Most interesting thing in reading these pieces by non-Browncoat reviewers like CHUD and now EW is how shallow (and somewhat negative) their interpretations are on aspects of the film (eg. Reavers = little more than souped-up space zombies). But in the end they always seem to give it around a 7 out of 10.

StaffOSimon | December 26, 15:16 CET

Shallow indeed. I actually found the whole Reaver/Alliance premise profound. Two things always nagged at me (not fatally, but a bit annoyingly) from the Firefly DVD set--why was the Alliance, an otherwise rather benign despot, so desparate to retrieve River (and why were they doing what they were doing to her and others?) And, huh, Reavers? They didn't make a ton of sense.

Now they do. In fact, they explain why the Alliance sends out blue-gloved assassins who cooly dispatch loyal soldiers who had the slightest contact with River. Why they will stop at nothing to get her back. Because they can't allow the general populace to know that they in fact created the Reavers. And that they have to create an army of uber-warriors like River to deal with them. In playing God, they have overstepped their limits (this is an ancient story, beautifully re-told) and are trying to get away with it without facing the consequences.

This hubris (a sin!) never ends well...I am praying for a sequel.

Chris inVirginia | December 26, 18:06 CET

I would like to think that had the series continued, we would have seen River go head to head with some of her fellow uber-warriors.

Unless of course we already did i.e. the Operative. An early example of Alliance mind conditioning? Prototype 1 to River's Weapon X?

Simon | December 26, 19:38 CET

It's possible, Simon. Or The Operative was simply a bit, you know, unhindged.

In the Serenity commentary Joss says The Operative and River share a link, that he posses some of the same kind of quality as River does.

gossi | December 26, 20:04 CET

Well put, CiV.

palehorse | December 26, 20:25 CET

I think it's Ursula LeGuin who wrote a speculative essay about the Reavers and what possible significance they could have in the Firefly-verse. This was before Serenity was even in production, I think. Her essay shows just the kind of depth that can be found in the Reavers, and also what part the utopic society of the Alliance might have to do with that.

Serenity pretty much solved that mystery, but it's still fun to speculate about what the Reavers might have been.

Reviews like EW's are annoying. I don't know anyone who went to see the movie in theatres and wasn't impressed, or would have considered comparing it with Eraser; but because of a mediocre box office return (that's probably got more to do with equally mediocre marketing) for what's overtly an action sci-fi flick, the mainstream media won't write better than a mediocre review.

Oh, btw, hello-- this is my first post!

Eric | December 26, 21:02 CET

Speaking of missing the point entirely, the New York Times today (Dec 26) has a piece about movie review sites for conservatives. The author of the piece refers to "Serenity" as "wholesome fluff."

Wild.

DrGonefission | December 26, 21:08 CET

Here's the full mention from the NY Times (it's only a sentence from a lengthy article:

But many also praise wholesome fluff like "Serenity" or serious fare like "2001: A Space Odyssey," which appears on the Vatican's 1995 list of 45 great films for its blend of "science fiction and metaphysical poetry."

"Wholesome fluff"? Unbelievable, amazing, bizarre.

Chris inVirginia | December 26, 21:22 CET

"Wholesome flull?" Really? Amazing! is that article on line?

(Oops. Posted at the same time as CiV.)

[ edited by newcj on 2005-12-26 19:27 ]

newcj | December 26, 21:26 CET

Because they can't allow the general populace to know that they in fact created the Reavers.

Um. Or, maybe, they can't allow the general populace to know that they mass murdered 30 million people? That's kind of the bigger deal.

The One True b!X | December 26, 21:27 CET

It`s like how it bugged me, when people just ignored Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, was just a silly horror comedy show, where a teenage blonde chick killed vampires.

Whereas, who spent some time really watching it, found out how deep those simple concepts could be. The "it's just like Power Rangers, but with no japanese action in it", only worked with who didn't really know anything about the show.

Well, some people just don't get it. I say, maybe we should just let these people, take it as a popcorn no worry flick, and let people who'd like to appreciate the movie, get their chance to appreciate it.

Numfar PTB | December 26, 21:30 CET

Because they can't allow the general populace to know that they in fact created the Reavers.

Um. Or, maybe, they can't allow the general populace to know that they mass murdered 30 million people? That's kind of the bigger deal.

They can't allow the populace to know that they are not benevolent and right in everything they do. That sometimes their government, which is supposed to be for good and supposed to act in a just, reasonable and peace creating way, only interfering in peoples lives to help protect them or maintain the peace, is sometimes wrong and sometimes does horrible things in the name of those values.

