nobody owns stock in NASA, a lot of people own stock in Apple, nobody watches movies made by Neil Armstrong, but Jobs founded Pixar.
What I'm getting at is not that Stever lacks either talent, hard work, or vision, but that we attribute these things to him more because of where he is than because of who he is. ANd I don't mean to argue that this is definitively true - just that I'm a bit skeptical of your point of view and though I'm open to being shown that I'm wrong you haven't done it yet.
-stormin
When I see MS do something stupid I don't generally blame Bill Gates. I mean, the day to day vulnerabilities, the crappy design, the shoddy interfaces, none of that can really be attributed (in my understanding) to Bill. The anti-competitive practices and other 'big picture' stuff, sure, but the nuts and bolts stuff? In a round about way of course if Bill is hiring the poeple that are hiring the people that are hiring the people that are doing stupid stuff it's ultimately his fault - but there's a lot of other input.
Maybe Steve just has a much more powerful impact on his own company than CEOs do in general, but I've always figured that CEOs did more with broad-picture stuff and were somewhat disconnected from the detailed operations. We just blame the CEOs or credit the CEOs for things that, in a lot of ways, seem to be beyond their control because as humans we're always looking for something concrete to pin blame/honors on.
But I've never been a CEO and I haven't studied Apple. I'm a little reluctant to believe that any one person can really be credited with stuff as diverse as the iPod, Final Cut Pro, the Mac Mini, etc and still have time to run around making speeches all the time.
-stormin
I've heard a lot of people say that a lot of (presumably other) people hang on Steve Jobs' every word. But somehow I've never met anyone who actually did seem to hang on the words of Steve Jobs. The buzz around Apple products seems grounded in reality - the buzz around Jobs seems like manufactured press.
He's like the CEO equivalent of Paris Hilton: everyone's sure he's famous, no one's really sure what he's famous FOR. No really, there a ton of sex tapes going around the internet - that's not enough to make someone famous. As far as I can tell Paris got famous because she was famous. As far as I can tell, Jobs is famous for the same reason: because he's famous.
-stormin
Why is it insightful to point out that MS is using market share to their advantage? That's what big companies do - just as small companies use their advantages (nimbleness in the market, aura of being elite, etc). The size of a company is just another asset to be used in business maneuvers. Whether or not its monoplistic is another question.
If MS were producing the HD-DVDs and had a monopolistic stake in the media format marketplace, then it would be monopolistic. But MS suplies neither the software nor the hardware for HD-DVDs. They don't have a monopoly on DVDs, DVD players, and they're not going for a monopoly in NG-DVDs or NG-DVD players either. MS is clearly trying to sabotage Sony because they are competing for real-estate in the conosle space - which is scene as a pivotal battle to see who gets to take over the living room. And MS is not a monopoly there either: Sony is the current console king.
Although MS clearly wields a lot of clout in these areas, it's not clear to me that they have monoplistic power (directly or indirectly) in the arena they're trying to influence. Since they don't have monopoly power and don't benefit directly from the outcome it seems to me that this isn't an example of monopolistic practices at all. It may not be nice, but I don't think it's monopolistic or illegal.
-stormin
I think that the public we have today is much different than the public that existed during the early OS wars. At that time OSs were relatively obscure and the general public neither knew nor cared what was going on.
This time around the general public tends to realize that MS is monopolistic (if not a monopoly) and Windows-alternatives (from Linux to Mac) have a large chunk of the public mindspace.
So now the public is both better informed and more invested in technology - I think we can trust them to at least make a better decision (if not the best decision) during this round of format wars.
-stormin
I didn't say that either. Go read it again. I said it was "fuck you" to the fans who were existentialists. And, if Joss is a nihilist like you say he is, than I'm dead right.
I know that messageboard and flame wars aren't noted for their fine distinctions, but please read all of what I say. If you thought I said Whedon gave a big "fuck you" to the fans, that explains why you think I was going over board - but it's just not what I wrote.
-stormin
Sheesh - if you're going to read ridiculous things into metaphors all the time no wonder you're going to think everyone's crazy. Take a philosophy course sometime - they'll be talking about all sorts of ridiculous scenarios that could never happen because they help examine a point.
-stormin
Thanks for the post. Golias is starting to accuse me of being a character out of a Stephen King novel, so it's nice to have a little back-up on the whole "deaths were pointless" issue.
