Serenity, eh.

[yendi]

So, I finally saw it this weekend, and was underwhelmed. Not just over the one thing that was spoiled, either (although I waited a few days to write this, as I wanted to be a bit calmer about that when reviewing it). Overall, a 2/2.5 star movie, which is good for a mainstream sci-fi movie, but way below what I expect out of Joss. Then again, it's the first movie he's actually directed, and only one of his previous four screenplays was really a winner. I'll still be there for his Wonder Woman.

Not a review, but a bunch of random thoughts, good and bad:



Stuff I liked:

Explaining the Reavers. This was long-needed, and as soon as we had that early discussion about the Reavers having just hit the edge of space and gone mad, I knew something else was coming.

The dialogue. Joss has a gift for finding the voices of his characters, and there wasn't a single line that was off (give some credit to the actors, of course -- not a single Halle Berry in this crowd).

The Operative. One of my favorite "bad guys" ever.

The Operative's way of smoking out River. Send the subliminal everywhere, and see if any shit hits the fan? Wonderful!

The fact that Book doesn't give us (and will never give Mal) his backstory. Not that I don't want it, but it makes him more interesting this way.

Hell, every single actor in this movie was wonderful. And the first half -- basically up until they go to rescue Inara -- was damned near perfect.

And whatever else my feelings about Wash's death, I liked the touch of leaving his dinosaurs on the console at the end. Of course, since we never saw him play with them in the movies, only the TV fans (which, admittedly, seems to be the only people who saw it) will actually catch the meaning there. That said, one small touch ain't enough.

The Reaver/crew showdown at the end was every bit as good as the Mal finale was bad.

Oh, and I loved what Mal did to the operative (even if I've got problems with how we get there). Take a believer, and expose the flaws in his beliefs. That's just brutal.

Stuff that blew:

Okay, the opening scene was great. But Simon's been claiming that he had no clue what was done to River all throughout the series. Are we watching the Earth-2 Firefly?

Mal was about twelve pounds of stupid in a six pound bag for most of the second half of the movie. Okay, let's walk into a trap and pull a gun on the guy who wants you dead, shoot him only once in the chest and then turn around. Because what are the odds that the guy's wearing body armor, right? Mal's a fucking combat veteran -- there's no excuse for this other than "Joss needed to get the plot from point A to point B."

And in that same scene, the flashbombs/incense that detonate at exactly the right moment, on cue? Nope. That was the moment in which I cried "Bullshit" and Joss let slip the Dogs of Suck.

And much as I liked the explanation of the Reavers, it didn't jibe with the evidence the movie provided. If 10 (or whatever) percent of the population went psychotic and cannibalistic, how come the other 90% weren't ripped to shreds before they had the chance to lay down and die? And how did the one woman manage to get her message across? Was her psychotic, cannibalistic state simply so tame that recording a message was the most violent act she could ponder?

And I'm still not sold on the Reavers (and I'm sure Joss conceived of them before fully trying to figure out how to explain/justify them). I don't accept that they could devolve into this psychotic state and yet still manage to organize a society and fly ships. Didn't fly on the show, doesn't fly here.

Speaking of the Reavers, you know what you do when someone forms a band around a planet? You fly around them. It's called the third dimension. Serenity isn't a video game, Joss.

Prolonged exposure to the nose hairs of Ron Glass during what should be a heart-rending scene. It's called CGI, dammit! Use it!

The entire ending. First, relying on Mr. Universe, when you already know that every one of your other safe houses has been destroyed? Even Mal figured out that they've have a blockade, but it somehow never occurs to him that they'd kill Mr. Universe (and who can blame them -- I hate Numb3rs, too) and destroy his stuff? Please.

But hey, let's make up for it having a nice Mr. Universe Double Deus Ex. First, he manages to be the one person personally killed by the Operative who gets to linger, and manages to record a message in his Fembot. Then, when All Hope Seems Lost, it turns out that Mr. Universe has an Emergency Backup Transmitter in the basement that the Operative somehow missed (even though it's the size of, at first glance, a small shopping mall). Please. That has to rank amongst the laziest, cheapest crap I've seen Joss pull. I expect shit like that from Lucas, but Joss should actually have standards.

