Episode: 659
Title: HPR0659: 10 Buck Review - Serenity
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0659/hpr0659.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:33:43

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Welcome to syndicated Thursday on HPR.
Today we present Ten Book Review.
Yeah, you got your ten bucks, well now, yeah, yeah.
All right, everyone, and welcome to Ten Book Review.
I'm one of your hosts today.
I am Lord Drakenblut, the digital dragon, and with me today I have...
Dragon's Angel.
Welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for inviting.
Now, we've done four episodes so far, and this is the first time you're showing up,
so why don't you introduce yourself to everyone, so they've got a clue who you are.
Well, there's interesting clues about me.
I am Lord Drakenblut, like call it Best Friend, Possible Future One.
We have...
Best Friend, I thought you were my fiancee.
When did I get to grade it?
Oh my god.
Folks, please help me.
The first day I have her on this show, and already somehow I've been degraded from...
Don't be degraded.
Beyonce to friend.
Oh, I have the trouble people.
Great trouble it is.
I know where you sleep tonight.
Oh, it's so much fun to be in that trouble.
Oh, I know where you sleep tonight.
And I know where you sleep.
But before we have the audience completely thinking, you know, horrible, horrible,
or wonderful thoughts, depending on who it is.
Today, we're back with another movie, and this time we're going sci-fi again,
and 28 days later, which we talked about last episode, was also considered sci-fi,
but this one is much more sci-fi than that.
This time we have...
90.
2005, Serenity by Joss Whedon.
Yeah.
Now, for, you know, Joss Whedon, the thing most people are going to know him for right off,
our three TV series, Firefly, Angel, and Buffy.
And of course, Angel has been off of Buffy.
He's just a vampire trying to kill everyone.
Yep.
It's a vampire trying to kill other vampires.
How lovely is it?
Exactly.
Now, today we're going to start off with just describing the box art,
and we'll let Dragon's Angel do that one.
Yes, it's a more color-oriented than bow.
Okay, to start off, we have experienced the ultimate action adventure.
So, my letter is over.
It's kind of a tallicky ocean blue.
Now, first off, I'm getting really tired of people trying to hype up their own fucking movies.
Just do me a favor, put the name of the fucking movie on it, and a nice cover art.
Don't tell me it is the biggest, baddest thing to rampage across the world since God's Zilla.
Okay.
Ain't nothing better than God's Zilla that rampage across the face of this planet.
All right.
But anyways, has another little, you know, as he was saying, a praise mark there.
You see a woman on the front with holding a ball or a b-ball thing?
I don't think it's so much he's holding it that she's right behind it.
Well, she's right behind it. She can be holding it. There's an arm. There goes that way.
Well, the story is written across the front and the middle of it, across the blue ball.
Well, we have two more characters at the bottom. One point, what looks like to be a gun or a fire flame thing.
That's the same with the other.
A gun.
Gun and the other one's on here. Not the same gun.
Let's see.
Back. You just get three screenshots of the entire thing. You get a basic description.
This movie is rated PG-13.
Yeah. Now, why don't you read the description for people who aren't aware of this movie?
Okay. For Surnady.
Okay. A passenger with deadly secret. Six levels on the run.
An assassin in pursuit where the retrograde crew have Surnady.
It's fun.
It's a little small for you to do that.
Yeah. That way my glasses stay different. It's a little small.
All right. So I'll start over for one thing. It says it's an absolute blast.
Again, stop trying to hype the movie for me.
If I didn't have it in my hand, I probably wouldn't give a shit.
So just, you know, stop trying to praise your own movie and just let the movie stand on its own merits.
A passenger with a deadly secret. Six levels on the run.
An assassin in pursuit when the retrograde crew of Surnady agrees to hide a fugitive on their ship.
They find themselves in an action-packed battle between the relentless military might of a totalitarian regime
that will destroy anything and free folks out there listening know this is not George Bush they're hiding from.
Or anyone to get the girl back and the bloodthirsty creatures who roam the uncharted areas of space.
But the greatest danger of all may be on their ship.
From the mind of Joss Wheaton TV's Buffy the vampire slayer angel and they leave out firefly for some reason.
Comes a new edge of your seat adventure loaded with explosive battles, gripping special effects and fantastic new worlds.
Again, you know, the descriptions all right, they overblow at some, but, you know, what can you do?
Now bonus features, you know, over 20 minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes.
Joss Wheaton introduction, relighting the firefly, the story of how a television show gained enough of a cult following to become a major feature film.
And feature commentary with writer, director Joss Wheaton and much more.
First off, I've got to say go blow it out your ass.
Because 20 minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes is not a fucking special feature.
We have gone over this time and time again at this point and you probably hear me rant about it some more.
Deleted scenes and outtakes are not a special feature by now.
If you don't have these, you're not a DVD. You might as well just put it on VHS.
But, relighting the firefly, that to me sounds like a special feature.
To, you know, sit down and find out how a show that Fox screwed up its run by running it originally out of sequence to where it only ran part of the episodes before they stopped it.
Got enough of a cult audience and a cult following that they were able to make this movie, able to justify making this movie.
And Buffy and Angel have yet to touch the big screen. Thank God.
Too much hype there when I was a fifth grader at Buffy and Angel. Too much hype there.
Yep. Now, one thing I'll say about the cases, it has the stupid little snap tabs.
Can you cut them off?
I could, but I don't like destroying my stuff like that.