Also - your point about Jane is totally valid. There's the one scene where he's like "Book always said..." and I'm like "WTF?" Since when did Jane EVER listen to Book? I'm sure that in Whedon's head there's a lot of plot and character development that eventually led to Jane changing his selfish ways, but since he skipped it all completely it makes Jane seem extremely out of character in the movie when he's suddenly into self-sacrifice all of a sudden - which is the OPPOSITE of everything we've ever seen about Jane.
I couldn't agree more - if he'd done a 2-hour episode (like the pilot) people would have gone nuts to see it. But from what I hear Firefly was never what Joss wanted it to be, he always wanted it to be darker and Fox made him lighten it up. If this is true then I guess it's explains why Joss's other works suck so much and is the first evidence of Fox doing something right.
-stormin
Hahahahaha!!!
A tribute to "Nausea"? Which is written by Sartre! Who is a French Existentialist and NOT an objectivist at all. I'll admit I haven't read "Nausea" but I have read much of "Being and Nothingness" and I can tell you Sartre was NOT a nihilist by any stretch of the imagination!
Look, I'll take a listen to the commentary, but if Joss thinks he's writing a tribute to Nausea and objectivism at the same time - he's confused. He needs to turn to Ayn Rand or something for objectivism. You can't even Google "objectivism" without ending up at a Rand Institute site - and what the connection is betwen objectivism and nihilism I'm not even sure.
It sounds like you and Joss both need to get your philosophies straight.
-stormin
I know - it was a mistake and I meant it when I said "sorry".
I won't repeat this error and I feel bad if I spoiled the movie for anyone.
-stormin
Dude, I may be a persistant debater, but at this point I think only one of us is starting to sound crazy. In my circle of friends it's not uncommon to get worked up debating questions like whether sci fi is inherently better than fantasy or what some element of the movie Big Fish really meant.
So for me, as a passionate fan of Firefly, it's no biggie to state what it is that I think went wrong with Serenity and why.
But I'm totally cool with us disagreeing and even though I stand by my analysis for the most part (I don't have time to review everything and sometimes I make mistakes in my haste to post fast) I completely understand that you think Wash's death helped the movie out. That's cool, we disagree - life goes on.
-stormin
Correction: It's a staple to kill disposable henchmen.
Firefly/Serenity is an interesting case. To fans Wash was indispensable. So for fans, it was successful to shock them. But those fans are the same ones that were fans OF THE TV SHOW. And therefore a lot of them - not all of them - were not happy to see their TV show treated like a common action movie.
Because newbies to the show had no way of knowing how indispensable Wash was - and so as far as they were concerned he was as dispesable as any of the characters from Predator that weren't Ahnold.
So you've got three groups of people.
1 - Newbies benefit little from seeing Wash die. They have no reason to suspect he (or anyone else) won't die, and so this doesn't really alter the movie for them.
2 - Whedonites who expect Whedon to hurt them so good. They should also not need any reason to fear the safety of the entire crew - they know his MO.
3 - Firefly fans who love the TV show and don't know much about Whedon. These guys are the only ones who have any reason to suspect that Wash et al are invulnerable. You'd think offing Book would clue them in. But killing Wash does show them "anyone can die". Trouble is, this is basically an attempt to turn them into Whedonites and as it turns out a lot of them don't like Whedon's universe where random people get killed in ways that serve the "in the moment" feeling of the movie but serve no greater purpose. When Wash gets toasted you think "anyone could die" but guess what - that only works the first time you see it! The 2nd and 3rd time it's pointless. So in the long range, killing Wash was pointless. It just made one viewing more exciting, and cut off the possibility of ever seeing him show up in a show again. A lot of Firefly fans considered this a bum trade.
I still don't know why the same people who lecture me on Whedon's MO are the ones that are like "OMG! Then I thought ANYONE could die!" If they knew Whedon's MO, and they STILL needed to see Wash die to know anyone could die - then they must be really, really dense.
-stormin
While your point might be a valid "realistic" argument for a series set in the present or past, I think it fails to pass muster for one set in the future
A valid point - but then one would expect to see death treated much differently in the future if this were the case. I don't see Firefly/Serenity do that. Besides which my point is meant to be general to American TV/film, not exclusive to Firefly/Serenity.
And never sacrificing a series character, to my mind, also sets one up for the dreaded red-shirted security guard syndrome...
