Went to my uncles cabin in the woods for a few days to relax, he's got the box set of the show and decided to give it a rewatch, was a pretty big fan in college. Got through like 3 episodes and shut it off.
Yes, Whedon is a creepy and maybe knowing that affecting my judgment, but honestly does feel like I'm noticing things my younger brain didn't. A lot of the dialog seems overwritten, some of the "quirky" shit the characters do comes off more obnoxious than endearing, also the story is giving me weird AnCap vibes. I mean yeah the Alliance clearly is pretty evil but we never get much explanation as to what the Brown Coats political program is, why did they want to succeed? Them being confederate coded sure as shit doesn't help.
Also, it almost leans TOO much into the whole western asethic sometimes, to the point I find it unbelievable. Okay, sure, humanity hastily colonized some planets and now some have regressed into SciFi Deadwood, I can dig that. But like, people on horses with cowboy hats seems a bit too comic for me.
Idk, just some random observations.
Edit: oh yeah and the intro song fucking sucks. That was something I thought even back when I liked the show.
my favorite part is how everyone speaks chinese patois/pidgin and chinese writing is everywhere but i can't think of a single asian character
For some reason I thought Summer Glau was part Asian but I just looked it up and no she's white. Weird cuz her character and her brother have an East Asian sounding last name so I assumed their character were supposed to be of mixed Asian heritage.
WEIRD completely white wtf
According to Wikipedia
Now that I think about it, Simon is a book smart nerd who's socially awkward and physically weak. River is a naive little girl who turns out to be a ninja Kung Fu master.
Both characters are written like lazy stereotypes of Asian people.
Speaks Chinese is a strong term for the pronunciation going on there. Couldn't even get a language coach.
I know there are other good reasons to have non-horseshit cultural representation in shows, but if I'm enjoying something and they do this, all's they gotta do is tell me it's in the distant future and I can completely ignore how bad it is because of how much languages and especially lingos change over time
That would be fine if they didn't also have extras yelling out in perfect cantonese.
I assume it's because the Space KKKrakers genocided the Chinese but kept parts of the language, like how the US still has Native American place names.
Either that or the Chinese part of the system is the nice part and Chinese people wouldn't be caught dead visiting the shitty American part the show takes place in.
The Chinese developed hyperspace travel and made the morally correct decision to leave the
s behind.
Almost what the fascist clans did in the Battletech universe. Just said fuck to the space libs and peaced out into deep space.
Uh... that's not how it went down in the battletech universe.
I can explain more when I get home, as the clans themselves are a hot mess when talking about the writing.
Apparently they were originally planning to cast an Asian actress as Kaylee but they changed their mind lmao