Some people will cut them off, I don't, because it's just an inside on the DVD itself will let dragons and Angel describe this.
Take sure how blue light is coming out in a straight column and then yes, white in the middle of it.
And then just also face out to the same blue.
Kind of crystal in a sense how it looks.
The title surrounding these on tabs are universal.
All that little stuff doesn't quite.
Because it's a no brainer, but hey, I thought I was going to point it in.
Now, it does, as she started to say a minute ago, it has English French languages in 5.1.
And it has subtitles in English, Spanish and French.
And it's the Anamorphic 2.351, which if I remember right from the last movie we did, this will not fill up a 16 by 9 widescreen TV.
It will be left with bars at the top of the bottom.
And it has a 1 hour and 59 minute runtime.
You know, we're talking 60 seconds short of 2 hours.
Couldn't you have had someone scratch their ass like three times in the movie for 20 seconds to get that 2 hour point.
But you know, that's just whatever.
That's true.
Now on to the cast.
You know, the cast of this movie, they worked very well together in this.
But we went out, we did a little searching, and we found some information out.
And first we'll start with Nathan Filion, who plays a character named Mal.
And a little searching into what he's done on IMDB is he was on Dr. Horrible Sing Along Blog as a character named Captain Hammer.
Now if I'm not mistaken, this was actually a project done by Seth Green.
And it had a pretty good following.
He was also a voice actor in Halo 3 as the sergeants.
Now I don't know if he was all the sergeants or what, but for all you Halo fanboys, you know, the worst shooter in history.
It's not that bad for a first person shooter, the first person decent.
It's a good first person shooter only on a console.
You take it off a console and it is a mediocre show.
But how many people play Halo for a computer instead of playing it for a console?
And how many people can't recognize a good game and have just bought into the hype.
But anyway, that would be a completely different show.
We'll leave that one over to C4 and Kobar at Gamer.
Next thing was White Noise 2.
Now I've never seen this one, but if I'm not mistaken, he was actually the star for that one.
And the first one didn't do so well.
Of course, he was in Firefly.
But before that, something I found interesting was,
he was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for five episodes.
And he did that kind of right in the middle of Firefly.
Because Firefly the TV show was 2002 to 2003.
He was in Buffy in 2003.
So right in the middle, right at the end of Firefly, he was showing up in Buffy also, showing that we didn't like the guy and worked with him more.
Now, this one surprised me actually.
He was in the movie Dracula 2000 as Father David,
which I did not know that one of the titles for it was Wes Craven presents Dracula 2000, but that's pointless.
Now, something other people will care about is, he was in the movie Saving Private Ryan.
And this was a very good movie by all accounts.
I haven't quite got around to watching it yet.
But he was in there as Private James Frederick Minnesota Ryan.
And now we'll go on to Gina Torres playing a character named Zoe.
And we'll turn this over to Dragon's Angel.
All righty. She had Torres and Zoe.
She's also in Matrix and Online.
She's the voice of Nairobi.
This I find interesting because most of the time when you have a character who is in both a movie and a video game,
the same actor who does the voice or is the character in the movie isn't the voice for the game.
This is one of the first times I've ever seen where you have a character in both movie and video game
that the actor from the movie is not the voice for their own character in the video game.
Well, does you also know Leia was supposed to be in Nairobi before that play in Crash Leia?
You have to clean the damn shooting.
Yeah.
But if we want to go on that track, Jeta Pinkett Smith had originally auditioned for the role of Trinity and got turned down.
We have the Matrix Revolutions as Cass.
Since it's an IMAX experience, we have Matrix Reloaded, Cass.
Angel.
Which she was in five episodes in 2003.
Showing again that we didn't like to work with some of the same people if he brought her.
Now going back to Revolutions and Reloaded on the Matrix.
Cass, this is kind of a bit character in some respects in that movie that this is Link's wife's sister.
Long, long, long weird track, isn't it?
Exactly.
But all right.
And now we're on to Alan Tudic.
I'm guessing.
I do not know how to pronounce his name.
He plays a character named Wash.
Now he was also a voice in Halo 3.
So he was one of the Marines.
Now I got to wonder who ever was doing the voice casting for this.
If they sat down and just liked the way those two worked in Serenity,
and that's why they both got picked up for this at the same time.
With Fillian playing the Commander and Walsh playing, you know,
someone reporting to him.
So it's just interesting.
Now he was in Ice Age 2.
Some people will care.
As the voice for a character named Choli.
He was in the video game and the movie.
Now this one I also didn't realize.
He was in the movie Eye Robot.
As Sunny.
Now if I'm not mistaken, Sunny might have been the main robot that the movie focuses on.
So basically he's in there as a voice.
He was in Dodgeball, a true underdog story.
I've never bothered to watch that movie, but he was in it.
Her dodgeball itself was one of those movies.
If you are under the age of 14, you can know like 12 and 14.
You just want to watch something utterly stupid.
But lots and lots of vulgarity and you can get away with.
Your parents don't care.
That's the movie to watch.
Now he was also in a night's tale.
Some people will know this was the movie that Heath Ledger was also in.
Moving on.
Ice Age he was also in.
Now he wasn't in Ice Age the original as the same voice.
I find this interesting that maybe they just like to working with them well enough
that they brought him back for Ice Age 2 to play a different character.
And now on to Marina Basarine.
She played a character named Annara in this movie.