Yes, but this is a straw-man because I'm not saying no main characters should ever be killed. I'm not even saying Wash should not have been killed. I'm not even saying Wash should absolutely not have been killed in the 2nd movie (although I don't see anyway that could have been pulled off well, I'm open to the possibility).
All I *am* saying is that I think the specific way in which this specific main character was killed of in this specific movie was a bad all.
Oh, well, I'll go further than that. I think it's an excellent idea to kill of main leads in film/TV from time to time. There are many reasons to do so, and it would be boring if we knew that main leads never died. The question isn't about the general practice, it's about this specific application.
-stormin
You simply can't pay a writer a higher compliment than to be utterly pissed off at a plot twist you didn't like in one of their stories.
I disagree. What's a better indicator of the majesty of the Cistine Chapel - that it's beautiful from end to end or that (hypothetically speaking) Michalangelo painted a huge smiley face over one of the cherubs?
You'd probably get a much greater reaction from the former than from the latter. And in a sense you would be demonstrating the quality of the artists OTHER work. But again I think this is evidence of the superficiality of this thinking. Because no matter how shocking the smiley face would be I think the Cistine Chapel is better without the stark contrast that would imbue upon it.
The quality of art can not be judged, in my opinion, for the shock value it has. In my opinion shock value is cheap. You watch a movie that shocks and startles you - but does that mean it stays with you? The movies that I really, really love aren't ones that fail to shock me or that succeed in shocking me, they are movies that - years down the road - I can still find myself not only thinking about but also can still feel alive within me. I feel a better person for having seen them. I feel my life enriched by them. Like the Cistine Chapel they may not have a lot of "OMG he just got PWNED!!!!111oneone" moments in them - but they endure because the artist didn't screw up at point B just to show us how really awesome he was at points A and C.
I'm not saying you can't have a shocker that also enriches, but I AM saying that by overemphasizing the importance of shock, tension, etc (the visceral "at the moment" aspect of a movie) you run the risk of replacing long-term value with shock value.
That happens to be the mistake I think Whedon made.
-stormin
There's a difference between a nihilist/objectivist character and a nihilist/objectivist work. "Objects in Space" had the former, Serenity became the latter. The issue of objectivity is fascinating, and should certainly be addressed in art. But notice that in "Objects in Space" Jubal was defeated by people who utterly rejected that philosophy? By people who cared about one another? That the whole sub-plot was an utterly anti-objectivist plot about learning to accept River into the crew and care about her as a person and not evaluate her as a mere threat? Your parallel between "objects in space" and Serenity serves only to greater CONTRAST the two. That's the great difference between the series and the movie - one depicted nihilism and one became nihilist.
I don't mind watching evil depicted, but I'd object to a work that was actually evil. Not saying what that means, just illustrating that the difference between depicting something and actually being something can be profound even if the words are only slightly different.
I can't really address your reference to "The Watchmen" because I haven't seen/heard/read it. But I stand by my claim - and the fact that you can't distinguish between depciting nihilism and becoming nihilist leads me to believe that you might very well be confusing the difference in this work as well.
-stormin
Dude, the CAPS LOCK OF RAGE is the funniest thing I've read today! I'm definetely going to use that!
However, I find your analysis of my rant on disability to be somewhat superficial. The fact that I mentioned only phsyical debilitations was not coincidental. I think that as Americans we have a hefty double-standrard in place. We push drugs for depression on TV commercials nonstop. We consider everything from internet use to cell phones addictive. We have no general, all-encompassing phobia of mental illness. It's part of our culture to be infatuated with it. From the mad scientist to the tortured genius we love to delve into the mysteries of mental illness.
So actually my analysis didn't miss River, I just realize that she's the kind of disabled person that's easy to romanticize. She's young, attractive, vulnrable, poetic, mysterious, and above all she's physically whole. Contrast that with how the show would feel if River had some kind of induced Down Syndrome - physical characteristics and all. Doesn't fit, does it?
If anything you're further confirming what I'm trying to say - that American entertainment in this aspect is superficial. What matters isn't "who is disabled and who's not" it's "who's physically different". If you realize that I'm talking about physical disabilities, or at least physically visible disabilities than I think you'll start to see that I'm not missing anything.