The people have a view of the myth of their government that must be maintained. That is more important than any one act or the results of any one act that might have been ill conceived. (And when taken single-ly, all acts are one act.) The people must believe that their government is working toward the ideal that they have been raised to believe is what the Alliance stands for. They need to believe that they are the good guys.

newcj | December 26, 21:43 CET

Well, yes, the dead folks, of course. But I'd argue that they weren't "mass murdered". I mean, the intent of the Alliance was to pacify them, not kill them. The horrific result needs to be concealed, for reasons newcj lays out, but that's still something in the past, something that can be at least somehow dealt with--reparations for family members, etc.

The Reavers, on the other hand, are very different manner. A potential threat to every single citizen of the Alliance.

Chris inVirginia | December 26, 22:05 CET

I still wanna know what Jane Espenson meant when she wrote in Finding Serenity, "In going from television show to feature film, the rules change. Parts of the board are wiped clean. The mythology of the Reavers on Firefly is not quite the mythology of the Reavers in Serenity."

Kris | December 26, 22:12 CET

Yes, Kris, that's confusing to me, too.

Because it seems that Reavers/Firefly jibes with Reavers/Serenity. In fact, to me, as I've said, the movie helps clarify some concerns I had with the show.

Chris inVirginia | December 26, 22:18 CET

The Reavers, on the other hand, are very different manner. A potential threat to every single citizen of the Alliance.

I've never viewed the Reavers as quite that large of a threat. There were only 30,000 of them, after all.

Meanwhile, this other bit: I still wanna know what Jane Espenson meant when she wrote in Finding Serenity, "In going from television show to feature film, the rules change. Parts of the board are wiped clean. The mythology of the Reavers on Firefly is not quite the mythology of the Reavers in Serenity."

Wel, perhaps Espenson was taking all the "saw the edge of space and went mad" talk at face value as the actual explanation for the Reavers. If you take that at face value, then the movie changes the mythology. If you just assume that the "edge of space madness" stuff was simply what people told themselves and each other because it sounded good, then there's no mythology change because the series never had the chance to give us the real story.

The One True b!X | December 26, 23:12 CET

I've thought that too bix, that it may've just been Jane's interpretation. Although you'd think she would've questioned Joss on their actual origins and he may've let her in on them. Who knows. It'd be cool to see Joss address it some day. Maybe someone can ask the question for me at a convention? Unless he comes to Toronto some time soon, I don't think I'll be able to ask it personally.

Kris | December 26, 23:18 CET

Now, I could be wrong here, but I *think* Joss said at some point the overall arc of the Reavers was put together around episode 4 time. Jane would probably have been part of that, being on the writing staff.


I've never viewed the Reavers as quite that large of a threat. There were only 30,000 of them, after all.


Try setting 30000 cannibal rapists free in middle america and say that ;)

gossi | December 26, 23:32 CET

Any idea how DVD sales are going (in terms of actual dollar figures)? I know at the local Blockbuster, all the copies of Serenity were rented out.

Nebula1400 | December 26, 23:48 CET

"I still wanna know what Jane Espenson meant when she wrote in Finding Serenity, "In going from television show to feature film, the rules change. Parts of the board are wiped clean. The mythology of the Reavers on Firefly is not quite the mythology of the Reavers in Serenity."

Other than the possibility of an internal change, that the audience never had spelled out for them as alluded to above, could it have to do with the time frame? The movie has the Reavers having been created a fairly short time ago. (My brain is still fried from Christmas, and I don't remember how long ago the tragedy at Miranda happened.) I got the impression that the Reavers had been around for a while in the show, but that was very much an impression rather than based on any specific line I can recall. Anybody got a better idea why I thought that?

newcj | December 27, 00:16 CET

The events on Miranda were said to have happened 12 years previously, I believe. Or maybe it was the holo recording that was made 12 years previously.

[ edited by theonetruebix on 2005-12-26 22:38 ]

The One True b!X | December 27, 00:36 CET

I don't thing the hologram of the River rescue could have been 12 years ago...that would have had her as a very, very young girl, probably even younger than the River we see in the introductory classroom scene. And Reavers were already in the public consciousness...I'm guessing (and that's all) that the River in the classroom was about 10 or so, and that the Miranda tragedy happened about 6 or so years prior, which would have given the Reavers legends ample time to generate.

Chris inVirginia | December 27, 01:03 CET

I was speaking, in response to the issue being raised, of the Miranda hologram, which Mal specifically says was made around 12 years previously.

On edit: And Jayne says the Reavers show up "like the bogeyman from stories" the "last ten years" or so.

[ edited by theonetruebix on 2005-12-26 23:19 ]

The One True b!X | December 27, 01:07 CET

Oh, that makes sense.

Actually, it all makes sense. Amazing sense.

Chris inVirginia | December 27, 01:27 CET

Yes, I read the Serenity DVD review over a week ago when I got my issue in the mail...I was slightly frazzled, but it's still a positive review even if the critic (I believe it was Dalton Ross; correct me if I'm wrong) didn't seem to quite get it, despite alluding to the fact that he watched a few episodes of the series.