And the only thing we found of any real interest other than she's got a decent list of TV stuff
but nothing that popped out to me or Dragon's Angel.
And she was in Stargate the Ark of Truth.
Now this was a movie that was a straight to DVD release as far as I know.
And now we're on to Adam Baldwin who plays Jane.
Alrighty.
He also, other movies, he's in Half-Life 2, Episode 2.
That was a video game.
He was a voice actor for that one and unconfirmed at that.
That's it.
Yeah, that's it. Unconfirmed.
That's his voice.
If Halo 3 who is also a voice, he's in the Marines.
So once again, I'm really wondering if whoever did this just like the way those guys work together
and does that make sense to you?
They probably did.
I mean, it wouldn't make sense.
Why don't you bring a good system rather than having to bring a new one?
Like a math class.
Every teacher feels like they have to teach a math a brand new way.
One of my brothers try to do that and try and keep it up.
We have Superman Doomsday, the voice of Clark Kent slash Superman.
We have Inviter Zim, one of my favorite shows to watch whenever I get a hold of it.
He's in first episode 6.
The fried coke that came from all outer space is just...
That is off of food corda.
You get a clip there and this is him.
But Angel, Marcus Hilton, five episodes.
Now, this comes in 2004, which is, you know, a year after the end of the run of Firefly.
Yeah.
We also have Independence Day with Major Michelle, Major Mitchell, aka ID4.
Yeah, a lot of people know that movie.
Yeah, Predator 2.
From 1990, he was Garber.
Now, Predator 2, for some people think we're talking about Alien vs Predator 2.
No, we're talking about the original Predator 2 that starred Danny Glouffer in the main role.
Yeah, we have Full Metal Jagged.
Ooh, yeah.
A lot of people know this movie.
Yes, yes, I've seen this movie.
It's good.
He's the animal mother, aka Stanley Cumbricks Full Metal Jagged.
Yep.
Now, we move on to Jewel State, as Kaylee.
And we'll just go ahead and throw Sean Marr in here as well, who plays a character named Simon.
As far as we've found and can tell, neither of these two actors really do much past TV.
Now, which brings up, if these people are mostly TV actors, why are they in the movie?
Simple enough.
This movie is, of course, based off the TV show Firefly.
So, it only makes sense to have them come back and reprising their roles.
And now we have Summer Glow as River.
And really, she's also another TV person.
And right now, the thing that she's in that most people would recognize by name at police is Terminator,
the Sarah Connor Chronicles, as Cameron Phillips.
I have not seen this show at all yet.
It's on my two watch list at some point.
It gets good thumbs up for me.
And she was also an angel in 2002, but only in one episode.
So...
Someone got a bit.
She was just a prima ballerina.
You know, it sounds like it was a bit part at best.
And...
But again, we're seeing kind of this repeating pattern in the cast and crew
that they've done quite a bit of work for most of them with Joss Wheaton before coming
over and doing Firefly the TV show or the movie.
And now we've got Ron Glass as Shepard Book.
Which all you have for him, basically, is fabled too as Garth.
Yeah.
Now, he had...
This is another person who is a heavy, heavy TV person.
And if you go way, way back in this history and you're an older person listening to this show,
you may recognize him from the TV show Barney Miller,
which it appears he was in almost every episode of.
So, with all of this laid out, do you have any comments before?
No.
You have actually...
You have never even seen the TV show or this movie yet.
Yeah, I have this to be a total shock to me.
Now, I have to say I have seen this movie several times.
I own the TV series too.
And this is a show that could have achieved greatness and really could have taught
George Lucas how he should have done Star Wars one, two, and three.
And I'm not talking about the original three that were the good three.
So, Lucas, wake up.
Talk to Weedon.
Find out how to do a movie nowadays.
Stop remaking and trashing your old stuff.
With that, I think it's kind of funny.
I'm not really much of a movie watcher per se,
but when you get engaged to him, you gotta start watching your movies.
But other than that, I know they'll say.
All right, folks, well, I think we'll wrap it there and we'll come back after the movie.
All right, everyone, and we're back after the movie.
Yeah.
Let's start off with a brief, real quick brief thoughts on it, not breaking down anything.
But we'll start with Dragon's Angel.
What do you have to say, my dear?
Personally, I've never seen this movie before, so I thought it was going to be an interesting look.
It's an awesome thing between sci-fi.
This is like this really super sci-fi stuff.
I don't really don't watch.
This kind of stuff in Lord of the Rings and I'm only trying to stay away from.
But for some reason, I like this a lot.
I had lots of guns, explosions, and really, really spontaneous, very funny word usage
and some of the parts.
It just seemed a good movie overall for my opinion.
Now, would you agree that there's...
Now, you haven't seen the TV show, so this wouldn't stick out as much to you, perhaps.
But would you agree that there seems to be kind of an interesting cross of technology here?
Actually, yes.
The lead character's running around what looks like a revolver almost.
And Jane is running around with fully automatic weapons and grenades.
Exactly.
That would be fun interesting.
But is there really a lot of pawn shop?
You know, and then Jane miss it.
That's the thing.
No, you have to think about that.
You almost have to think about the universe therein as the wild...
of America back during the Wild West days.
That if you went to, you know, out west, you got low tech, revolvers kind of grungy.
But if you went back to the East Coast, it was much more advanced,
a little more civilized.
And more click, click, boom.
As to Coastaliva.
Yeah.
So, would you agree that it's kind of like that?