The nation of breast implants, a million diets, lipo and botox is far more apprehensive of someone with no arm than someone with schizophrenia on TV. We hide physical blemishes, we treat mental illnesses.
-stormin
I can see the point about how killing Wash increased tension. I just think that that's an overly simplistic analysis. That's the trouble I get into on these messageboards (and msg boards in general). You score points by being fast and witty - not by trying to really see intricate details. So I'm not arguing that "killing off nice characters is bad" or that "tension and suspense don't matter".
I'm just trying to say that if you think about it carefully and weigh the benefits of killing Wash to the cost - I think it was a bad decision.
First, I think it was a bad decision in the specific sense:
Honestly I really think Simon should have died. I think that would made a much better story. He's already a kind of Messiah-figure to River by giving up his life (his job, family, wealth and status) to try and give her back her life (her sanity). The pieces are all in place for a final sacrifice. It would have been far more poignant - especially in demonstrating that while River may be able to kill hordes of Reavers she lacked the power to save her brother in the end. I think that's a much richer path that the film could have taken.
Furthermore I don't think Simon was an integral part of the crew. He was a fun character, but most of what made him a good character was his caretaking for River - and that was now over. Sure as a doc he'd be useful, but as a character I felt he'd run his course.
Now my second objection. Not only do I object specifically to the decison, but I object to it because of the larger philosophical implications.
You see it may have been more realistic to kill Wash because "anyone can die", but we don't go to see movies to see random. We go to see the complete oposite. We want to see form, symetry, plot and narrative - all of these things are the OPPOSITE of random. If we interpret realistic to mean "like it would happen in real life" we're going to lose what we like about movies - the fact that they are NARRATIVES for what we don't like about real life - that it's utterly meaningless at the core. I don't want meaningless movies, I want movies that HAVE meaning.
Imagine going to a movie where every pixel of every frame was randomly generated. That's "real". Or, if you think that's too much, imagine going to a movie where they just stuck camera glasses on a guy, taped for 2 hours, and put it on the screen. As an experimental flick it would be really interesting - there'd be stuff to talk about what it does to our perception of art. Now imagine that those were the ONLY movies made. Pretty soon it's not so interesting.
And so I'm opposed to "realism" in the sense of "shit happens". There's a place for that in the movie - but in order for it to be good I think you need to place the "shit happens" in the framework of a narrative.
That's one of our greatest challenges as humans - finding a framework for our lives. I think existentially speaking we're not "finding" so much as "creating". We impose our own narrative on our own lives day by day and moment by moment - creating meaning in what we do. We create meaning and we invest it in our lives, friendships, memories, possessions and aspirations. None of those things exist in the "real" world, but they do exist in our narratives. That's how meaning gets into life. And I think that sometimes we fail to make sense of things that happen to us, and art's greatest calling is try and succeed where we may have failed - to show that meaning survives all that life can throw at it. If art has lost meaning, than it ceases to be art. If art has lost the ability to convey meaning than it ceases to be art and becomes "pseudo-intellectual masturbation" intead (read the quote at end of post!).
If you take the opposite approach and give up and see that meaning doesn't matter - then where does that take you? In Serenity it takes you to killing Wash and thinking it was a great idea. But you still like killing Wash because it happens in the greater context of meaning. Wash was somebody
STOP SAYING THIS STUPID STUFF!!! YOU'RE DRIVING ME NUTS!!!
Killing Wash established that "all bets are off." It was just about the last thing any fan of the show expected...
It's also typical of Whedon's M.O.
Pick one please.
And finally: Whedon is not only willing to kill off well-loved characters, he's actually eager for the chance to do so. He's an evil god who never wants his creations to be happy. Bear that in mind when watching anything he makes.
This is what I mean when I talk about misery-loving Wheddonites. You can rest assured that I have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in seeing anything else Wheddon has done.
But you get this through YOUR head - I can like Firefly without liking Wheddon. Just like I can like Star Wars (original and unedited) but still hate Lucas for what he did to the show - both in "improving" the originals and creating the prequals.
-stormin
If you don't see how perfectly it fits in to his universe to have Wash take a reaver grappling hook (just like the one he pointed out in the pilot episode when a reaver ship passes nearby) right in the chest just as everything looks like it will be okay, then you weren't watching the show very closely. Sensless brutality is the world in which Joss Whedon pretty much always sets his stories.