And speaking of deus ex, Mal just happened to go all Lloyd Bridges and have that nerve cluster moved in the war? I wanted him to follow that up by saying, "My ear canals are very sensitive. They're stainless steel. Took a bullet in Serenity Valley. Passed straight through."

Oh, and how exactly do Mal and company get to just sit around on a government planet and rebuild for months? Aside from the fact that one video won't bring down the government (honestly, some chick could have filmed that same video herself, and surely this can't be the first time someone's pulled a prank and hacked the airwaves. The government wouldn't go down any more than blowing up a building would destroy the credit card companies. It's weakened, but no government, ever, will just let their enemies sit around and rebuild that easily. And no way do I buy that the Operative is the reason they haven't been molested (and why did the kill-happy guys wait for authorization during that last scene, other than that maybe Joss didn't want to kill the entire cast?).

As for the aforementioned death of my favorite character, it was still cheap and lazy on Joss's part. But in a better movie, it would have been a better death. Yeah, I'd still be pissed, but if the narrative was stronger, the pissed-off emotion would be the one Joss was deliberately soliciting, not the "well, that was bullshit" one. Even if the rest of the movie had been better, though, there needed to be more of a sense of loss at the end. Tossing Wash in with Mr. Universe didn't exactly convey any regrets on the part of the crew.

(That said, folks who never watched the TV show probably would bitch from the other end, that the witty sidekick is always the one to bite it).

As it stands, I honestly can't imagine that all the love (from all 836 people who have seen it) is for the movie itself, so much as the existence of the movie, and the opportunity to visit with classic characters one last time. That said, if you love it, more power to you. But don't expect me to do the same. That said, as with any other movie adaptation, a sucky movie doesn't destroy the source material. There's still a wonderful TV show called Firefly on my DVD rack, and you can't take that (or the sky) away from me.

ETA: My final gripe: Simon didn't die. I free admit that this one was merely a personal issue. :-) That said, if the entire post-ending was going to focus on making the fanfic 'shippers happy instead of actually pretending that Wash's death meant something, couldn't they have given us Jayne reaming Simon instead?

Comments

[montykins.livejournal.com]

I don't accept that they could devolve into this psychotic state and yet still manage to organize a society and fly ships.

...and also weld giant lobster claws onto their ships. Some of those modifications were pretty fancy!

[yendi]

Well, it's possible that deep in our forebrains, there's an atavistic claw-welding skill that we haven't needed for milions of years. And let's hear it for the government scientists who isolated it!

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

And how did the one woman manage to get her message across? Was her psychotic, cannibalistic state simply so tame that recording a message was the most violent act she could ponder?

She was part of a research and rescue team that came in to investigate WTF went wrong on Miranda; she wasn't exposed to the Pax.

[yendi]

I see that, although she should have been much more removed from the Reavers, then.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

I imagine she's supposed to have been there after the Pax had been released, but before the Reavers managed to get offworld - probably in the few weeks following the initial event.

Why the Reavers didn't kill all the dying folks, I don't know. No fun? Maybe if they won't scream or resist, it takes all the pleasure out of torture?

Or maybe it's the reason why zombies don't eat each other.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

And how did the one woman manage to get her message across? Was her psychotic, cannibalistic state simply so tame that recording a message was the most violent act she could ponder?

I agree with you on most of these, but I didn't have a problem with this one. Makes perfect sense to me that the government scientists pumping experimental happy-gas into the air would live and work in a sealed compound where it wouldn't affect them. There's doubtless even a valid scientific reason, along the lines of "exposing the experiment staff to the drugs we're giving the populace might invalidate our data-collection or adversely affect the experiment," though it comes down to something more like "mind control is good for them, not us. We're fine already, thanks." So she wasn't psychotic, and she was in a position to witness the whole thing via whatever cameras or sensors would be necessary to monitor the experimenting on a whole planet.

[yendi]

I see that to an extent (exposing herself would have been bad science), but then I'm not sure how her position got so easily run over by the reavers.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Well, a facility designed to keep out gas isn't necessarily also designed to keep out an army of well-armed crazies. And even if it was, they certainly didn't seem to have too much trouble getting through a hardened battle-bunker to get to the rest of the cast.

