Day 17. 33 pages, 15,559 words.
I continue this week’s warm fuzzy feel-good-a-thon with a new post about what makes me grin like a big loon pretty much every time.
The following is a classic Internet countdown, and basically is about what the title of this blog entry says it is about. Let’s do this.
5. LL Cool J’s Last Testament (Deep Blue Sea)
This was a hilariously silly and amazingly terrible movie and all most people remember about it is that it features Samuel L Jackson essentially doing a warm-up to “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane” and then getting torn to pieces by a hysterically unexpected shark. Me, I loved it.
But my favourite scene in the movie? Chef Dudley’s advice on how to cook a perfect omelette:
The recipe itself is, of course, incomplete. But the opening snippet is enough. The delivery is perfect. The heart undeniable. Anyone who says LL Cool J can’t act, fine. Then he sure as shit can cook an omelette.
4. The “Gozer the Traveller” Speech (Ghostbusters)
A classic example of the sort of nerd-tangent that protagonists often “humorously” shut down in a movie due to being “boring” or “beside the point”, but which I could listen to for long, rambling and preposterously happy hours:
“Gozer the Traveller. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveller came as a large and moving Torb! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex Supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day, I can tell you!”
Fuck yes.
3. Data (Independence Day)
Okay, I know it’s not really Data. But I love this scene. Not because I like to imagine that Doctor Okun somehow is Data (although I do), and not because that means Jayne Cobb is also in this movie (although he is), but because of that enthusiasm:
And because I like to make up searing comebacks he should have used when the President dressed him down for his eagerness.
“Oh, people are dying? You’ll have to excuse me, Mister President, I’ve been officially dead since Hippies walked the Earth, and studying this weird alien machinery is the only thing I’ve done for my entire adult life, so yeah. When it all powers up I’m going to be excited, I’m so very sorry about all the people of absolutely zero relevance to me who apparently died somewhere, that must suck for someone who didn’t give up any chance of love and meaningful human contact when he signed the Area 51 Secrets Act. Oh and PS, fuck you.”
2. “SOMEBODY FIRE!” (Serenity)
That is all:
1. Ralph’s Final Bad-Anon Testimonial (Wreck-It Ralph)
“Because if that little kid likes me, how bad can I be?”
‘Nuff said.
Hatboy's Hatstand 
Brilliant. One of my favorite moments in the film. Moranis’s delivery is just a perfect combination of excitement and (a bit morbid) awe. He’s basically geeking out over Gozer.
Hangonaminute… I thought one of Firefly’s things was that you didn’t get inexplicable sound in space…
This was within planetary atmosphere, technically. Although I confess that Serenity did screw up a lot of the really cool things about Firefly.
As much as I like the movie, and I like it quite a lot, there’s one pooch it screwed big time: reavers. The series suggested something almost unknowable, terrible and monstrous, but intelligent and purposeful in its twisted way. The movie gave us… meh. Or this is at least how remember things. Again, I should really re-rewatch both.
I don’t want to say more due to spoilers, but I thought the story behind the Reavers was chilling. I mean, the series had this rather cool suggestion that these guys had sort of gone to the edge of the inhabited universe and had the proverbial void look back into them, but the movie – in my opinion – explained it very nicely.
I’m not entirely convinced that creatures that insane would have a) been able to fly and maintain spacecraft, and b) wouldn’t have just thrown themselves suicidally at the inner system instead of staying out there in the Reaver zone, but oh well. Suspension of disbelief. Special kind of crazy, and I guess they were making strikes and slowly expanding.
!! SPOILERS !! FIRELY & SERENITY SPOILERS !! SPOILERS !!
It’s a bit of a double-edged sword for me. On the one hand, I definitely liked the backstory of the Alliance experimenting on its citizens and having that backfire on them in a tragic and gruesome way. The holographic recording alone provided two really nice scenes. (I really liked how the recording played into The Operative’s arc. Dat was a cool character.)
On the other hand, I though the plot neutered the Reavers. Instead of the almost unknowable terror of the series — people who had reached the edge and stepped over it into the abyss — the movie gave us lunatic psychos created by drugs. It was just a bit meh. It also made them less believable: First, like you said, it’s hard to imagine them operating spaceships or really doing anything that involves planning and complex cognitive skills. Second, how does a culture like that perpetuate itself? It doesn’t. The Reavers are a single-generation thing.
In short, the Reavers simply proved to be something far less than what the series suggested, at least to me. Perhaps the backstory of the experiments could’ve been about something else, and the Reavers could’ve been a third party with some mysterious interest in it. Dunno.
I spoilertexted your spoilers so you can spoil while you spoil.
For reference, you can put them in tags like this:
p style=”color: #ffffff;”
/p
Just imagine pointy brackets on either side of each of those tags, because if I put them there, the tags will vanish. Of course, that’s a lot of trouble.
Anyway, fair to say. As far as I’m concerned, if this was the plan Whedon had for the Reavers all along, then it is just fine with me and gets my seal of approval. If he had something more awesome planned and was rushed to give an ending for Serenity, then this is just another layer of the heartbreaking tragedy lasagne that is the Firefly franchise.
I tried adding attributes to img tags a while back, but WordPress cut them out, but let’s see if the p element works. Here’s a major spoiler for Titanic:
The ship sinks!
OK, so you can’t use anything fancy in replies. WordPress removes that shit.
Bummer.
(Mister Universe’s planet had that wacky storm thing going on around it.)
I’m going to have to take your word for it, I think – it’s been a very long time (on the scale of my memory at least) since I last watched Firefly or Serenity. Maybe that can be my next programme, after finishing Breaking Bad and catching up with Game of Thrones.
Problem is, I keep getting distracted by computer games… I’ve played about 60 hours of XCOM in the last month or so…
OK now I want to finish watching all that Firefly stuff. That is all.
Not sure if Aaron or dreameling are still able to see comment-replies to old threads, but this was brought to my attention and I thought it was worth sharing.
Sort of speaks to the “either this was his plan, or he had a better plan and they screwed him” thing I was talking about.
I saw this bonus scene a while back and emphasized totally. (I contributed to the Kickstarter for Hands of Fate!)
But yeah, it could be Whedon had something else in mind for the show — or at least something more intricate and developed — and then had to either change or abbreviate that for the movie.
And, yes, there was a comment notification.
Awesome. But now I have to google Hands of Fate.