A day or so before the release of Spider-Man, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. Two or three days before Spider-Man 2 (a Spider-Man movie with a villain I like?! Woo-hoo!), I could barely sit still.

There are now fifteen days left before Serenity is officially released into theaters, and I’m already getting jittery. I’ve been excited about this movie since it was supposed to be released back in April but was moved to avoid competing with Star Wars Episode III (Curse you, George Lucas!).

Anyway, in celebration of the pending release of Serenity, I’m going to be writing at least one Firefly related post (episode reviews and summaries, mostly, though there’ll be some other content) until the release, followed by a review on the 30th.

The Characters of Firefly – Part 1

(May contain spoilers for some episodes!)

Like Joss Whedon’s other television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Firefly was essentially an ensemble show. Also like his previous series, though, the ensemble centered around a central character whose presence was pivotal, if not exactly required to maintain the show’s feel (though, on his previous shows, a removal of the central character may’ve necessitated a name change). For Firefly, that character was Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion).

Malcolm Reynolds was a soldier in the Unification War, fighting on the side of the Independents, the group that opposed the Alliance’s powergrab over the “border planets.” Mal was apparently religious until the final battle of the Unification War, the Battle of Serenity (which is where he gets the name of his ship, the Firefly-class Serenity). At some point after that battle, perhaps because he felt that God had let the Independents down, Mal turned his back on God and has become openly hostile to religion.

Mal strictly adheres to his own moral code. Even after the other party involved in a deal has attempted to betray him, Mal is shown as always holding up his end of the bargain. In the pilot episode, “Serenity”, after the woman to whom he’s trying to sell salvaged goods tries to kill him rather than parting with money she doesn’t have to, Malcolm takes her money but leaves her alive (and, apparently, with the salvaged foodstuffs). “We do the job, we get paid,” he tells her as he and his crew leave. On the other hand, Mal seems to feel no obligation to follow the rules of society. He and his crew are smugglers, and he is knowingly harboring (at least) two fugitives, Simon and River Tam.

The defining characteristic that makes Mal the true heart of this show, though, is his absolute, unwavering loyalty to the members of his crew. When Jayne betrays Simon and River in “Ariel”, he protests that Mal shouldn’t take it so personally; after all, Jayne hadn’t betrayed him. Mal’s response shows exactly how he feels about this crew: “Oh, but you did! You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me! But since that’s a concept you can’t seem to wrap your head around, then you got no place here.”

Mal’s right-hand woman is Zoë Warren (Gina Torres), an old war buddy. Zoë is calm and collected in almost any situation, and while her philosophy of battle is different from Mal’s, she has a great deal of respect for him. Zoë is a skilled warrior, more than capable of holding her own in any battle.

Zoë’s husband is Hoban “Wash” Washburne (Alan Tudyk). When the two first met, Zoë didn’t like Wash, saying that “something” about him bugged her. Exactly what changed her mind about him is never said, but it could have been Wash’s attitude toward life. Most of the time, Wash is irreverent, even goofy, but when the situation calls for him to step up to a task, he becomes calmer as more stress is put on him, as when the crew was fleeing the Reaver ship in the pilot episode. “War Stories” may dispute this, as Wash isn’t calm after he’s kidnapped, but the argument can be made that he was in a situation where being focused wasn’t really going to benefit him much. Even focused, Wash is never portrayed as a great fighter, and he and Mal were at a serious disadvantage at the time.

More tomorrow…

One of the good things about being forced to download a patch that takes 24+ hours for World of Warcraft (Dialup sucks, y’all) is that I’ve been catching up on putting the finishing touches on some posts I’ve wanted to write for a while now. Of course, most of them are dated and won’t make it up at all, but some of them will.

I’ve also caught up on some reading, both online and off. I found this post by the Doorman, in which he quotes a reader’s e-mail:

I know how proud you are of not being racist against blacks. I wouldn’t want your fantasy to get all screwed up for you. Having spent a few years in New Orleans, let me warn you that if you went down there, it would be unavoidable for you to become a racist. The city is 70% black. It’s simply impossible to spend time among those ghetto animals and not draw conclusions. …

Like the Doorman points out, it’s a good thing for him that he’s been living in a racially homogeneous area. Since New York City doesn’t have any blacks, he’s been blissfully unaware of how “real” blacks act.

Of course, it seems to me that going to New Orleans, where 70% of the population is black, and finding that the people there were “ghetto animals”, my reaction wouldn’t have been “I hate blacks,” but rather, “I hate the people who live in New Orleans.” Why is it that people like the writer of that e-mail think that it’s a person’s skin color that is the best way of grouping them? I’m reminded of a bit from Bill Whittle’s “Tribes” post over at Eject! Eject! Eject!:

I believe that the human animal – the raw material of our physical bodies – is essentially interchangeable. By this I mean that I could take the children of Fallujah and turn them all into Astronauts, convert Jewish babies into fanatical, mass-murdering SS guards, and shake a generation of the poorest Voodoo-worshippers in Haiti into a cadre of top-flight nuclear physicists, chemical engineers and computer scientists.

Race has nothing to do with this – precisely nothing. The mobs of murdering Hutus and swarms of slaughtering Serbs are as different racially as it is possible to be, and they are cut from precisely the same cloth.

Race is devoid of any meaning other than that which we give it. As I’ve said before, I’ve found that it provides little relevant information, and while I may note it if I’m trying to describe someone’s appearance, I otherwise don’t care much what the color of someone’s skin is.

I hope this doesn’t get around. I like the fact that West Virginia is looked down on by so many people outside the state. It keeps the cost of living low, and keeps me from having too many neighbors.

( þ Balloon Juice )

The IP “theft” mentioned in my last post has been fixed, and there are no hard feelings. It was an honest mistake, and after reading the author’s comment here as well as the altered “Movie Commandments” post and his apology, I’m extremely glad that I took the time to cool down before firing off my e-mail and writing my post.

I’ve also added his blog, The Chronicle, to my blogroll.