Bullitt's biggest accomplishment was wearing a turtleneck to avoid the question of whether he ought to wear a necktie

Wait a minute. Bullitt's biggest accomplishment was a car chase that went on for app. 32 hours (at least that's the way it was in my memory).

And this discussion may have run out of steam, but I do want to note that lots of Westerns, as I alluded in an earlier post, are cowboys vs. crazier cowboys. See Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, for instance. My problems with Firefly didn't have anything to do with the genre-play, but with some of the very strange choices they made in creating that universe. Overall, though, I give most of my misgivings a pass.

What I did really like about the Firefly universe was that they created a place which ensured moral ambiguities. They had characters like Inara and Simon and Book who had extremely different tensions with the core planets than Mal or Zoe.

Mal had to make dodgy choices all the time, and so the narrative always hinged on defining your morality instead of reversing the tachyon flow.

That's what I liked, too. My problems were that we were supposed to sympathize with states-rights Confederates (which is ambivalent at best and downright noxious at worst), accept that everyone curses in Chinese but never speak any other Chinese words, despite the fact that no Asian people ever appeared on the show, and deal with Mal's unfailing moral sense. I mean, I love moral struggle, but would prefer the guy with the shades of grey to be wrong occasionally and less in the thrall of his heart of gold. These problems were more major when the show was running, though. In retrospect, it was a B+ kinda show, which is heads and tails above the C- dreck TV usually serves up.

My problems with Firefly didn't have anything to do with the genre-play, but with some of the very strange choices they made in creating that universe.

It seemed to me that Firefly had the surface trappings of the genre but no actual understanding of What Makes Something A Western. Which is one of the things about it that pissed me off.

The "very strange choices" thing didn't help, either.

Or else there would be dispossessed natives on all those planets the crew keeps visiting.

That's what makes the Indians Indian? Dispossessed is a required characteristic? Do you see this as true in the typical Westerns with Native Americans as bad guys?

Bullitt's biggest accomplishment was a car chase that went on for app. 32 hours (at least that's the way it was in my memory).

I was reading up on pony cars last week, and ran across a discussion somewhere about how truly sucky the brakes were on most models of that era. Not just not anti-lock, but truly mushy, and when the whole thing is a gigantic steel tank, and powered with a bitchin' engine, and there is no power steering, you need some damn fine brakes so as not to die horribly. So, it makes that chase kind of funny, in my head.

Dispossessed is a required characteristic?

It's part of the story, even in stories where the Injuns are villains. "They're not USING the land. They don't DESERVE the land. Push them westward -- there's always more room!" The point is, cowboys arrive in an empty land and realize it's not actually empty, often in violent ways. Fireflyans arrive in an empty land and it is literally devoid of human life. (Possibly all life.)

It's part of the story, even in stories where the Injuns are villains. "They're not USING the land. They don't DESERVE the land. Push them westward -- there's always more room!"

I disagree, but sadly I'm terrible with film names so I can't back it up with cites.

Whee! Looks like we're in for a lot of fake hair.

I still haven't seen O12 (which I must correct soon), but that trailer gave me a HUGE happy. Thanks, ita.

that trailer gave me a HUGE happy.

The eyeroll! I love the eyeroll!!