But you put it on a more universal scale.
Yeah, good.
It's been more like that.
Just thanks for that.
I understand why that's how it came about.
All right.
Now, the opening scene we've got.
Let's start with...
Okay.
Opening scene.
Little girl named River.
Correct?
Could you sit in this little...
like, I don't know, egg-shaped bubble thing?
Well, actually, let's back up a little.
You're just a little...
A little too far ahead?
A little too far ahead.
First, it talks off.
It shows it's talking about the Earth that was.
And it's a woman's voice talking.
And you see ships flying away from the Earth.
But it's not a blowing, glowing blue orb in the sky.
It's kind of...
gray...
dingy looking.
It's like the moon doesn't know.
And it talks about the history of what happened to mankind
leaving Earth.
How they found a new universe started colonizing.
Doing a process called terraforming.
Now, are you aware of what terraforming is?
No, I am not.
It is taking a planet that is unsuitable for life.
And transforming it to be suitable for human-type life.
Terraforming.
Hmm.
That's you.
And now we cut back to where it's a woman standing up
talking in front of an entire classroom.
But this is an outdoor classroom.
All the kids are kneeling in front of these little desks
with embedded computer monitors.
Would be fun, by the way.
Yeah.
And, you know, she's explaining that, you know,
here in the inner planets we're all civilized
and we're trying to bring it to the outside ones.
But they're resisting.
And she asked the question, why?
Why are they resisting us?
And that's when it cuts into her little leg.
Nope.
It's the little girl talking.
Yeah, it's the little river.
But she's not in an egg.
She's sitting in the classroom with the rest of them.
Next scene.
But the little girl river sits there and says,
because we metal.
They don't like it to metal.
No one likes it when we metal.
Of course.
And the teacher kneels down to talk to her
and starts explaining, we're not trying to teach anyone
how to think or what to do.
You wouldn't show them the right way.
It's what she says.
And she picks up the pencil and then frames it into her forehead.
And then this is where it cuts to the scene.
I think you keep wanting to talk about.
That's the basic thing I remember.
I don't remember very much.
My memory is trashed, as you know.
Almost if not the worst train both of us.
Yeah.
But she's like a little egg.
And they have all these needles and pains inside her head and stuff.
And the river was apparently supposed to be some kind of
agent of weapon-ish, massive war thing.
I really don't know how to describe it.
She was just basically an armed weapon, a human armed weapon.
They were, first off, she's psychic.
They explain at one point.
Yes.
And that they're subliminally training her basically to be a weapon.
Yeah.
And they're all explaining this to a guy who's standing there holding us.
Kind of a staff.
And they even go on to say even key members of parliament have overlooked this.
And they'd say that she is our most prodigal.
And in combat, she's the best we've ever seen.
She has a gracefulness to it.
At this point, the guy says, and she always did, she always did love to dance.
And then this guy looks over at him.
Kind of what?
And the guy with the staff slams it on the ground as he's ducking down.
And the end pops up.
And laser.
Yeah, this beam shoots out in a pulse around it.
I would, you know, to go with the sci-fi explanation,
I would imagine that this is a neural disruptor.
Basically something that is meant because of the level it hits,
it shoots across all of their heads and their faces.
So it's something that basically stuns and incapacitates.
Yes.
And they now make their escape and they go up and elevate her shaft.
Where a ship flies over and a pan drops down.
Yeah, and pan drops down.
They go up, they go up.
And you get another thing in the next scene.
You get something on the lines of.
One thing I have to comment on about as they're going up the elevator shaft,
whoever designed their security system is a fucktard.
That's all there is to it.
Because these laser grid, this laser grid, start shooting up floor by floor.
Why are you going from the bottom up?
If you're trying to prevent an escape from a maximum security system,
wouldn't you want to go from the top down?
And part of the phone, you know, first time it happened, but.
Fun, fun, fun.
Exactly.
But it's not a podcast until someone's phone rings at least once.
So I guess we're now officially, this is now officially a podcast.
Oh yeah, the very first time too, I feel so honored.
And at this point as they're starting to rise, it stops.
And a guy walks through the scene.
And this guy, his world cuts scene.
They're escaping the escape, but this is different.
It's a pre-cut scene.
It looks like they're in the scene.
And this guy walks through it.
And it's like, so can you tell me how she escaped from something along the lines of that?
And it goes back to tell all these other men.
And it's telling one of them how it's really natural for the leader to fall on his own sword.
Well, we're jumping a little bit, but you're hitting some important stuff.
He walks through it.
And people walk in.
What are you doing here?
What's your authorization?
No one's in the gentleman.
It's a black gentleman.
Blue clothes.
Fairly nonsense script compared to everything else everyone there's wearing.
And he's, you know, I'm going to need to see your authorization.
And he's, of course, very agreeable, very polite and nice.
Puts his hand on a palm reader.
And it's no name, no rank.
I have neither.
Just like this place, I don't exist.
And he goes on, you know, to tell the guy you have failed completely.
Do you know what your sin is?
Pride.
That's what sin was.
Pride.
And they go on to talk about the escape as it being madness.
He's like, it was complete madness that Simon Tam would spend all his money throw away a career, promising medical career.
This guy's basically a prodigal medical student and surgeon throws it all away and it's madness.
And the operative, that's all we ever know him as, is madness.
And it's a questioning kind of statement.
He's like, no, look at him.
This isn't madness.
This is love.
