I felt completely used

Used? Really? I can't imagine fiction using me.

Also, I don't feel that Wash was more of a redshirt than Kaylee, and I know more than one person who thought that either River or Simon would bite it.

Sometimes hindsight is more than 20/20, and in the bad way. Zoe and Jayne didn't stand out enough to die, Inara was almost the same, and there was no way our Captain was going to buy it.

I understand that people don't like the death, thought it was too much, etc, but I also think a lot is being read into what I hear was a practical decision as much as it was a narrative one. Tudyk was not going to live through the end of the movie.

Given that--what are the narrative alternatives?

Beverly, what I meant to post was that I had already suffered the death of a character in whom I was invested. Wash's felt like overkill. I suppose for people who were seeing the film without having seen the series, Book's death mattered little, but it was plenty enough for me.

Used? Really? I can't imagine fiction using me.

I didn't get the feeling so much from Serenity, but the one time I really felt I was being manipulated was when Gary died on thirtysomething.

I have a distinction between manipulated and used that I may be projecting into other people's posts.

Well, I as a person don't feel manipulated, but my emotions often are. Sometimes deftly, sometimes cheaply, but it's kinda why I show up in the first place.

I thought the senselessness and suddenness of Wash's death made a lot more sense than the Book's Grand Guignol death, which couldn't have possibly mattered to people who didn't watch the series.

I didn't get the feeling so much from Serenity, but the one time I really felt I was being manipulated was when Gary died on thirtysomething.

I hated Gary, and cheered. But Hope's miscarriage gutted me, long before my own reproductive adventures in unwonderland. But then, thirtysomething was the most passive-aggressive emotionally manipulative bad for me relationship I ever had with a tv show.

Sometimes deftly, sometimes cheaply, but it's kinda why I show up in the first place.

There's a distinction I make, which I'm not sure I can explain properly. It's the difference between when the manipulation comes from the storytelling, and when the storytelling takes a back seat to the manipulation.

Wash's death manipulated me in all the ways I think it was supposed to--utterly shocking and ratcheting up the tension. The first time I saw the movie, I was completely in shock from there till the end. At that point *anybody* could die, and I was truly afraid they would--Zoe, then Kaylee, then (especially) Simon. I didn't take in a lot of details of the end of the movie till my second and subsequent (let's not count, shall we?) viewings.

So, yes, manipulated, but that didn't bother me. Rather, it worked to hammer home the peril. Not that Wash dying doesn't bother me, because it *hurts*, a lot.

I can also project some interesting future times for a Serenity which has lost both of its moral compasses.

Gary died on thirtysomething.

!

I don't think I knew this! I think college interfered with my viewing somewhere along the line.

Funny - I think that Wash's death was the moment I decided the movie was more than just fun, but had actual greatness. I screamed, and tears flew out of my eyes, and I was hyper-ventilating for the rest of the film - and I was in it.

Maybe my acceptance of Wash's death has something to do with the fact that, though I always loved Wash, from the moment with the dinosaurs, he was never my favorite character, never one I was totally emotionally invested in. In fact, I feel like right with Joss on how I saw the series; for me, it was always All About River. And Mal. The greatest episodes of the series, in my opinion, can easily be split into the Simon/River Episodes (Ariel, Objects in Space) and the Mal Episodes (Out of Gas, War Stories), and I always felt that these were The Arcs. Wash, Book, Kaylee, Jayne, Inara, even Zoe - these characters existed to further those stories. Sure, they were very well developed characters, and certainly had fascinating stories of their own to tell, but they were always secondary, always at risk.

And I also think, to some extent, any of them were disposable in the right movie script. Kill Jayne whenever you want - it's easy. Kill Inara just so she can fall into Mal's arms and send him into a fit or vengeful rage - easy. Kill Kaylee for exactly the same reason. She'd die with such sadness - it would be Tara's death all over again. Shocking, random, and the entire crew would go all vengeful. Easy peasy. Kill Simon exactly when he got wounded, so that River's killing spree is motivated by revenge more than rescue - easy. From the perspective of a series watcher, none of the deaths are easy. The characters are all too meaningful. But from the perspective of the movie watcher, any one of them - or all of them - could have been set up to be the red shirts.