Jayne was drunk. Drunk people do stupid shit without thinking.
I didn’t plow through the past six pages of this thread for this answer, but I really want to know: What is Wash’s first name: Horan or Hoban? I couldn’t quite make it out on the screen.
Hoban.
Hoban Washburne is his full name.
Wasn’t he “Jerry Lee Washington” or somesuch in the TV show?
I don’t remember his name ever being given in the series.
No, no…
Serenity II: Snakes on a Spaceship
With the new kickass Shepherd, Samuel L. Jackson. He’s already done the part in Pulp Fiction.
Nonono… Serenity II: Assault of The Terrible Space Monkeys
Alternatley, we could use anime naming schemes:
Serenity Zeta
Serenity Double Zeta
Serenity Double Zeta Ultima Finale: Brownshirts Assemble!
Coats!
This is getting to be a really awkward name for our fandom.
No kidding. What’s the sequal gonna be, Serenity 2: Triumph of the Will?
Seriously though, Serenity is kind of a bland name. Based on titles alone it pales next to the current competion: The Corpse Bride, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…
Thanks. I knew he was only called Wash in the series.
Backing this up, in Ariel, he says “It wasn’t like I betrayed you or anything”.
I think he was just responding to the guy holding the wrench.
In a previuos episode they were discussing betrayal. Reynolds asks Jayne something like “what if they offered enough money” and Jayne responds. “that will be an interesting day.”
Meh, I don’t know about that. Here are the top 10 movies of last week.
I’d say Serenity is at least as good as 4 or 5 of them.
I’m not sure being drunk makes Jayne think less, per se.
Just because he took a shot of liquid courage doesn’t mean he’s drunk. Jayne doesn’t need to be drunk to do stupid things. I seem to remember him saying he was going to take her for a little ride…whatever that means.
A bit late to the party, as I waited until I’d seen the movie twice to write up any detailed impressions, but anyway… a SHIT TON of **unboxed spoilers **below. You have been warned.
I loved the movie from start to finish. It really is Firefly kicked up to the silver-screen level, with all the good and bad that comes with having a bigger budget but less time to tell a story. As a result, the action and special effects are bigger and louder (except during the space scenes, which, with one explicable exception, retain the “no sound in space” realism of the series) and the character interactions are sharper and more explicit. Without 22 hours to bring the arc to a slow boil, Whedon was forced to trim the plot to the bone, and while I missed the little side moments that added so much vibrancy and warmth to the television series, I thought that he did a darn good job of unloading massive amounts of exposition in a minimum of screentime with efficiency and clarity.
Storywise, I have no complaints besides the aforementioned wistfulness re: side moments. I liked the Operative a lot. He’s a charismatic villain with shades of gray, an idealist who is perfectly well aware that his work is evil, but views it as a means to a good end, even if achieving that end means that he himself must be excluded from it. Parallels to religious fanatics and political true believers of any stripe. I was pleased that he wasn’t killed off, but doesn’t turn around completely and join the crew all Spike-style (which would’ve REALLY made my brain hurt, since they couldn’t possibly accept him after his actions throughout the movie). Instead, in a movie about idealism versus acceptance of what’s there, his defeat comes from the rebuttal of his beliefs even as Mal’s victory comes from the discovery of his own.
The Simon Discrepancy. Joss himself has indicated that he knows it’s a plot hole, and that his personal interpretation is that Simon out-and-out lied to the crew of Serenity in the pilot. This makes sense to me: we know that Simon can and will do whatever is necessary to protect River, and at that point in the series, views the crew as an unknown quantity. Furthermore, after some thought, I came to the realization that…
Spoilers for Angel’s later seasons in the box:
…Simon is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. Both men are staunchly idealistic (not to mention snooty and somewhat repressed ;)), but are willing to do whatever is necessary to accomplish what those ideals demand. In Wesley’s case, that meant betraying Angel to protect his son. In Simon’s case, that means lying to Mal, organizing crime runs on hospitals, and infiltrating government research facilities in order to protect his little sister. Unlike the Operative, I suspect that both characters would ultimately stop at a certain point (say, mass murder), but they would both act in a far more ruthless fashion than most of their compatriots if they viewed it as necessary. Honestly, I think this makes Simon a much more compelling character than he was on the series alone.
Wash’s death. So I’m sitting there at my second showing, knowing what’s going to happen, and this time I watch the audience carefully as Serenity screeches to a halt. The audience reaction convinced me that Whedon’s method of killing Wash was absolutely correct, as laughter and some tentative cheers were instantly replaced by the loudest gasp I have EVER HEARD in a movie theater. I nearly clapped out loud. Would have, if I weren’t so busy gaping myself. Even knowing what was coming, it still hit me like a lemon wrapped around a brick to the skull. 
As a plot device, it’s incredibly effective at ramping the tension to eleven. Like many others, the first time I saw the movie, I was halfway-convinced that Whedon was going to be a total bastard and kill *everybody, *with the final shot of the movie being the Operative crushing the data disc into powder, next to Mal’s dead body. A far cry from the usual “yeah yeah yeah, we know they’ll all get out alive” crap.