(And, hey, the discussion of Reavers in this thread is one of the best I've read yet on Whedonesque. Woo!)

UnpluggedCrazy | December 27, 01:45 CET

And, Eric, hello, and welcome!

Chris inVirginia | December 27, 02:03 CET

Excellent point! Even though the Alliance has been denying the existence of the Reavers, as the Teacher in the classroom does, they also managed to cover up that there ever was a Miranda, needless to say the death toll there. Even if the Alliance didn't "actively" murder them, they caused their deaths, and then swept it under the carpet. I mean, many (most?) of us are furious that people needlessly died in New Orleans because the government (federal, local, all of the above) bungled it and then claimed that they were doing "a heck of a job;" thank goodness we're finding the death toll there is "only" in the low thousands. We can't even imagine what it would be like if there were millions dead and the government utterly disavowed it; but that's who the Alliance is, ultimately. No wonder the Independents fought them.



That seems right, but it is also true that the "creation event" on Miranda rendered "only" 30,000 Reavers, and that was 12 years ago or more. What with wear and tear and radiation poisoning and bullets and River and such ;-), the Reavers would be reducing in numbers. So, how do we get new Reavers? Well, we did see it in "Bushwhacked." There are people whose response to great evil is to become it (Stockholm Syndrome to the nth degree?). So, maybe there are two sources of Reavers: mostly, the Pax, but also sometimes being driven by very extreme forces to madness.


Couldn't agree more! This is pretty deep. That's why I lurve this board! :-)

billz | December 27, 03:30 CET

It isn't just the Reavers mythology that changes from the series to the movie. There are a lot of differences, some quite obvious -- Simon doing the action adventure rescue of River -- and some a little more subtle -- in Firefly the objective of the Alliance was to recover River, in Serenity it is to kill her. Sure there had to be story-line changes in order to condense everything from a slowly developing arc to a two-hour movie, but what that means to me is that the story of Serenity is not the story of Firefly. Rather it's the story of a Firefly crew in a similar but different dimension. (Maybe the one without shrimp. Was anyone seen eating shrimp in Serenity?)
So for me, Serenity, regardless of its quality a movie, was not satisfying as a resolution of the River Tam storyline in Firefly. I still want to know why the Alliance wanted to get her back, -- if it was just because she was a human weapon, when did the objective change to killing her, and why? Were the men with the blue gloves just the people experimenting on River? Why did they come "two by two"? There seems to be a lingering creepiness about that image that wasn't resolved in the movie. These questions continue to haunt me.

(Another newbie posting. Thanks Whedonesque editors for letting us join!)

barboo | December 27, 06:01 CET

Of course Joss said he could fanwank the differences between the show and the movie but he wasn't going to!

Lioness | December 27, 06:03 CET

I believe he did actually say somewhere that his idea of the Reivers evolved during the show -- that he really wasn't sure where they came from and put in the "went mad on the edge of space" idea as a sort of filler until he was sure and came up, at some point, with the origin story that's in "Serenity." It's possible, I imagine, that he kept a lot of this thinking mostly to himself.

As for whether the Alliance wanted to capture of kill River, I think that was a point that was deliberately vague on the part of both the Alliance and Joss. He maybe wasn't sure either, but (this is my fan wank/rank speculation from hereon) figured that the Alliance would speak euphemistically in any case.

Even the Operative at first mentions only finding River and bringing her back (almost in a sort of protective way) to the "young miss" -- making it more sound like, just perhaps, he really would prefer to bring her back alive, though he's probably just doing it for the benefit of the terrified woman --and, in any case, his behavior about six seconds prior pretty belies any notion of his preferring not to kill people. In fact, as I noticed it watching it this weekend on DVD, it's Inara who is the first to flat out state that the Operative intends to kill River. Sounds like she and the Operative had some interesting conversations while they were waiting for Mal to show up.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is how do we know the Alliance didn't want to ultimately kill River in "Firefly"?

bobster | December 27, 06:45 CET

Oh, and also just a quick shout out to all the new Whedonesquers. Welcome aboard, congratulations on joining what is by far the most intelligent and polite board in this whole mishegas, and hope you're all having a great holiday season.

bobster | December 27, 06:53 CET

Regarding differences and fan wanks, the reality is that Joss has adopted a fan wank for one thing, and that's the difference between what Simon tells the crew in the series about River's rescue and what we actually see of the rescue in the film.

The reality is that what people often cite as being "differences" aren't really differences at all because so little of the underlying backstory or character motivation was ever full defined or developed in the short-lived series. What people declare to be outright differences are actually just differences between what they perceived to be the story in the series and what Joss says is the story in the movie.

One exception: The entire reason it appeared in the series to be about capturing River, but became about killing her in the movie (at least in part) is because once it was assigned to The Operative instead of a series of random bounty hunters, he bothered to use his higher level of access to do his homework and discover that River had had access to the minds of key Parliament officials.