Actually I AM watching it very carefully - and that is why I dislike it so much. Here's something for you to consider:
the world has gone nutty and contemporary art always paints the spirit of its times. Rodin died about the time the world started flipping its lid. His successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition and they copied that part. What they failed to see was that the master told stories that laid bare the human heart. They became contemptuous of painting or sculpture that told a stories --they dubbed such work 'literary'. They went all out for abstractions.
Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right --for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror. What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience. These laddies who won't deign to do that -- or can't --lost the public
This is the story of what happened with Serenity. Wheddon is very smart, and he's alwayss flirted with the border of nihilism. But what he had in Firefly was NOT nihilism - it was existentialism. It was the portrayal of a universe devoid of meaning but it was also the portrayal of men and women who through sheer force of will imposed meaning on that universe.
Consider Simon's arrival on the ship. When he asks why Mal came back for him Mal replies "'Cause your one of my crew. Why we still talkin' about this?" There is no rhyme or reason to whether or not Simon is part of the crew. Mal simply imposes his reality on the universe.
It is this imposition of the human heart onto the unfeeling universe that made people love Firefly. Sure - the universe was crappy and dangerous but Firefly (the ship) was warm and full of light because the crew made it so. The depiction of a nihilistic universe was a contrast to the existential power of the human soul - and this message resonated with viewers.
But in Serenity by killing Wash Wheddon stepped over the line into nihilism. There is no room for the human heart in nihilism - is is destruction and absense of meaning. In the death of Wash the warmth and emotion of Firefly is subsumed in the cold chaos of the cosmos.
Whether you like this or not isn't a factor of whether or not you can understand the philosophies involved - nor is it a factor of which is more "real". If you are a nihilist, if you get a thrill out burning meaning out of existence than this tickles your fancy. It's a big "fuck you" to every thing that humans care about as far as narrative and meaning are concerned. But if you wanted the existentialists to win out - if you believe that the human spirit can imbue a senseless realm of chaos with order, meaning and narrative then killing Wash is a stab in the heart.
Besides, I don't believe that Wheddon is a nihilist. If he was, then we wouldn't have the ending that we do - where Mal says "we're flying, it's enough". That's existentialism coming back.
The trouble is that you can't rectify nihilism and objectivism with existentialism in the final analysis. Objectivism is the ultimate denial of existentialism. Both start with a world devoid of meaning - existentialism imbues the world with meaning, objectivism denies that possibility.
As long as Wheddon holds the two in dynamic contrast throughout his stories - which he does in Firefly - propoenents of both can enjoy the series. But when he tries to allow both to win out - as he does in Serenity - than the existentialists will jump ship.
Argh - have to get back to work! What it comes do
If we redid the the works of Homer and Shakespear, everyone would live at the end, else how would we have Season Two of Hamlet?
Yes and no. If Homer and Shakespeare were a TV series - yes. This is why I like miniseries (which usually have a capped number of seasons/episodes) best. They have time to do more intriciate plotting than a movie, but since they also have a finite point you lose the incentive to sacrifice long-term story for short-term ratings. But look at American movies: we kill anyone and everyone.
This is especially true in sci/fi action movies. The exception is star trek - which was really just a franchise even when it was a movie. But other sci fi movies always involve killing off large numbers of the cast along the way.
Thus the problem I have with saying "once Wash died - anyone was fair game". If we're looking at it as a movie then this is a moot point - anyone's fair game anyway. The only people who would think the cast was NOT fair game are those who knew the cast from Firefly and we're seeing Serenity as an add on to Firefly. So the people that might not have had the tension Wheddon was looking for are by and large the SAME PEOPLE that like wash so much that to them his death is not worth the increased tension.
It really comes down to a question of sensitivity. If it takes abrupt killing of a beloved character to make you feel the tension of the movie then, in my opinion, maybe you've become a little too desensitized. But at the very lesat you need to realize that if you weren't feeling enough suspence until Wash got speared - that doesn't mean other people weren't. Personally, I got all the tension I needed before that point.
And lastly, I think the whole tension/suspense card is WAY overrated. If suspense was really critical to watching the movie, we'd never watch it more than once. We don't watch movies just to see how they end. If that were true - there'd be no repeat viewings in theaters and no market for DVDs. And there would never be book adaptations either.