This is some pretty heavy-duty justification to cover some screenwriting laziness, but I like to tell myself that the Reavers aren't just rabid, drooling psychopaths; they're full of furious, aggressive sadism, not animal stupidity. Hence their ability to use weapons, fly ships, organize raiding parties, and so forth. If they just really, really like hurting living things, that would also explain why they didn't kill off the rest of the planet's population; not much fun in raping, skinning, and cannibalizing something that doesn't react or care. Hence their determination in getting into the science lab to get the unaffected people, and getting out into space to find more entertaining victims.

thoughts back.....

[dwivian]

...Simon's been claiming that he had no clue what was done to River all throughout the series...
I've not seen the series, but I could see this as a means to avoid having to explain the risk she posed. So, maybe it was protecting her, above everything else.

what are the odds that the guy's wearing body armor
He didn't move like he had on body armor, so one could presume that operatives get armor that isn't obvious to even trained combat veterans. Even so, I'd have fired a shot or two to his head, just to be safe. Ends the movie early, though.

the flashbombs/incense
I'm with you, here. Dramatic tension, and all that, but she was taking the risk that she'd be the only one knowing they were about to go off, and thus would have had to lead Mal out to safety on her own, without getting caught. Dumb plan, at best.

Reavers
I think that the population, at first, was able to contain the Reavers and execute them as unsafe. Those that were just starting to go psychotic and paranoid that wanted to avoid death quickly took to the stars in whatever spacecraft they could get, leaving behind those that they feared, until their conversion was complete and they could raid with impunity, taking just those few they wanted, until people laid down to die, giving the Reavers no quarry.

And how did the one woman manage to get her message across?
She was from a team sent in to find out what happened, probably crashed after being attacked by Reavers on the way in. How they gathered together all the information before the Reavers found them to kill them off, I can't say, and it bothers me, but it does explain how she was able to make her message.

I don't accept that they could devolve into this psychotic state and yet still manage to organize a society and fly ships.
There are many kinds of psychosis, some of which are very lucid until provoked. One has to assume there is a cold evil leadership that we've not yet met that keeps the fringe explosive types in line.

when someone forms a band around a planet...
I never got the idea it was a ring, but a wall. Flying around something that extends large directions as a blob can take far longer in time and more fuel than is viable. Even so -- worlds move in those planetary orbits, and that's a LOT of Reavers to keep with that planet.....

The entire ending.
I think Mal was playing the trap -- that seeing Mr. Universe alive meant that there was a possibility that the Operative was keeping him to make the evil trap work, unlike simply destroying all safe houses to remove places to run. And, I think Mal was expecting there to be SOME means to use the broadcast point while the trap was being sprung on the Reavers while confusion left Mr Universe available. Alas, that wasn't the way it played out. I don't think Mr. Universe was the first to be killed that lived a while -- but that he was the first to be in a position to have recording equipment handy to leave a last message.

And, I think that you miss one of the critical lessons -- the Government has a bunch of pawns that do only what they've been told. By attempting to generate a society without backbone, they showcase this idea. Even their military only does as ordered (without orders to kill the cast, they don't, and without orders to destroy ALL the comm equipment, they show no initiative to find it all and merely break the monitors in the room).

I'll agree with you that the spread of the story, in whatever form, wasn't what toppled the government. There had to be enough resentment that this was merely the Boston Tea. Playing that up a bit would have helped us see how the leaders were struggling in the core to keep control, and couldn't afford to send military out to the rim after Mal, thus affording him repair time. I think a lot more could have been made of the attempts to suppress the story, and why they had to pick up and move without completing repairs, adding a final tension.

I liked the movie, and saw it multiple times. Maybe it helped that I've not seen Firefly?

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the movie, but I'm a relatively recent convert. Your analysis of it echoes some of the same criticisms that adrian76 had as we were driving back from the theatre last weekend. (He has not seen the show).

All in all, I think you're right in that it's the characters that everyone loves. That's what drew me into viewing the series in the first place. Right away, I *cared.*


And ...couldn't they have given us Jayne reaming Simon instead?
Guh. I might have camped out at the theatre to see that, but I freely admit I'm a weirdo.

[litch.livejournal.com]

The fact that Book doesn't give us (and will never give Mal) his backstory. Not that I don't want it, but it makes him more interesting this way.

I thought it was somehow made clear that book had been an operative who had found god.

[litch.livejournal.com]

the first part I hard real issue with is: if you are making prognisticators, why the hell do you make them superninjas as well

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

Obviously, they weren't making prognosticators. They were only making superninjas.

