Joss Whedon: Still a bastard...
Oct. 22nd, 2005 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kukla_tkoLest you all think that I think Serenity is a terrible movie, or that it falls into my category of "irrational evil" (like MSG and that GODDAMNEDNOISE), let me reiterate my earlier opinion, and elaborate on it.
Dear Joss Whedon:
Fuck you.
Really.
Do not take me to a con where I might meet the man. I am liable to cause an incident, because if I ever see Joss in person I will punch him dead in the face. And I will follow that up with the following:
"You're a fucktard, Joss. Anyone who punches his fans in the face as much as you have deserves every millisecond of that strike. You did something really terrible, but what's even worse than that is that you did it POORLY. I had come to expect better of you. I see now that I was wrong to do so."
Why do I feel that way?
Ok. I like stories that hurt. I like unresolved issues; I'm even willing to forgive a creator for killing off a favorite character or several. But there is a difference between breaking my heart and yet leaving me feeling satisfied afterwards, and simply breaking my heart and walking away whistling to yourself.
Continuing with the puppy soup metaphor: He didn't serve me my puppy soup. He served me my puppy soup along with photos of how he tortured my puppy to death. And the soup wasn't that good either.
"Oh," you're thinking. "She's mad that he killed off her favorite character." Nope. Every one of those characters was my favorite character. It would suck to lose any of them. It would hurt like losing someone I know personally, someone I love. So his choice of which character(s) to kill off is not what prompted the anger and resentment. I disagree with his choices.
I think that Wash's death was unnecessarily cruel... and Book's wasn't cruel enough.
He did it wrong.
"Fine, Kukla. You do it better."
Ok. I will.
They fly over the Haven massacre. We see their shock, their grief. We see them search high and low for any survivors. They find Book.
Book is not really conscious, and is somewhat addled when they find him. He's badly wounded but still alive. Mal holds him and tells him to hang on, bore him with many more sermons, etc.
Simon runs to the rescue. He's got his bag, his skills. He goes to work right away on Book.
"It's ok, preacher. The doc will have you patched together in no time..."
But Simon looks at Mal in despair.
I'd have liked to have seen the doctor put his hands on someone he COULDN'T save. Not someone who died before he could get there, not someone who he was too late to save. No. It would have been useful to put Simon in a position to where he simply failed to save the person. An important person.
Throughout the run of Firefly, every time he's put his hands on a live person, he saved them. Every single time, including himself.
Maybe Simon could have bought Book some lucidity, so he could drop his last words of wisdom on Mal before dying. Maybe not.
I know that Book had to die. The cost had to get high enough and personal enough for Mal to do the dangerous stunt that got them the information regarding Miranda.
Book's death I could forgive but it felt cheap and predictable. Classic wild west ending: he's dying from a belly wound and instead of the day and a half of delirious pain, we get forty seconds of lucid "last words" then a cough and a death in the arms of the hero. Bleah.
Then there's the other death.
I get why one of the team had to die. There are lots of good storytelling reasons why. If it wasn't risky, if it wasn't going to cost someone's life Mal would have pulled a stunt like this much sooner. If everyone got out unscathed it would cheapen the accomplishment. One or more of the main characters had to die to make the point. No disagreement from me.
But let's look at who they have to kill off:
Wash is the one character that most of the audience is going to identify with. He's the "Xander." He's the mostly ordinary, mostly sympathetic character through which the audience enters the story. When he speaks he seems so funny and wise because he is usually saying what the audience is thinking. He's not a hero, a war-torn veteran, a hardass, or even very courageous. He's a guy, who's doing a job he likes reasonably well for a guy he mostly gets along with.
Malcolm is the driving force of the movie. Without him there is no hope for sequels, or further story line. One could kill him off and send the grieving, grim-faced crew to finish his doomed mission for him, but what's to hold them together after he's gone? No, Mal is not the one to die. He's needed for the rest of the story.
Inara is nicely disposable. She gets dragged into things just in time to die? Mal has to go through the next bit of the movie with THAT on his conscience? (Shiver.) Actually, that's kind of delicious. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily malicious here. Their unrequited love story arc is wearing a little thin to me. Theirs is the kind of relationship that makes me nuts, and not in a good way. Other people can obsess about what would happen if they finally got together. I know what it looks like. It isn't nice. So I would put in a vote for Inara.
Kaylee, everyone loves Kaylee. She's a good candidate, actually. Oh, no she's not. No, no, Joss has been setting up that scene between Simon and Kaylee for years. He's been teasing us with it for way too long, including during this movie. No, can't be Kaylee, unless it's later in the story than the "price tag" death needs to happen. Her crush on Simon really does need to be addressed, by Simon. (And it does, in a really cute sequence which really helps a desperately bleak moment.)
