serenity

the lack of moral clarity in the plot was a little jarring and maddening

I didn’t get that at all. I don’t even know what you could be referring to. Feel free to email if you’re afraid of spoiling for others. I’m mad curious.

I figure anyone afraid of spoilers won’t read the comments so I guess I can digress here.

Throughout the movie they take pains to make it clear that Mal is a guy who is out for himself and him alone, and that he’ll kill without much hesitation at all to protect himself and others (or to deliver mercy blows, etc).

Nearer to the end there’s a scene where there’s a survivor of the ship from the Alliance who comes out with his hands up, and Mal shoots him in the head without hesitation – further emphasizing that this guy isn’t fucking around.

But then, like 30 seconds later, suddenly he’s deciding to drag his entire crew on a mission for the good of all humanity? When did he instantly become Dudley Doright?

I am not saying that in the plot of a movie a transition like this isn’t possible – in fact, you can think of about a billion examples of plots where this is the entire point – a lone self-serving rebel who eventually comes around and Does Right, but this transition wasn’t made clear in this movie at all, I didn’t think. It was just like someone flipped a switch from loner shootemup-type to a crusader for humanity with little explication.

Was there some little blood parasite or something that made him suddenly care about other people in between shooting the unarmed guy in the head and deciding to save the world? What’s the deal?

It isn’t a big gripe with the movie, because in the end, it’s just a sci-fi movie by the guy that, you know, did Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I am not expecting Bladerunner here, as far as moral and philosophical implications, but it was still a little lame, I think.

The key to remember is that the Alliance is Mal’s enemy. As they point out in the movie, Mal volunteered to join the Confeder^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HRebel^H^H^H^H^Hbrowncoats when the war started. He genuinely believes that the Alliance is wrong, has done wrong, will continue to do wrong. The guy he shot was an Alliance guy that had just participated in the slaughter of an unarmed camp.

Yeah, well, Big Jimmy took my point. Sure, Mal is an outlaw, a thief, and a man lookin’ out for “him and his.” But, he was, at one time, a soldier. He became an outlaw, not out moral choice, but out of necessity. Outlaw or sheep, those were the choices. He chose outlaw and the only way to survive as an outlaw outside the regime was to adjust his moral code.

However, even forgeting all that, his moral evolution is not THAT grandiose. The Alliance killed his God-fearing friend (and everyone else) on the hideout planet. Mal was coming for the alliance just for that. It wasn’t about morality or universal principles. It was a blood feud. The true nature of the Reavers was just icing on the cake, in my opinion.

His game face went up when his friend died, not when he learned the true despicability of the regime. So, I would argue that Mal’s morality is fairly consistent throughout. He is more about the particular than the universal. For Mal, getting the tape out is as much about “doing right” as it is about bringing down the regime that killed his friend and made “him and his” dodge the Reavers for all these years.

Okay, I guess I can see that it was more about hating the alliance and revenge than an example of his cold morality at work.

I still don’t think the transition as far as character development was done very well (or existed at all).

Much like the fervently devoted zealot assassin guy, who kills kids, blows up entire camps of people and has no reservations about it is suddenly converted by .. watching a video? Please.

Chris,

I think that if I were a Firefly newb, I would have the exact same problems that you mentioned. However, knowing the serires well, the character issues not only make sense, they work really, really well. For example, Mal talks a good game about being in it just for himself and his crew, but there are a lot of instances where he takes the moral high ground at the peril of those he has in his charge. He’s jaded from the war, and that makes him cold and opportunistic, but he hasn’t lost that element of humanity that makes him a “good guy” yet. In fact, if you watch the pilot episode, the first time we see Mal he is kissing the crucifix around his neck before doing battle. You actually see the moment where he loses his faith.

Also, throughout the series we see that Book understands Mal’s loss of faith, and is trying to pull him back from the brink. You might not have picked up on some of these subtleties, as Book was really downplayed in the movie. But his mysterious past is a major part of the series. We know going into the movie that he was once a very badass character, and that he had a lot of pull in the Alliance, but that’s all. Apparently, he had a conversion where he realized that what he was doing was WRONG and so he walked away. It’s more than heavily implied in the movie that he was once an Operative, like the one chasing River. So in a sense, we’re getting the gist of his story by watching the conversion of the Operative.

One of Book’s lines in the movie was something like, “Why is it that every time I talk about belief, you think I’m talking about God?” What he’s telling Mal is to stop having such a reactionary, simplistic view of faith and realize that he really does believe in something. It takes his death to convince Mal to do the right thing and sneak past the Reavers to Miranda in the first place. I’d argue that this is hen he committed to his version of “cold morality,” long before seeing the video.

The Operative is essentially a young Book, and Mal provides him with the catalyst for conversion. His faith is that he works for a greater good, and that his own evil is just a means to an end. But when he sees the Miranda footage, he realizes that the ones he serves are no better than he. So, just like Book, he walks away.

Much like the fervently devoted zealot assassin guy, who kills kids, blows up entire camps of people and has no reservations about it is suddenly converted by .. watching a video? Please.

Yeah, I had a large problem with that, too. You show Cheney or Rumsfeld a video like that and they’ll look at you like you’re a moron right before they put a bullet in your skull.

You show Cheney or Rumsfeld a video like that and they’ll look at you like you’re a moron right before they put a bullet in your skull.

What about Colin Powell?