A mind-reader isn't a "prognosticator" anyway.

[litch.livejournal.com]

they already had perfectly acceptable superninja operatives, why so much energy and effort to create "sensitives"?

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

So you don't see the advantage to a superninja who knows exactly what moves all of her opponents are planning to make?

[litch.livejournal.com]

not when you are the government

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

Huh?

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

I think River was a prognosticator BEFORE hand, and while they were playing with her brain, and making her a superninja, they accidently made her a super-d-dooper prognosticator, and a super-d-dooper psychic as well.

[yendi]

See, that never bothered me. I mean, who wouldn't want to make superninjas?

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I loved what Mal did to the operative (even if I've got problems with how we get there). Take a believer, and expose the flaws in his beliefs. That's just brutal.

Although I think the Operative's conversion was the least believable thing in the movie.

But Simon's been claiming that he had no clue what was done to River all throughout the series. Are we watching the Earth-2 Firefly?

One, clearly the continuity has been tweaked and laundered for movie purposes; remember that in the series Simon didn't personally break River out of the Academy. Two, Simon could well have been lying to Serenity's crew, thinking she'd never be exposed to a trigger. He as much as says this when Mal has him by the shirt.

And in that same scene, the flashbombs/incense that detonate at exactly the right moment, on cue?

Ever heard of voice-activated devices? Perhaps even keyed to the word "incense?" But those won't have been invented by 500 years from now, because...oh wait, they exist now!

I don't accept that they could devolve into this psychotic state and yet still manage to organize a society and fly ships.

History is full of examples of such, like Viking berserkers. If they don't think of themselves as human anymore, it's entirely credible that they could cooperate with each other to accomplish necessary tasks while still treating unPaxified humans as Happy Meals on legs.

Speaking of the Reavers, you know what you do when someone forms a band around a planet?

Yeah, and silly football players never catch the clue that they should run where there aren't opposing players!

Mal just happened to go all Lloyd Bridges and have that nerve cluster moved in the war?

That bugged me too, although there's no way it could have been set up in advance without telegraphing that scene.

Oh, and how exactly do Mal and company get to just sit around on a government planet and rebuild for months?

Where did you get "months?" I figured "days" or a few weeks at most. And where did you get "government planet?"

My final gripe: Simon didn't die.

I can't imagine why this would bother you. And anyway, we both know how unsafe it is to be part of a happy couple in the Jossverse. And since Joss would never kill Kaylee for the same reason he'd never kill Willow, you can be sure Simon's in the crosshairs if a sequel gets made.

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

shoot him only once in the chest and then turn around. Because what are the odds that the guy's wearing body armor, BUT NOT ON HIS HEAD!!! Shoot him in the HEAD! NOW!!! Damn it.

the flashbombs/incense that detonate at exactly the right moment, on cue? uh.....it was making a tiny hissing sound right before it went off? She's a genius and had been mentally counting down the whole time? I dunno, it still made more sense than NOT SHOOTING HIM IN THE HEAD DUH.

If 10 (or whatever) percent of the population went psychotic and cannibalistic, how come the other 90% weren't ripped to shreds before they had the chance to lay down and die? Maybe the 10% only chewed down on about 10% of the dying, but ignored the other 80% for the same reason they didn't attack ships that didn't attack them. The real question is, if the 10% of reavers have only each other to eat, then how could there be more than, I don't know, .3% even left??

I thought it worked out pretty well -- most people had their ids shut down, so they lost the will to live. Others had their egos and superegos shut down, so they lost the ability to live. I thought it was cool.



honestly, some chick could have filmed that same video herself, and surely this can't be the first time someone's pulled a prank and hacked the airwaves. The government wouldn't go down OH yeah. And whats more, even if that was an unlikely possibility, the vast magority of people with wealth and power WOULD CHOOSE TO BELIEVE it. Because facing the fact that Bush your futuristic government is evil is HARD, and giving up your comfortable like and SUV pleasure planet is HARD, and the majority of people don't want to give up that comfort. So they'll come up with convient, if not entirely logical, excuses and keep the stauts quo. The government won't fall any more than ours did when it's obvious that Iraq was not involved with the terrorists attacks, wasn't going to attack us, and really was just a Bush Pet Project gone terribly, terribly wrong. If some of the population DID believe the tape, the government would find a department to scapegoat, have a mock trial with lots of publicity, punish the "guilty" and everyone would say "Oh good, I'm glad that's over" and go right back to their exact same lives with the exact same government.

folks who never watched the TV show probably would bitch from the other end, that the witty sidekick is always the one to bite it and those that DID watch ALL the Joss shows will be forced to remember that Joss won't let ANYONE be happily in love for long. So, since Wash and Zoe were happily in love, ONE HAD TO DIE.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Shoot him in the HEAD! NOW!!! Damn it.