Something far more dangerous.
And then he goes on to saying, you'll fall on your own sword.
Where are you just supposed to stick the guy with some helmet and fall over and go, come.
I'll ever sword.
And the whole time he's talking to, there's four people in the room.
He's talking to one of the ladies.
Yeah, there's four people.
The guy he was talking to who runs the facility.
Two black suited agents who you get the idea, there's security, he asks.
He cuts them down and he nails the guy in the back in a nerve cluster paralyzing him.
And the whole time, you know, after that, he talks to the woman and says, I'm going to need information.
Tell us what he needs.
And he walks in front of the guy, flips his hand on the sword so he's holding it in a reverse hold,
kneels down and just holding it there.
Guy falls on it.
And he's, do not be ashamed.
This is a good death.
You've done good work here.
And the guy just falls further down the blade and dies.
Which would suck, honestly.
Yeah.
I mean, impalement itself that I'd rather not have on my list of things to do.
Yeah, but this is an old Japanese custom.
Perhaps some others.
No, it's not.
It's not.
It's up to you don't really fall on your own sword.
You'd have, you'd have to take us like a tonto, which is a really small knife.
You know, rip, rip, open your organs and if best try to cut your head off.
Yep.
Now, you, it would, would be used your own katana too, but you would wrap the blade so you could hold it and do the cut.
And all it was required was to do the cut, spilling your organs in and your friend could sever your head, sparing your life at that point.
Sparing a horrible death.
Now, the next scene we cut to, they're, where on a ship.
And they're, they're doing an entry into the atmosphere.
And something flies off, clings off this, you know, glass or, you know, whatever it is that they can see through.
And he's like, was that just the front panel bumper or buffer?
And at this point, you know, we get into where they're talking, you know, the captain reaches over, grabs the intercom and says,
they're in for a bit of a bumpy ride after a little bit more of a conversation, a little bit of turbulence and then explosion.
And he goes, I mean, that's one, one thing that people loved about this character is he's very straightforward.
He doesn't pull punches.
He's pretty much ass, but the smart ass.
Yeah.
So he goes towards the back of the ship trying to, back towards the engine room because if they don't get some more power, they're toast.
And on the way, he stops and talks to, you know, kind of gets sidetracked a little bit here and there.
The first person we run into is Jane.
And Jane is the weapons guy of the ship.
And he's sitting there, he's got a couple of guns and grenades and they're like.
Big, big, big rifle in his back or massive magazine.
And he's like, look, we don't need all this.
I don't mean there to be shooting.
He's like, look, what you mean for there to be and what is are not always the same thing.
You know, there's just smart ass comments flying back and forth.
He's like, just leave the grenades.
Leave the grenades.
You need to go down there and we'll get to that.
Then he goes back and we've run into Zoe.
Zoe is the second and commanded the ship.
And, you know, he has a little conversation with her before going back.
And as he's going back, you hear Zoe.
We're just robbing the place.
We're not occupying it.
And obviously you can tell she's talking to Jane.
And then, you know, he talks to Kaylee, comes out of the engine room.
But Kaylee says, as, you know, there's sparks fly and lights coming from wherever.
She's like, everything shiny, captain, nothing to worry about here.
Turns around and there is sighting.
Simon is the ship's doctor.
You know, either you know this from the show or you'll find this out as we go.
So, I ain't killing anything for you.
And he's like, ain't nothing to be afraid of.
The same fear you see.
Well, with a face like yours, it'd be hard to tell.
If this were fear, my eyes would probably be wider.
You're not taking her.
This whole conversation is centering around Simon's little sister.
River.
Which, river is kind of, river is the key character in this movie at least.
And he's talking about, you're not taking her.
You're not taking her.
I don't care.
You know, you're not taking her.
That's final.
And the captain turns on his heels.
I think if I ever hear the words that final come out of your mouth, it will be.
Which they go down into the medical lab.
And the conversation continues.
He's like, look, she's a reader.
You know, she can help us stop there from being trouble.
So, you know, little more conversation.
They all load up onto this thing called a mule.
Basically, an anti-gravity conveyance of some nature.
It's just kind of funky to look at, but fun.
So they go to town.
And one of the last comments made before they jet for town is the fact that, you know,
oh, that was it.
Oh, yes, yes.
Here we go.
That I'm not going to, you know, if anything happens to her, I'd get very choked up.
I promise, there might even be tears.
Which again, you have more asked than comments.
And they leave.
And Kayley says to Simon, he's going to take care of her.
He always does.
You know, he, you know, he watches after his own, basically.
And they get there right about during the time of Sunday service.
And the highest they're pulling is for the payroll department, basically,
of a security force.
Because as they say, you know, the alliance cannot practically send people to every place
to enforce the law.
True.
So they go.
And, you know, they go in and they just start shooting the place up.
Not so much shooting.
They fire off a couple of rounds so they can, you know, get everyone's attention.
Yeah.
Fire off lots of rounds.
Guns, guns, gunscope, boo, boo, boo.
Just a few rounds.
And he's like, look, everyone should just be looking at their belly buttons.
Anyone who looks up, their will, violence will ensue.
And Jason's back at this vault saying, oh, it's locked.
And, you know, they, and then in walks forever.
And she's walking in barefoot, very gracefully.
And she just kind of stands there for a moment before pointing at one guy.
She is, she read the guy's mind.
Because this guy is sitting on his belly, such poor, his little gun.