Zoë. Now, there's another good candidate. Kill Zoë and what keeps Wash around? You wind up losing Wash... or maybe keeping him around at odds with Mal for having gotten her killed. She's a complicated death, because she's connected to both Mal and Wash. Depending upon how you do it, you either sew those two together permanently, or you make them oil and water never to mix. You could add weight to it by having her die in the crash and therefore make Wash feel responsible. Oooh. That would be nasty. Not as nasty as what DID happen, though...
Jayne.
I saved "the man they call JAAAAAyne" for last.
He's who gets my big vote. I adore Jayne. "I like smackin' em" is practically the line that sold me on the damn series. Most of what I love about Jayne has little to do with what he says and everything to do with what he does. I want to see Jayne grow, and learn, and eventually score enough money to save his family. I'd like to see him retire, like a fine old pirate king on a moon somewhere where he can have hot and cold running whores... or a noisy boisterous family. A family of whores. Something.
However.
In this case, he strikes me as the best choice for the Sacrifice Play. Joss even had his moment: Jayne gets thrown all the hell over the ship because he's busy checking to make sure everyone is strapped down properly before he himself straps in. He pulls the table out of the way, starts checking everyone, and then gets thrown all the hell around.
Perfect.
Have him get killed saving someone else's life. I would particularly like to see him save River and Simon, which would arc nicely with his earlier betrayal of them. Add in a snarling "Aw, hell. I didn't wanna die saving YOUR stupid hide" kind of last words...
Oh yeah. That would have worked well. It also makes the team look particularly doomed. They lose their big muscle right before the gigantic fight? (EEEeevil Grin.) I think that would ramp up the tension nicely.
Losing Jayne would still hurt like hell. It would still be a punch in the face, but I would feel oddly satisfied.
However. With the extremely cheap (as Brad puts it) "Jack In The Box" trick they did pull... Ugh. No. What the hell did they kill him with, anyway? A telephone pole? That was ridiculous. It was lame and stupid. I didn't see any Rievers launching telephone poles before this... why did they suddenly decide that a Caber-Toss was appropriate now?
It's a bit like watching a high fantasy movie where they get to the big swordfight, and it's really exciting because you want the hero to win but you know that someone is going to die at the end of the fight... and the hero gets shot with a laser beam from outer space by an alien race which no one knew existed until now.
Bleah.
It's like those mystery writers who throw in pertinent characters in the last pages of the book. Eleven pages from the end "Oh, it was my cousin Margot who killed him. You know, Margot who I forgot to mention until now and no one else even knew about..."
It was that level of cheap trickery.
Brad says that it was even worse in the original edit. I think it was still too cheap a gag.
It was a useless, senseless death. I have plenty of that in real life, thankyouverymuch. I expect more from a writer as good as Joss. He let me down. Don't ever let me meet him.
Dear Joss Whedon:
Fuck you.
Really.
Do not take me to a con where I might meet the man. I am liable to cause an incident, because if I ever see Joss in person I will punch him dead in the face. And I will follow that up with the following:
"You're a fucktard, Joss. Anyone who punches his fans in the face as much as you have deserves every millisecond of that strike. You did something really terrible, but what's even worse than that is that you did it POORLY. I had come to expect better of you. I see now that I was wrong to do so."
Why do I feel that way?
Ok. I like stories that hurt. I like unresolved issues; I'm even willing to forgive a creator for killing off a favorite character or several. But there is a difference between breaking my heart and yet leaving me feeling satisfied afterwards, and simply breaking my heart and walking away whistling to yourself.
Continuing with the puppy soup metaphor: He didn't serve me my puppy soup. He served me my puppy soup along with photos of how he tortured my puppy to death. And the soup wasn't that good either.
"Oh," you're thinking. "She's mad that he killed off her favorite character." Nope. Every one of those characters was my favorite character. It would suck to lose any of them. It would hurt like losing someone I know personally, someone I love. So his choice of which character(s) to kill off is not what prompted the anger and resentment. I disagree with his choices.
I think that Wash's death was unnecessarily cruel... and Book's wasn't cruel enough.
He did it wrong.
"Fine, Kukla. You do it better."
Ok. I will.
They fly over the Haven massacre. We see their shock, their grief. We see them search high and low for any survivors. They find Book.
Book is not really conscious, and is somewhat addled when they find him. He's badly wounded but still alive. Mal holds him and tells him to hang on, bore him with many more sermons, etc.
Simon runs to the rescue. He's got his bag, his skills. He goes to work right away on Book.
"It's ok, preacher. The doc will have you patched together in no time..."
But Simon looks at Mal in despair.
I'd have liked to have seen the doctor put his hands on someone he COULDN'T save. Not someone who died before he could get there, not someone who he was too late to save. No. It would have been useful to put Simon in a position to where he simply failed to save the person. An important person.
Throughout the run of Firefly, every time he's put his hands on a live person, he saved them. Every single time, including himself.
Maybe Simon could have bought Book some lucidity, so he could drop his last words of wisdom on Mal before dying. Maybe not.
I know that Book had to die. The cost had to get high enough and personal enough for Mal to do the dangerous stunt that got them the information regarding Miranda.