But we DO like to watch our favorite movies again and again. The Matrix isn't any worse of a movie after I've seen it 4 or 5 times. This shows me that again - the question is NOT uncertainty OR suspense - it's immersion. And for me and many others killing Wash did not lead to a greater sesne of "being there".
-stormin
I don't know the #s on this, but I have a suspicion that you're wrong. As I've stated before, Americans don't like to see amputees, quadrapelegics, etc. They make us uncomfortable. When you're dead you're a hero forever, when you've lost a limb you're a hero for a limited period of time - then you're disabled.
It would be interesting to take a look at the #s of soldiers that fought in a modern war from the US, then look at the # that were killed, the # that were OK, and the # that were permenantly injured. I'm guessing that the rates for permenant injury are going to be significantly higher than what's reflect in our entertainment. Of course it would be hard not to be - there are practically none reflected in our entertainment.
I can only think of one movie that has actually looked at this issue at all without being one of those dramas where the disability IS the plot - and that's Forest Gump. Part of the brilliance of the movie, in my opinion.
All I'm trying to demonstrate is that people who are calling out for "realism" aren't really thinking through what they mean. And that American could probably do with a bit more realism in our entertainment - but that it involves more nuance and not just a higher body count.
-nathaniel
So in a series with many season and even more deaths of major characters we had ONE instance of a permenant injury?
How is that supposed to help your point again? If I say something's really rare and I'm like "when was the last time it happened" and EVERYONE gives me the one and only identical example - who's really making the successful point?
-stormin
The on advantage to having to repeat myself is that I get a little more economical as time goes by.
1 - Joss kills character.
Big freakin' deal. So did Homer (Illiad and Odyssey, not Simpson). So did Shakespeare. I have nothing against killing main characters.
2 - "safety net" and "this is better than knowing..."
You suppose two things.
A - Uncertainty is an essentially good part of experiencing art.
B - Uncertainty trumps all else when experiencing art.
As for A, I think you're missing the point. The point is NOT uncertainty anymore than it's realism. We like to be surprised and we like to feel like a movie is real beause we're seeking immersion in the world. Uncertainty and "realism" are only means to that end.
And furthermore you don't actually want either uncertainty or realism. By "realism" you tend to just mean "darker". As in "more people die, more bad things happen". But the fact is that you're still operating in the same binary "live or die" paradigm as Hercules and Xena. Either characters fully recover from inury or they die. Shifting the odds from death to life doesn't make the show anymore realistic because the entire either/or option is the real problem. In REAL combat there are many injuries for every fatality - and many permenant injuries for every fatality. But Americans get uncomrtable around amputees and quadra/parapelegics - so we just erase that entire continuum and stick with "live or die". Your notion of realism is just a superficial idea that the more people die and the more things suck the more the movie is real. That's not reality.
And you don't actually want open-ended uncertainty either. You're ALREADY working within a narrow, formulaic paradigm of American film/TV where characters either live or die. OK, one Buffy character lost an eye once - that just proves my point. We have one permenant injury to what - dozens of deaths? Hundreds?
And now for B. Even IF you could prove that somehow you really did want uncertainty (which would be something like Mal getting the disk inserted at the last moment and there's a read/writer error, or the power conking out in Serenity and they all asphyxiate in their sleep - but you don't want REAL uncertainty and randomness like in real life, you just want more tension) Even IF you could prove that, how do you prove that because film X has more uncertainty it's better than film Y? Maybe film X has crappy characters and stupid dialogue and so we don't care about the uncertainty?
Conclusion:
I'm not trying to tell you that Buffy sucks, or that Serenity is inherently inferior to Firefly. If you suddenly had a change of heart and thought that, I wouldnt' feel successful. What I want to do is challenge you, and others like you, to really THINK about what you mean when you say that you want uncertainty or realism in your movies/TV. Because most of what I hear is just nonsensical and upon analysis falls apart. And THAT'S depressing.
-stormin
Your points are entirely valid. If you only care about the movie there's nothing wrong with killing off Wash or Book. So if that's what matters to you - we don't really have a disagreement.
I was just really, really hoping for the movie to be popular in order to bring back the TV show. There's no use arguing whether it's better to want the movie to succeed in its own right or whether it was better to want the TV show back. All I'm saying is that most fans were there because they were trying to save a TV show, and so for us it was sad to see Wash go. If you are content with movie, cheers.
-stormin
over 20 replies
stupid num lock key