orichalcum

So I quite liked it, I thought it was solidly put together, and very powerful in certain scenes. It does make me mostly wish that the series was still running, as I thinkt his woudl have been great television and from what I hear, the movie is essentially what would have played out over one of the later, major arcs of the show. Just with less space battles.

To the violence point: While this is the first time that the Reavers showed up on screen we have had descriptions again and again of how violent they are, and honestly, I did not find them any worse than the Uruk-hai or the orcs from LOTR.

While I'm still agnostic on Wash's death, I'm also not sure how Wash's death ruins Zoe as a character. I felt like Zoe was a full character to begin with and I think Wash dying merely changes her, not necedssarily for the better, but certainly not ruins. If the series was still running, I would be honestly very curious to see how they dealt with the aftermath. Zoe and Wash's marriage was one of the most real relationships ont he show: a good marriage, though not without its stresses and bumps, as you say, one of the most fundamental and dynamic. Part of every marriage is dealing, eventually, witht he loss of a spouse and I would have been very curious to see Joss dealing with the grief of losing a husband, both from a character development standpoint - We know that Zoe was cold and closed before meeting Wash, would she go back - as well as a dramatic standpoint of the potrayal of grief. Joss dealt, reasonably well, with the loss of a parent in Buffy, I'd like to have seen how he dealt witht he loss of a spouse. Sadly, this probably does not translate well to film.

I suspect that ultimately, as Jer says, the movie dealt with too many masters: if this was a TV show I have no doubt that the elements would have played out eventually, including Wash's death. If he was assured of a sequel I'm equally sure that he woudln't of killed Wash. Given that Joss presumably had to assume that this would be the last movie, it had to be constructed as a finale for the show, which is, I suspect, what edxplains the body count. Ironically, I suspect that without Wash's death, peopel would be super psyched about the show and be watching it multiple times without prompting, so I thinkt hat killign Wash may have seriously hurt his long term box office and thus the chance for a second movie, thoguh we shall see.

As to the rest, sad to have so little Book, but probably necessary, it's hard to keep an ensemble nature in a movie and Book was the correct character, I think, to have his role cut down. I didn't think Kaylee had changed over much, though I did notice that the actress had lost weight. I agree that the movie overall was darker than the show and lost some many of the western aspects that I loved, but there you go.