Book's death I could forgive but it felt cheap and predictable. Classic wild west ending: he's dying from a belly wound and instead of the day and a half of delirious pain, we get forty seconds of lucid "last words" then a cough and a death in the arms of the hero. Bleah.
Then there's the other death.
I get why one of the team had to die. There are lots of good storytelling reasons why. If it wasn't risky, if it wasn't going to cost someone's life Mal would have pulled a stunt like this much sooner. If everyone got out unscathed it would cheapen the accomplishment. One or more of the main characters had to die to make the point. No disagreement from me.
But let's look at who they have to kill off:
Wash is the one character that most of the audience is going to identify with. He's the "Xander." He's the mostly ordinary, mostly sympathetic character through which the audience enters the story. When he speaks he seems so funny and wise because he is usually saying what the audience is thinking. He's not a hero, a war-torn veteran, a hardass, or even very courageous. He's a guy, who's doing a job he likes reasonably well for a guy he mostly gets along with.
Malcolm is the driving force of the movie. Without him there is no hope for sequels, or further story line. One could kill him off and send the grieving, grim-faced crew to finish his doomed mission for him, but what's to hold them together after he's gone? No, Mal is not the one to die. He's needed for the rest of the story.
Inara is nicely disposable. She gets dragged into things just in time to die? Mal has to go through the next bit of the movie with THAT on his conscience? (Shiver.) Actually, that's kind of delicious. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily malicious here. Their unrequited love story arc is wearing a little thin to me. Theirs is the kind of relationship that makes me nuts, and not in a good way. Other people can obsess about what would happen if they finally got together. I know what it looks like. It isn't nice. So I would put in a vote for Inara.
Kaylee, everyone loves Kaylee. She's a good candidate, actually. Oh, no she's not. No, no, Joss has been setting up that scene between Simon and Kaylee for years. He's been teasing us with it for way too long, including during this movie. No, can't be Kaylee, unless it's later in the story than the "price tag" death needs to happen. Her crush on Simon really does need to be addressed, by Simon. (And it does, in a really cute sequence which really helps a desperately bleak moment.)
Zoë. Now, there's another good candidate. Kill Zoë and what keeps Wash around? You wind up losing Wash... or maybe keeping him around at odds with Mal for having gotten her killed. She's a complicated death, because she's connected to both Mal and Wash. Depending upon how you do it, you either sew those two together permanently, or you make them oil and water never to mix. You could add weight to it by having her die in the crash and therefore make Wash feel responsible. Oooh. That would be nasty. Not as nasty as what DID happen, though...
Jayne.
I saved "the man they call JAAAAAyne" for last.
He's who gets my big vote. I adore Jayne. "I like smackin' em" is practically the line that sold me on the damn series. Most of what I love about Jayne has little to do with what he says and everything to do with what he does. I want to see Jayne grow, and learn, and eventually score enough money to save his family. I'd like to see him retire, like a fine old pirate king on a moon somewhere where he can have hot and cold running whores... or a noisy boisterous family. A family of whores. Something.
However.
In this case, he strikes me as the best choice for the Sacrifice Play. Joss even had his moment: Jayne gets thrown all the hell over the ship because he's busy checking to make sure everyone is strapped down properly before he himself straps in. He pulls the table out of the way, starts checking everyone, and then gets thrown all the hell around.
Perfect.
Have him get killed saving someone else's life. I would particularly like to see him save River and Simon, which would arc nicely with his earlier betrayal of them. Add in a snarling "Aw, hell. I didn't wanna die saving YOUR stupid hide" kind of last words...
Oh yeah. That would have worked well. It also makes the team look particularly doomed. They lose their big muscle right before the gigantic fight? (EEEeevil Grin.) I think that would ramp up the tension nicely.
Losing Jayne would still hurt like hell. It would still be a punch in the face, but I would feel oddly satisfied.
However. With the extremely cheap (as Brad puts it) "Jack In The Box" trick they did pull... Ugh. No. What the hell did they kill him with, anyway? A telephone pole? That was ridiculous. It was lame and stupid. I didn't see any Rievers launching telephone poles before this... why did they suddenly decide that a Caber-Toss was appropriate now?
It's a bit like watching a high fantasy movie where they get to the big swordfight, and it's really exciting because you want the hero to win but you know that someone is going to die at the end of the fight... and the hero gets shot with a laser beam from outer space by an alien race which no one knew existed until now.
Bleah.
It's like those mystery writers who throw in pertinent characters in the last pages of the book. Eleven pages from the end "Oh, it was my cousin Margot who killed him. You know, Margot who I forgot to mention until now and no one else even knew about..."
It was that level of cheap trickery.
Brad says that it was even worse in the original edit. I think it was still too cheap a gag.
It was a useless, senseless death. I have plenty of that in real life, thankyouverymuch. I expect more from a writer as good as Joss. He let me down. Don't ever let me meet him.
