Mal: “you really have to tell me about that sometime”
Shepherd: “No, I don’t”
Gotta love that. After rewatching the DVD multiple times, I think that might even be my favorite line in the film.
After the out-take rant by Mal, my favorite is a line by Jayne:
“Hell, I’ll kill a man in a fair fight… or if I think he’s gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there’s a woman, or if I’m gettin’ paid - mostly only when I’m gettin’ paid.”
The rant (starts at 4:47)
Well, I wouldn’t want it to be categorically ruled out, either. I think the character works best when it’s not clear whether she’s psychic or just really freaky and uncannily perceptive.
My favorite piece of evidence is in Ariel. Spoilered, since I’m not sure if the OP has seen the series or not:When Simon is looking at the imager in the hospital, he says, “She feels everything. She can’t not.” That suggests to me that she’s not so much psychic as just inhumanly perceptive, as you say. Every little facial expression, body language, voice quaver gets noticed and she’s able to read far more into each than a regular person ever could. In Trash, when Jayne is telling the Tams to stay in their room, Simon says, “This bounty on us just keeps getting better.” Jayne mutters, “Well, I wouldn’t know.” If you know what to look for, you can read “he’s scared we’ll find out” into his voice and posture. It’s really cleverly done, and I’m almost disappointed that they seemed to go with the real psychic angle in the movie.
Well, yes and no. What you say is true, but the series did hint she had some measure of psychic shit going on as well (my earlier joke notwithstanding) : in Safe, she accurately figures out why the mute girl is mute, in details. I don’t care how perceptive you are, you’re not going to get “my mother killed my sister and tried to kill me, then she killed herself and I haven’t talked since” from body language alone.
Of course, what she perceives from that mind reading ability gets lumped with her regular, acute perceptions, schyzophrenic delusions, the huge amount of miscellaneous junk data she can’t filter out ; all of this goes through the crazy filter going in, and once again going back out as creepifying disjointed words. So it’s not like she’s a *useful *psychic.
ETA : “They weren’t cows on the ship. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see the sky and remember what they are.” - my favorite River line.
“Should I be worried that that made perfect sense to me?”
You would not believe how often I use that line in class.
Possibly true, but I liked the movie enough to go back and watch the entire Firefly series.
I mean to a certain extent, you can pick it up pretty quickly if you have ever seen Star Wars, Cowboy Beebop, Spaceballs, or any other “group of misfits on a junky spaceship” sci fi. Mal is the embittered reluctant hero, Zoe is his hard-core badass XO and best friend, Wash is the flaky pilot, Inara the hooker with a heart of gold, Jayne the badass mercenary who isn’t quite as badass and mercenary as he acts, River is the magical ass-kicking chick, Kaylee the tomboy engineer, Simon the idealist, Sheppard the wise man with the mysterious past.
OTOH, the series does a pretty good job of subverting a lot of the common genre tropes. For example:
in War Stories
[Mal is getting is fighting some badguy who tortured him earlier in the episode.]
Zoe: Let them go. The captain needs to handle this himself.
Mal: NO HE DOESN’T!!
Zoe: Oh…[shoots badguy]
or
in The Message
[Wash is flying through some canyon trying to escape the badguys]
Wash: They’d have to be insane to follow us through here.
[several minutes later]
Wash: He’s not behind us any more!
[Looks up and realizes they are simply following them from above the canyon]
Wash: I didn’t think of that.
No, I think we’ve established that, in fact, he is. At least through most of the series. On both counts.
Yeah, there’s no heart of gold there, except where whores are concerned.
Wash: It’s Jayne being so generous with his cut that confuses and frightens me.
Zoe: It does kind of freeze the blood.
He is and he isn’t. Compared to say Keamy from Lost who was scary as fuck, Jayne is just sort of a buffoon who is handy in a fight. No one on the Serenity seems particulary worried about him.
For example:
Mal: “Do you want to be in charge?!”
Jayne: “YES!”
Mal [surprised]: “Well…you can’t!”
or
Wash “I want to hear the part of the story again where Jayne got beat up by a 90 lb girl.”
Well, he is as mercenary as he acts. More so, actually. (see: airlock)
And… well. He’s not scary as fuck, but he is just about exactly as badass as he presents himself. Stronger than Zoe, more liable to violence than anyone else. Now, is he smart? No. Is he capable? No. But he’s pretty much as badass as he presents himself, which is more or less ‘thug’. (but not as badass as he thinks he is.)
Or see “Ariel” where Jayne strangles a purple-belly to death while handcuffed. And the second Simon picks up a gun, he hands it to Jayne.
Jayne? Is that you?
The phrase, “Low animal cunning” comes to mind.
Inara: It’s not “*the *Serenity.” It’s just “Serenity.”
E-Sabbath said:
“Capable” doesn’t tell you anything. That’s like, “is he skilled?” “Is he talented?” Capable at what? He seems very capable at certain things. He’s a good tracker. He’s great with weapons. He’s pretty good in unarmed combat. He’s great at keeping Jayne alive. There’s a reason Mal hired him and keeps him around. It’s not just because
it got them out of a jam once to pay Jayne to switch sides.
He could have sometime shortly after suggested their arrangement was over. But he keeps Jayne around for a reason. That’s because Jayne is good at what Jayne does. He just isn’t particularly thoughtful, he’s not a strategist, he isn’t great at leading or dealing with people, and he is very much an opportunist and mercenary.
If you had to pick one person to be on your side to go into a fight, well it would probably be Zoe, because what she doesn’t match in sheer badassery (and that isn’t much) she more than compensates for with loyalty and intelligence. But if Zoe weren’t around and you had to fight, take Jayne, and just make sure it’s in Jayne’s interest to keep you alive.
I’m yet another who saw and really liked the movie with no idea there was a series too.