This is what my husband said while we were watching: "Why didn't he shoot him in the head? Then he'd definitely be dead." Yes, BUT we needed a man to represent the society that Mal and co. are in conflict with. (Because man vs. society is only interesting if there are other men chasing the one man.)

[yendi]

Although I think the Operative's conversion was the least believable thing in the movie/.

Was he converted, or just broken? I was dreadfully afraid that his final scene would end with him saying, "please take me with you," and Mal agreeing.

The problem with the voice-avtivated explanation is that there was no indicator of it -- no setup, no mention of it afterwards. Joss does tend to be very aware of Chekhov's rule about putting the gun in act 1, etc. If explaining it involves a no-prize, I don't buy it.

As far as the planet/rebuilding goes, I just figure that since on any given episode, they often need days for Kaylee to come up with one or two fixes. And the ship got seriously borked here. Also (and I can't swear to it -- you've seen it more than I have), I thought that the Operative's comments at the end implied at least a decent passage of time.

Re: Your final comment -- are there actually talks of a sequel? I took much of what happened here as Joss's way of basically closing the book (so to speak) on the Fireflyverse.

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

Was he converted, or just broken?

Either way, there was a clear change of heart.

The problem with the voice-avtivated explanation is that there was no indicator of it

Some things are either so minor or so obvious they aren't worth the bother. We saw Inara fiddling with the incense sticks, and that's all the setup I needed to believe she could set off the flashbomb whenever she wanted.

A better question is why it seemed to affect Mal so much less than it did the Operative, when they were both brawling so close to it.

are there actually talks of a sequel?

There's been talk of a sequel since day one. All nine cast members are under contract for three films, and at a convention over the summer Joss said "If enough of you go see it, we'll get to make another one."

The movie's relatively poor showing at the box office makes the prospect a little more challenging, but DVD sales should still carry it over the magic number revenue-wise. More expensive movies that did worse in earnings have still gotten sequels.

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

about the Reavers having just hit the edge of space and gone mad, I knew something else was coming. My husband and I predicted that we'd learn more about Reavers in the movie. When the lines came at the beginning when Jayne said "I've looked at space" I KNEW that we'd find out what was REALLY up with Reavers, and that we'd find out it was the bad government. And THEN I realized that we would ALSO find out that River was made by the governement TO DEAL WITH THE REAVERS that they made. and I got lots of points afterwards for being right!!

The dialogue. Joss has a gift for finding the voices of his characters, and there wasn't a single line that was off and it was so so funny, but did you find yourself sitting there naming off Buffy characters? sirmacncheese and I kept saying "Willow." "Xander." "Xander again." Not that it was BAD, it was just so very very obviously JOSS.

The fact that Book doesn't give us (and will never give Mal) his backstory is WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! *sniff* He GOT three movie deals -- he SHOULD have told us Book's story!! *whine*

Malcom: Some day you'll have to tell me your story.
Book: No I won't.
Malcom: YES YOU WILL DAMN IT WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!*whimper*



And whatever else my feelings about Wash's

you know why he died, right?

Because the LAST time, he survived, and it was Anya who died. That's why.



The Reaver/crew showdown at the end was Buffy killing vampires. But that's OK, Joss freely admitted that he accidently wound up making another teen-age superhero story.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

how did the one woman manage to get her message across?

Because they were a rescue ship that came _after_ everyone had lain down and died. (the ship is labeled 'rescue')

No idea as far as people laying down vs reavers. Perhaps the Reaver bit took longer to happen than the laying down and dying part?

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

Won't touch on the points already made, but a band around a planet? You fly around them.

'Cept the Reavers have sensors like our heroes, and I assumed that the reavers could've sensed an incoming ship. A lone ship flying a looonnnng loop around the outside of the blockade is a pretty big red flag saying "come get me" and negates your disguise. Flying right through the middle is the only way to support your disguise.