(Also, FYI, the blue gloves wereneither her abductors nor her experimenters. Read the three-issue comic series. They were "freelancers" -- in other words, bounty hunters.)

[ edited by theonetruebix on 2005-12-27 06:22 ]

The One True b!X | December 27, 08:20 CET

Thank you so much to the owners and moderators of this site, especially Simon who helped me get registered when I ran into a problem. Of all the gifts I received this season, I'm sure this membership will get the most use!

My friends and I, watching Firefly before the movie was released, thought that the episode in which the Reaver survivor turns Reaver himself implied that Reaverism might be caused by a transmissible disease, perhaps a bioengineered one.

I liked this explanation better than the one in the movie. It's a more plausible government experiment screwup than experimenting on the entire population of a planet without preliminary small trials. A horrible disease of unknown origins, with an unknown vector of transmission, that causes dementia and has no treatment, is reminiscent of the early days of the AIDS epidemic. It solves the problem of why a bunch of violent people with no impulse control don't just get wiped out. It allows the Reavers to start as a barely noticed problem and slowly propagate into an immense one.

In the series, Reaverism as a disease would have provided endless fodder for plots and character interaction. Serious incurable diseases pick up spiritual and mythological associations pretty quickly (leprosy, syphilis, tuberculosis; smallpox has its own god in West Africa).

I'm sure that the changes from the series to the movie were necessary, and I don't expect a perfect match. Just another set of what-might-have-beens.

janef | December 27, 09:43 CET

I really like this idea, and had similar ones myself back when the series was first airing. I think it could have been a fascinating plot device. *sighs* Ah, what ifs. Gotta love 'em.



Wow, really? I'd never heard that before!



I read the comic (granted, it's been a while), and I never thought they were freelancers. I thought they were government agents, [SPOILERS FOR THE COMICS] mostly due to the fact that Dobson seems to think he can get Alliance support via the blue hands. He says having that support is the one thing he lacks, and they seem able to provide it.

And hi everyone! The name's Sonya, and I'm new here, too. :)

sonyajeb | December 27, 20:43 CET

Second to last page of the fina issue of the comic. Alliance official to The Operative: "Our independent contractors have... disappeared."

My memory said "freelancers" but the comic actually uses "independent contractors." The intent is the same -- they're bounty hunters.

The One True b!X | December 27, 22:11 CET

The review is sloppy in the way it chooses to highlight the plot outline and type of antagonists as bad points.

For one, you can take almost any quality movie, including bucketloads of 5-star rated classics, that could have their plot summarised in some way that makes its premise seem unoriginal. An unoriginal basis for a plot is not even enough to stop a film becoming a classic so it's a pretty weak reason to put a black mark on a film.

Secondly, the main antagonist is The Operative (or Mal, depending how deep you wanna go in analysing the story). Saying that most of the antagonists are souped-up space zombies fails to put across that the movie isn't about heroes vs zombies, it's about heroes vs corrupt government. (The reavers themselves are basically as much a product of the corrupt government as The Operative is).

And even if the movie was simply about heroes vs zombies, these ultra aggresive cannibalistic rapist zombies are so freakin awesomely frightening they make the stormtroopers, vampires and klingons of the movie universe seem cuddlier than Shrek.

Lastly, how fascinating it is that this guy starts the article basically saying that anyone who was bummed when Firefly got canned was a squealer, whiner and weeper (all words implying various levels of weakness) but when Farscape and HR were canned he was "furious" (like a strong person should react to dissapointment). Funny how different the impression of the guy would have been if he started by saying ... "I wasn't one of those fans who was furious when Firefly was canned but I squealed, whined and got my nose all snotty when Farscape and HR were cancelled."

Then again, it still got a B which is obviously lower than it deserves but, from a less than competent reviewer, you'd take it.

Bucho | December 28, 10:34 CET

Bucho, I would not call Dalton Ross a "less than competent reviewer." I've been reading his stuff for years, and it's always been of a high caliber; he may not have really got Serenity, but he certainly is competent.

UnpluggedCrazy | December 29, 12:38 CET

Am I remembering the scene when Dobson mentions wanting an Alliance sanction for his actions and the Blue Hands agree incorrectly? Because that scene suggests that they are more than mere bounty hunters. I doubt Jubal Early, for instance, could have offered anyone an Alliance sanction for their actions, even if he wanted to. (Not that he would.)

And the Blue Hands do seem to have a lot more power than your average bounty hunter. After all, would a mere bounty hunter have been allowed to kill Alliance officials for just being in the same room as the Tams?

Not saying you're wrong, just pointing out that there might be more to it... :)

[ edited by sonyajeb on 2006-01-11 23:15 ]

sonyajeb | January 12, 01:15 CET