Book’s death. I appreciated that they never out-and-out state who or what he was, but leave some pretty strong hints that he himself was an Operative. Makes me wonder if the Operative himself will end up a shepherd… would make for a nice turnaround.
I like the character of Mr. Universe, and fortunately found his ludicrous name to be less distracting the second time around. The idea of a futuristic open source nerd with a sexbot is just inherently funny to me, I think. Still don’t think he deserved a grave next to Book and Wash, though.
Mal’s ruse pitting the Reavers against the Alliance is the best thing ever- and thematically consistent to boot, since the whole concept of Firefly was that of a small, poor, seemingly helpless crew who consistently beat the odds through a combination of guile and using whatever patched-together junk they can get their hands on. Who needs a fleet of spaceships when you can trick your two massively powerful enemies into blowing the shit out of each other while your unarmed freighter sneaks past?
Speaking of patched-together junk, I thought it was cute that the main plot starts and ends with a piece of Serenity falling off. 
The special effects were inconsistent, although I can mostly overlook this, knowing how small the movie’s budget was. Firefly was always more about the story, the humor, the drama, and the characters than big-ass photorealistic spaceships anyway. It’s kind of bizarre, though… the special effects get noticeably better as the movie progresses. You start with that absolutely cringe-worthy shot of Serenity landing on a field, complete with awful compositing and windblown grass that doesn’t seem to be affected by the giant landing claws that should’ve smashed them, move on to some decent shots of Serenity in space, Serenity landing somewhere else, and Serenity surrounded by Reaver ships, and then finally get to the gorgeously detailed space battle and crash landing sequences.
LOVED the humor! I don’t think there was a single joke that fell flat. Jayne was high-larious as ever, particularly the running gag about grenades. Wash got in some great lines as well, and Nathan Fillion’s Mal still has the best deadpan ever. Even Simon got his fair share of the humorous asides (“It’s okay to leave them to die” and “…Am I speaking to Miranda now?”), and River gets more funny moments than she had in the entire series run. I just about died each time she did that “are you an idiot?” furrowed brow look.
Oddly enough, there were a few moments where I actually expected a Whedonesque “HAHA JUST KIDDING” moment and didn’t get one. In particular, there’s a beat after Mal’s big “I aim to misbehave” speech where the crew just kind of stares at him. I expected Wash or Jayne to chime in with some disarming comment about speechifying or corpses or something. After-effects of too much Buffy, I suppose. 
Ever since “The Body,” I’ve held that Whedon has a good visual eye as a director, and knows how to use the frame to get his point across at least as well as 90% of the journeyman directors out there. Here, he makes the transition to film with aplomb, giving the action sequences a purposefully choppy, found-footage style, and giving the dialogue just the right touches of dramatic tension and humor. I particularly liked that his signature jump cuts for the character of River (as seen in “Objects in Space”) made it to the film version in a couple of spots.
After talking with one of my friends about how music may or may not have improved the completed version of Serenity, I kept a conscious ear out for the soundtrack this time, and was surprised to find I was relatively pleased with the result.
Problem is, I think that the original Firefly composer, Greg Edmonson, did a perfect job of capturing the show’s tone: country-style acoustic guitar and fiddle for the western bits, eastern instruments for cultural flair (and to more subtly get the whole “everyone knows Chinese” thing across), atonal percussion for the action sequences, and Buffy-style soft piano melodies for the emotive moments.
Any replacement would’ve therefore been creating a good imitation at best. Movie composer David Newman gets the eastern sounds right, particularly the use of the Chinese erhu during the emotional bits, but doesn’t quite nail the melodic-but-moody guitar jangle that was the signature of the series. The guitars in the movie sound quicker, more cheerful, which jars with the “pioneers alone in the black” backdrop somewhat. Still, I adore the main cello theme, particularly as it’s used during that first sequence of Serenity entering atmosphere, and the rest of the music, while banking on the same two or three motives for the entire film, does an excellent job of accentuating the mood of each scene, particularly during the first passage through the Reaver fleet.
Overall feelings: extremely positive regarding the movie itself, disappointed that the chances of a sequel seem dashed due to the horrendous box office performance. Still, if Whedon can get this movie made from a failed television series to start with, then there’s a chance that the crew of Serenity will get another chance to fly. Here’s hoping they decide to make a TV series out of this failed movie.
One question (and my appologies if this has been asked and answered in this thread: It’s early, I’m sick and cranky). What were Book’s last words? His final sentance was so quiet, neither I nor anyone I was with could tell what he said.
And I gotta say… I loved Mister Universe… Cos he’s so what I’d want to be if I could. Uhm, minus the sex doll marraige.
<bump>
I think it was, “I don’t care what you believe in, just believe in it!”
Saw it a few hours ago–was working my way through the DVD set first. It was in a largish theater in Union Square but only had one showing per day (at least it was crowded).
Still stunned. Whoa. I have to go out and buy some dinosaur figurines so I can stare wistfully at them. I walked out of the theater like I’d been poleaxed and wandered down to Washington Square Park in a daze. Where, of course, I fit right in. But seriously, what a movie.
Anybody got a link to updated BO figures? This story HAS to continue.