And then click right by his ear.
You know, he'd been pointed out.
And Zoe at this point says, do you know what the definition of a hero is?
A hero is someone who gets people dead.
Exactly.
And he throws it off to the side.
Well, they open the vault and look in.
And we're talking small change for, you know,
fly in a ship all the way out here to rob it.
Well, Mal looks at it, reaches up and pops a switch.
Yay, good job.
Pops a switch and everything.
He's noticed.
Yep.
The vault slides back.
And there's just more.
Sorry.
There's just more and more of it.
And you kind of see more of what this little vault had portray.
It's not just small change.
There is another two panels.
I think there is.
There's two panels full of money.
Yep.
Now, you hear a voice.
You know, they say, we're coming down to clear that out.
He's like, what's your authorization?
Okay.
So they, you know, they cut to, they're down there.
And Mal is talking to the guy who is down there saying,
look, I was thinking a leg shot.
You know, make them look like you put up a fight.
Nothing vital.
A little bit of bleeding.
Some pain.
Nothing really bad.
Guys, like, you know, I was thinking more of a crazy.
He's like, no, no, you don't want to do that.
You want to make, don't want to make it look like you just gave up.
This is just hilarious.
He's sitting there.
Doesn't want to hurt the guy.
But the guy, give the guy an out.
So it doesn't look like he just gave up.
It's rendered.
Now.
You're in the foot.
At this point, River starts going off the deep end.
She starts freaking out because guess who's coming?
Revers.
Now, we're not going to really talk about Revers much.
Other than, I'm going to reference a bit of an explanation that came out of the TV show
that Revers will kill you, eat you, and rape you.
And if you're lucky, they'll do it in that order.
So they bug out.
Oh, wouldn't it be killing you, rape you, then eat you?
For each is a rape.
It's the Revers.
You're not.
But anyway, so they, you know, they bug out.
And one guy comes running out.
You can't leave me.
You can't leave me.
You got me.
And I was like, get back in the vault with everyone else.
Pushes them off.
And they bug out.
And right as they start to go, two Revers fall on.
Now, Revers from what you can tell right now are humanoid at least.
And Mal turns around and just fires off one shot right into the guy's chest dropping
him, sparing him in the pain.
Whatever's going to happen to him.
And they jet with a ship in pursuit.
Now, this is probably one of the best chase scenes I've ever seen in any movie.
And you've got, you know, a spaceship tailing and anti-grave sled basically.
And they're just booking for it.
And they call up walls who is the pilot of the serenity.
It's like, we got Revers behind us.
And he switches on the intercom.
We've got Revers fired up to Kaylee, the engineer.
Kaylee's cool.
I mean, there's a little quirky.
Kaylee's a very interesting character to say the least.
So, you know, they're coming up.
And they're just booking along this flat.
And, you know, shots are exchanged fired.
We're not going to blow too much here.
So, but they do manage to clip a boulder, sending chunks of it into the ship,
getting it off their ass for a moment.
Now, income serenity as they whip around 180 degrees.
Robs is chunking up.
Basically doing a barn, what I believe they call a barn swallow.
Where serenity is moving, it's moving.
They just fly it right up there.
And they just drop and run right into the back.
Yep.
And, of course, there's also a reaver manages to get up in there with them too.
And it pops up and mal just bam again.
This is a guy who is a man of little words sometimes, but very decisive action.
When he sets his mind, he's going to do something.
It gets done.
It gets done to the team.
All right. Now, what's the next scene that sticks out to you at this point?
The next thing that sticks out to me is, it's actually closer to the end
when they arrive on this planet.
Well, we're jumping away.
I don't think that's the next thing that we're going up to.
We're jumping way too far up.
But you stole me.
Anyways, back track a little here.
Oh, little.
Three quarters of the movie back.
They're on the ship and Jason's having or Jane is having a conversation with Kaylee.
But he doesn't understand how people go so bad.
You know, killing, raping, eating people.
I mean, eating people.
How's that fun?
I mean, I'll kill people.
I'll kill people if it's a fair fight.
If it's a man, I think he's going to start a fair fight.
Or if there's a woman.
Or if I'm being paid.
Especially if I'm being paid.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a funny scene.
Or how about the part which is I ate a bug right after the gun.
I get we've almost left that out.
Yeah.
River.
They're coming back onto the surrounding.
And Simon comes running down and he ignores everyone else.
Comes running up to them.
You are you okay?
Are you okay?
Are you okay to, to river?
And she just looks up all sweet, cute and innocent.
I eat a bug.
I mean, it's just, it had us both giggling.
Oh, it's good.
So, and that's when they mentioned, you know,
Kaylee mentions Shepard, Shepard book that, you know,
man got out there and he saw too much and went crazy.
So, you know, they eventually, they go to exchange the money
for clean money, basically kind of a money laundering operation
where you bring us a lot of money, we take a percentage.
And because of altercation between Mal and Simon,
Simon decides him and River are going to leave the boat.
They're done.
He's done with it.
Don't know how the stress fair is over the river.
Yeah.
Now they get down into the bar and they start talking business.
And instantly, this is kind of interesting.
That Minty and Fango or something like that.
I forget their names exactly, but they're twins.
And, you know, they're like, he's in, he's like, no, no,
that one's this, you know, whichever.
He's like, how do you know?
Because he's, you know, he's prettier.
And the one twin kind of smirks and they wander off
and start talking business.
