posted
But here's the problem: Even with Book's narration, his line referring to "hundreds" of new Earths being settled stretches the credibility of the whole story taking place in one solar system even more. It strains credibility already talking about a few dozen habitable planets and a few dozen more habitable moons, but hundreds? Sorry, that's one of the things that I just can't buy -- on a rational level. I have no problem with suspension of disbelief, of course. I wouldn't be watching sci-fi otherwise.
Registered: Nov 2000
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Upon careful scouring of the trailer, River is wearing a different outfit in her Buffy moment than the 'motion suit' she's wearing at the start. But it does seem to be a very similar color.
Also, in the sequence where Mal is in his room looking at the video snap of Inara, you can see a black on white image of what appears to be the galaxy on the wall near his desk. A rectangular portion of this galaxy is greyed. It's beyond the depth of field, and so I couldn't really read it...
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
There's a list of what purports to be nearly every world in the 'verse in that book, the, uh, "Visual Companion" I think. Well, every planet plus "border moons." I was going to buy it, but then I didn't. I was hoping it would have more in the way of production art and pictures of shiny spaceships. And then there's that pernicious deleted scene from "Our Mrs. Reynolds."
If one really wanted to nitpick, he might complain that Chinese characters do not lend themselves to a digital world as well as Roman ones do. Consider the size of the keyboard containing even only the most commonly used characters. There are a lot of kludges available, of course, but from what I gather (and I am exceedingly ill-informed here, so don't set your foreign policy by me or anything) putting Chinese (or Japanese, or any of the languages which use an "alphabet" descended from the Chinese system) on computer screens by way of keyboards is a real problem. So you might expect that, in the future, the Roman alphabet would muscle out the Chinese when it came to computers.
So how come this movie isn't number one, is what I want to know.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I believe it was, on a dollars-per-screen basis. Give it another week, I'm betting it will make MORE money this weekend once the word gets out how uber it is.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
A History of Violence made more money per screen than Serenity. Into the Blue, alas, is making more money per screen. (Depending on who you ask; I guess there is some error in reporting. All the huge Whedon nerd sites are all over it.) Obviously, the problem is that Serenity the movie lacks the Inara spongebath scene from "Serenity" the episode.
We've discussed it before, but the scene in question is on the Firefly DVD set, and contains a reference to the "more than seventy earths spinning about the galaxy." (There's that word again.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
So here's what I see as the only two irreconcilable differences between the show and the movie, and one of those can probably be fudged, though it is weird.
Anyway, one, Simon spends the series trying to figure out what was done to River, yet at the beginning of the film he sits through a presentation on exactly that. I mean, I can see how he might be distracted, and perhaps he sprung the escape plan just after arriving; I don't think we can tell how long he and the scientist guy had been talking prior to that scene. Still. (I don't, incidentally, have any real problem with Simon being present. It doesn't contradict anything he said in his TV speech, though why he said "they said they could get her to Persephone and then I could take her wherever" instead of "they could get us to Persephone," but perhaps he didn't want to discuss the details.)
The other thing, and the thing I think we can squint at and explain away, is the Alliance's curious response to River's escape. In the show the Alliance issues regular warrants for her and Simon, and even a seemingly low-level federal agent like Dobson knows that she's "important to the Alliance brass." They even go so far as to enlist the help of private citizens, like Jubal Early. Yet in the film the operative is dispatched and suddenly everything is super hush-hush. "No warrants issued," they say at one point. So what changed?
It seems to me that we can get away with saying that we see multiple agencies with different security clearances taking multiple approaches, maybe. River escapes and general law enforcement is alerted, and then the people in charge of the project dispatch their own agents, perhaps concerned that having anyone who isn't in the know apprehend her means the potential leak of all sorts of secrets, and then finally the operative is sent out from the very highest levels with orders to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Maybe the program intentionally downplayed River's importance at first, hoping some random street cop would pick her up and send her back before the government's really scary agents started to nose around.
While I'm rambling, various background stuff tells us that the Alliance evolved from the U.S. and China, neither of which have parliaments, so where'd that come from?
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well the Big Damn Flanvention also happens to occur in December. I would hope the DVD release might coincide...
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: ...While I'm rambling, various background stuff tells us that the Alliance evolved from the U.S. and China, neither of which have parliaments, so where'd that come from?
The US (America) evidently had long ago usurped the UK according to the Official Visual Companion that I flipped through at B&N the other night. Also the American capital planet is Londinium. Not that that in any way explains it...
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Huh. So, like, were you disappointed that there were not nice full page plan views of ships in that book as well?
I imagine "parliament" was thrown in mostly for storytelling purposes. It sounds mildly exotic to us Americans, and conveniently combines legislative and executive powers, thus no need to bring in a president figure to complicate the plot. (Er, and a prime minister wouldn't count just because.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I've just got back from seeing it in the UK. I loved it. Sure there were some things that bugged me, but not enough to spoil it.
One thing I've just thought with regards to Wash's death - anyone else think it's really, really similar to Trinity's in Matrix Revolutions? Apart from the really important fact that Wash doesn't go through a 3-hour long overblown death speach that sends the audience to sleep. I have a small fantasy that this was a subtle slap from Whedon to the Wachowskis, essentially saying "This is how you make a good movie!". Wash didn't need a goodbye speech to show the emotion between him and Zoe (And indeed the audience), it was shown much more clearly by Zoe losing her head and trying to charge the Reavers. Methinks Mr. Whedon has a much better grasp on human psychology than either the Wachowskis or Lucas, and this is why his work kicks so much butt.
Registered: May 2005
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quote:I imagine "parliament" was thrown in mostly for storytelling purposes.
Jayne at one point in the series says "She's in congress?" I think from this we can assume there's also a body by that name, since it doesn't seem likely that Jayne of all people would know the word if there wasn't.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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