As for the rest of the stuff about the Reavers... it's no more unbelievable than the Reavers in the TV series. Psycotic, cannibalistic madmen still capapble of operating a spaceship is pretty unbelievable whatever their origins. (As for the "why wasn't everyone massacred by the 10%" it might be that the 10% weren't evenly distributed across the planet. Some areas didn't have any, so they could just lay down and die unmolested.

The fight coreography at the end was a bit... zuh? at times, though.

[yendi]

I can see the point about flying in disguise. That said, I just don't see how the Reavers have that many ships orbiting a planet, period. Just seems fishy on too many levels, like a video game design.

And yeah, the Reavers were just as unbelievable on the TV series, but they mattered less there. Understand, I'm not as bothered by them as by other things (basically, the Reavers serve the function of "necessary boogymen" for the movie), but it's one of those things where the answers we've been given don't answer the question. On the series, at least we never had any answers.

A lot of folks were more bothered by the choreography than I was. I assumed that A) the Operative may be a damned good figher, but he's no River (not all agents are perfectly talented at all aspects of being a spy, no matter what James Bond movies might imply), and B) Mal does have some serious fighting chops. He's just never been in a non-brawl fight that I can recall.

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

The fight sequences I enjoyed in theory, because it's essentially a ninja-skizzles badass versus a barroom brawler who can just take a lot of pain and battering and bull through crippling strikes to connect. The simple pragmatics of "underhanded" fighting (like when the operative goes to draw his sword and Mal belts him under the arm, or their respective "quickdraw" techniques). That's why the end of the fight makes sense to me (thematically) as a "our scars and wounds make us what we are, our flaws are our strengths" moment. (I heard the line as "I had that nerve cluster removed.")

What puzzled me, though, was the sillier moments in the fight, like Mal turning his back on the agent to do that leap for the communications panel. The choreography should've somehow accounted for Mal thinking he had enough time for something he plainly didn't.

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

I have to make a nitpick to an error that keeps getting repeated. The Reavers didn't come from "10%" of Miranda's population. The woman on the recording said that one tenth of one percent of Miranda's population became Reavers.

We were also told Miranda's population had been "30 million," which means originally there were around 30,000 Reavers.

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

Re: reavers = psychotic and flying ships: The reavers aren't nessecerily insane... They've just lost the things that make them acceptable to human society. The effect of the gas on most of the people was to make them so apathetic that they stopped caring about everything. The reavers.... maybe they care too much about everything. Have you thought about it that way?

[yendi]

Except everything we've seen of the Reavers says that they are psychotic and insane. They've shown no ability to reason or think in person (even at the rudimentory predatory level of thinking out an attack). That's why the flying thing bothers me.

The Operative is a much better example of someone who might care too much, and therefore is insane but capable of reason.

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

I can reason this the other way. What have we seen of them that says they're pyschotic and insane? They rip, rape and eat people. Ok, yeah, that's kinda crazy. Maybe they have a reason. The gas the Alliance used... It slowed the other people's functions down to the point where they lay down and died. Maybe it accellerated the Reavers to the point where they said, "Humanity? Fuck 'em." and that's why they're acting crazy. They have a tribal mentality, but so did many ancient civalizations and take a look at what they accomplished using intense brutality. (I'm staring straight at the Mayans here.) Add in the fact that these humans were probably genetically engineered at some point so that they have certain things ingrained directly into their genetic makeup... Well, yes. Also, the Reavers have been exposed to extreme amounts of radiation, so they're probably dealing with effects of that too. Yes.

Ok, I'm good.

Also, unless they're makin' babies, the reavers will die out in another 20 years or so. :)

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

Except everything we've seen of the Reavers says that they are psychotic and insane.

When they're attacking. I figured they were some kind of manic-depressive, with dormant states and manic states. Otherwise there would be no "they won't attack unless you attack first" at all -- they'd attack everything that moved and kill & eat each other.

[sweinberg.livejournal.com]

Solid observations, both the negative and the positive. Me, I loved the flick, but I do agree with a solid portion of your gripes.

[yendi]

Thanks. Like I said, it was probably a good 2.5 star movie, once I moved past any personal/emotional issues I had with Wash dying. It's just a lot easier to focus on the negatives.