Well, in walks River.
And she just kind of looks up at the TV.
And the lighting changes.
It goes from the normal lighting to kind of a,
pure, no, kind of a, like there's a blue filter
over everything.
Yeah, but the whole screen, not just the lighting.
The whole screen goes that blue.
And she just looks at it for a moment and then one word comes
out of her mouth.
Miranda.
And then, oh my god, River goes ape shit.
She's the ass of everyone in there.
Ha, make sure a little 17, 90, 90 pound on the girl here,
kind of pulling all this crazy converse shit on everybody.
Like no man is safe.
I mean, put her 400 pound guy in front of her.
He's down in five seconds.
She, she manages to knock Jane out.
Yeah, and Jane's like the most big dude.
Jane is like six, you know, you get the feeling he's supposed
to be like six, six, kind of a hulking guy,
a little 90 pound girl, knocks him out with a serving tray.
Yeah, it's like kind of on.
And the whole time Mal is sprinting up to get his gun.
And as soon as he whips it out, River pops hers up.
Simon charges in, says some form of gibberish,
which, you know, actually it's Russian.
I didn't think of the Russian.
I speak Russian.
It's actually Russian comment that he says that I've got,
I don't think I got the note written down,
but it's something like some bizarreness about the hen.
And she falls down.
Just drops cold and they take her and sprint out of there.
Well, a lot of conversation and you're like,
we're flying blinder than we normally do.
We need to get some help.
We need to talk to Mr. Universe.
Now, this is a kooky character.
He is hacker-o-extraordinaire.
That lives in, you know, like some kind of storm cloud
in outer space with a doll.
A sex android.
A sex android.
Thank you.
Well, this looks like a android.
In the end, it's turned very, very helpful to the story,
but just kind of stood there and it's like,
well, she lives a Barbie look.
Really, this is what Barbies would really look like
if they were lifeless.
Yeah, so Mr. Universe is definitely an interesting character.
Yeah.
So we move forward from there and they throw river
into basically the storage area for the food.
Locks her down.
She manages to break out and gets to the bridge.
And when she gets there, she's not even looking.
She's just typing away one handed on the screen as Malwalks in.
And she just creep before he even brings his gun up
and there's a whole conversation that breaks out here
that's well worth listening to where he says,
look, I told them all that I think you're a person.
But the operative says, you're not.
You're just dangerous.
You're a risk.
I don't think that's true.
That's taking my entire life screw on this.
Yeah.
Now they sit there and they pan in on the screen
and she looks back Miranda.
Well, we come to find out that Miranda is a planet
that doesn't exist in any record.
The only thing is Kaylee can vaguely remember,
mention that they were looking for settlers to go there
and help set up the colony.
That's the only thing anyone knows about it.
But sadly, things went ape shit there
where they try to create a utopia.
We'll get there.
Yeah.
They go to Haven because Mal wants the advice of one person.
The person he always wants advice from Shepard Book.
But they get there and the place has been demolished.
Everyone's been shot.
Only survivor barely is Shepard.
And kind of one of the funny things that happens here
is with Shepard Stein saying what he did,
Mal goes, it should have been me.
And Shepard looks up at him and says,
Yeah, it should have.
He the fuck crossed my mind.
Well, they go on from there and Mal comes out.
He is pissed, he's hot.
He throws down a coil rope,
string up five or six of these bodies.
I want it on the nose of the ship.
I want you and you to mount this gun
which is a World War II German flat cannon.
And mount it to the top of the ship.
And they all start, you know, we can't do this.
You know, you aren't thinking about doing a suicidal run
through reverse space to get to this planet.
And he's like, look, I plan to get there.
There's information there.
They don't want out.
We're getting it.
So anyone who is the next word I hear out at anyone's mouth
that is not helping me or saying their goodbyes,
I shoot.
Yeah.
Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
Oh, yeah.
So now they're, you know, the next scene we see,
you know, skeletons, scorch skeletons,
strap to the front of the ship.
Yeah, but the rope still holds.
Yeah, that's kind of one of those, what?
I don't see anything.
I don't see anything.
And they fly through the reverse space
and everyone's on edge and they're twitching
at every single thing but they make it through fine.
And get to Miranda where they land.
And here's where the whole crux of everything comes out.
We're not even going to explain to you what happened
because that would just blow a major plot point
if we tell you what happened.
Yeah, that would be nice.
I want to make them square up to watch the movie.
Yeah.
But we'll go back to, they leave with the information
they came for and they're flying back
through reverse space.
And so and wash are in the cabin
and they're talking to the captain.
But you're not quite sure where he is because, you know,
you can tell it's, you know, over the intercom system
or, you know, something like that.
And, you know, the communication for the captain
is, are we almost out?
Well, there's one ship that's starting to come up
and it looks like it's got these big scissor kind of things
meant for cutting a ship in space in half.
Well, all of a sudden, you hear the captain yell,
now, they've got the gun mounted on top of the ship.
They swing it over directly at the ship
and this is where I call bullshit.
I don't know that much about ballistic weapons
but I'm pretty sure most of them need atmosphere of some nature
to work.
True.
They blow up a revership and then just kick it into overdrive.
So they need air in the fire for the air
because the fire cannot really exist.
It's such an atmosphere.
But they just haul ass out of there.
And they are, you know, all of a sudden,
all the engine runs every revership,
fires up and gives pursuit.
They all start hunting down there.
You know, you just want to be in the beans nest.
All of these want to come at you.
Yep.
So, you know, they're...
Now, the next scene we talk about really
is we see all these alliance ships
between the ion...
ion cloud and the planet that Mr. Universe is on.
And they're all just lined up
and here comes Surinity out of the cloud.
And the operatives like, you know,
Crazy Bastard isn't even changing course.
And, you know, just smug and arrogant that they're...
Yeah.
They just come out from it's little leadership
then without further ado,
every living ship that had all...
Every gore-am revership busts out of the ion cloud.
Oh, I was poom.
And he just starts, oh my god.
Aim for the revers.
Every god on the revers.
God, why won't someone fire?
I know.
And he runs off the deck.
And the whole time,
he's just sitting there flying.
He's just saying,
I am a, you know,
I am a leaf on the wind.
Watch how I fly.
Exactly.
I'm a leaf on the wind.
Watch how I fly.
And I've got to say, you know,
whereas earlier was one of the best chase scenes I've ever seen.
This has got to be one of the best flight scenes I have ever seen
of a ship zipping through
a massive outer space firefight.
And to make it even better,
this is cargo ship.
This thing has no weapons,
except for the one thing on top of it.
And that's not even a permanent part of it.
Yeah.
So that's absolutely hysterical to me.
Yeah.
So.
They break through the atmosphere
and they get hit with an EMP pulse.
And this is where shit starts to go sideways.
But as they're, you know,
they lose all power and they're falling.
And this is where I've got to give Jane credit.
Jane is normally one of these bastards
who's all about me, me, me, me, me, me.
Me first.
Screw y'all.
Yeah.
And instead, he pulls off.
Go looks at every person on that helmet system.
Well, except for the people who are up in the cockpit.
Yeah.
Everyone who's not in the cockpit,
goes around and checks or seatbelts, checks or bells.
Make sure to latch down.
Yep.
Which is just an incredible scene to see out of Jane of all people.
Huh?
And they manage to land.
If you want to call it a landing.
It would be more like, you know,
trying to put a Boeing 747 into the Hudson River.
No, I think it's more like a lion's of a grape on a highway.
No, there's a reason I talk about the Boeing 747
and the Hudson River.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, the story.
New story where the pilot lands.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, they land in all the sudden.
Wham!
Something pierces through the cockpit, killing walls.
And you realize really quickly the reavers are in there too.
So they run, you know, they get off the ship
and they find a place where they can mount a good defense.
You know, and Zoe tells the captain, go, do it, you know.
It's more important to get this.
We'll hold them off while you get the information out.
And now the one of the last things we'll talk about
before we go, before we wrap up for the day,
is Simon and Kaylee start talking.
And Simon's like, you know, I'm, you know,
I spent so much time, you know, worrying about River on that ship.
You know, putting her my first priority,
I never got to, you know, anything I wanted,
like being with you.
And she kind of, you mean like sex?
Sex?
Sex?
It looks up, I mean to be saying.
And she's like, screw this, I've got to be living!
I know!
Now, one thing she said earlier that we've complete left out
is, at one point, she actually looks up and says,
I haven't had nothing near my nether regions
that weren't run on batteries for a year.
The captain's like, I don't need to be knowing that.
And James, like, I could be using to hear a little more of this.
So, at this point, I think we're going to pretty much wrap up
because we're at the, you know, coming towards the last little bit.
And we don't want to, we don't like to spoil the ending.
The rest of it, eh.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, any final thoughts on this movie as a whole?
Um, movie I thought was entertaining.
It kept me occupied.
Most of it, bad, bad, bad, bad case of A to D.
So, about 90 to 75% of the time I was actually focused.
Which is good.
Now, I've got to say,
this movie is a sci-fi of Western.
In fact, some of the shots are actually shot with a shaky cam.
And by shaky cam, I mean, they aren't mounted
so everything's 100% perfect, crystal clear,
seeing how it's all going.
The camera shakes.
And this is very reminiscent of the old sci-fi,
or the old Westerns, how they would do it.
Yeah.
You know, it's a very unique story you have going on here.
And there's very interesting crosses of culture going on
where every time someone's swearing, they break out into Chinese.
You'll have to watch the series to understand the wise of that people.
Now, I paid $9 for this movie.
Brand new.
And that seems to still be the relative going price.
Now, out of $9, what do you think this movie
was worth to you, Dragon Sangel?
That's a really hard call.
I give it props that kept my attention span most of the time.
So I can definitely see it to be above a six.
But as for the funny parts of the movie,
they just made me laugh for no apparent reason.
I can also like to give it like an 850.
I've seen better movies, but I'd like to give it an 850,
considering all that was in it.
Yep.
I have to give this one an 875.
I'm knocking it a quarter out of the $9 that I paid for it
for the DVD menus itself.
Because you get in the opening menu,
it's really nice, well animated,
but any sub menu you go to is very static, very boring.
It's one of those, it's that little touch that they left out
at the end that why.
You have something that's so good up to this point
and you just screw it up right then and there.
Egg second.
All right.
Well, everyone, I think that pretty much wraps up the show.
I would like to remind you that we now have a store up on the site
where you can purchase any one of the movies
we have purchased previously.
So, any last words?
Enough.
None.
Nine.
Yet, EA.
Oh, otherwise I'd say no wind.
All right, folks.
Well, thank you for listening.
Stay subscribed and we'll be back with more soon.
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