Bloopers and Shout-outs

 

List of Serenity Bloopers, Inconsistencies with Firefly, and Shout-outs

MOVIE SPOILER WARNING!  IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN SERENITY, DO NOT READ FURTHER!  GO SEE THE MOVIE FIRST...DO IT NOW!  :)

Bloopers:

• In the classroom scene when the student asks "why were the independents even fighting us?" and we are seeing the entire classroom (from behind and to the left of the teacher), there is no sign of River, even as the camera pans slightly before the next cut.  This cannot be explained by her desk being far enough behind the others, because this shot is quite wide and later shots establish how close she is to the other students (when River is tapping on the computer tablet we see how close she is to the student in front of her -- the back of his feet are visible immediately above her tablet; and right after River says "we meddle" and the camera zooms out to show the reaction of nearby students, we can see how close her desk is to the others') [First reported by Shiny]
• The novelization repeatedly mentions that the operative wears eyeglasses.  Apparently, Joss decided to change this too late for the novelization author Keith R.A. DeCandido to make a change in the book.  However, if you look carefully during the scene when the operative is watching the security hologram, you can see his eyeglasses sitting on the desk. [First reported by Shiny]
• Down in the vault during the trading station heist, you can see part of the studio briefly on the edge of the screen, since the vault stage actually only has three walls (note I haven't been able to really make this out myself).  [First reported by Joss in his DVD commentary]
• After River senses the Reavers and Mal is ordering the guard to get everyone into the vault, Jayne passes behind Mal in the same direction twice within 3 seconds.  [First reported by Joss in his DVD commentary]
• Why does Wash ask Simon to "open her up" (for the 'barnswallow') if you can open the cargo bay doors from the bridge (established in OoG) [First reported by Shiny]
  
• When Mal goes off on his "and a powerful need to eat" rant to Zoe, you don't see any of the hallway wall or the hallway lights behind Mal, since this was a re-shoot in front of a black curtain.  [First reported by Joss in his DVD commentary]
• When Mal and Inara escape from the Companion Training House in the shuttle, Mal has a grenade in his hand, for no reason (well, the reason is he used the dummy grenade to scare off the alliance guards around the shuttle in a scene that was cut from the final version of the movie).  [First reported by Shiny]
  
• When Mal finds Book dying on Haven, the shephard grasps Mal's head, leaving a bloody print on his brow/forehead.  The blood disappears in one frame shortly thereafter but re-appears when he's on the bridge talking to the Operative on the vidphone. [First reported by Shiny]
• The "Research and Rescue" shuttle that crashed landed on Miranda left no trail of skid or burn marks on the ground.  [First reported by Joss in his DVD commentary]
• Maybe not exactly a blooper, but after leaving Miranda, how the heck does Mal hang on much less survive the acceleration to full burn while sitting in the cannon on the outside of the ship???
  
• In the final confrontation with the Reavers, Inara's bow was replaced with a futuristic-looking 'bolt caster' gun, using CGI.  However, in several of the quick flashes back and forth in the fighting, you still see the original bow. [First reported by Shiny]
• The operative told his men to "destroy it all", yet almost all of the monitors in Mr. Universe's "office" displayed the recording from Miranda when Mal transmitted it.  [First reported by Shiny]
  
• When the blast doors open revealing River standing over the bodies of the dead Reavers axe in hand, who opened them? [First reported by hlgem]
  

Inconsistencies with Firefly:

• In Serenity, Simon learns River is a psychic before he rescues her, but in Firefly, he was as surprised as everyone else when Mal suggests she is psychic in Objects in Space [First reported by Eric Johanson]
• We see Simon personally rescuing River in Serenity, while in Firefly he implies that he just paid others to get River out. [First reported by ???]
• In Serenity (the movie), Mal's browncoat no longer has the patch on the arm where one of Patience's goons shot him in Serenity (the pilot). [First reported by Shiny]
• In Serenity, when the Operative pulls up Mal's war record, it lists him as a Captain, but in Firefly it was established that Mal was a Sargeant in the war. [First reported by ???]

Shout-outs:

• Just before his "this is what I do, darlin" exchange with River, Mal whips out his gun and stares down the barrel, pointed at the camera, much in the same way he does in the teaser to Heart of Gold.  [First reported by Shiny]
• There's a spiral parasol similar to the one Kaylee has in the pilot episode that you can see in the crowd as Kaylee leaves the ship on Beaumonde after telling Simon not to fly in anything with a Capasan 38 engine.  [First reported by Shiny]
• When being triggered in the Maidenhead brings up horrifying secret memories, River tells Simon to "Put a bullet to me. Bullet in the brainpan, squish".  In Bushwhacked, Mal tells the Feds (about the fella gone mad from watching the Reavers) that "Charity'd be putting a bullet in his brainpan" [First reported by circusfreaketh]
  
• When Mal is talking to Inara over the vidphone, you can see a scar where Crow stabbed him in The Train Job. [First reported by ???]
• One of the monitors on Mr Universe's wall 'o screens played the Blue Sun commercial (girl smiling, holding can, played by Kelly who was the assistant to Firefly producer Gareth Davies), that we saw in Ariel and The Message. [First reported by Mutt999]
• On Miranda, the crashed research ship was labeled C57-D. This happens to be the name of the ship from the classic "Forbidden Planet". Great double reference - Miranda as the forbidden planet and a shout out to a sci fi classic Forbidden Planet (which itself was a reworking of Shakespeare's The Tempest, whose main female character incidentally is named Miranda, who utters the famous line about the "Brave New World," and the whole project on Miranda in "Serenity" is very reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World.") [Reported by genebatl, theAlmanac, and greenarro2]
• After Serenity comes through the ion cloud above Mr. Universe's planet, look down and to the left of the ship. right when the Reavers come through you can see the same "Trans-U" Reaver ship that followed Serenity onto whitefall in the original pilot.  Not just the same type of ship, the EXACT SAME SHIP.  You can tell it's the same because the magnetic grappler on the left side of the ship is intact, while the right side is completely gone, just like it was in the pilot. [First reported by Chad]
  
• Simon asks for adrenaline for his gut wound, much like Mal used when he was shot in the gut in Out of Gas.   [First reported by Shiny]
• Zoe wears a slinky dress to the funeral, calling back to when Wash wanted to buy Zoe a slinky dress in Shindig. [First reported by ???]
• In the extended Mal/Operative final conversation deleted scene, Mal telling the Operative "you still standing there when that engine starts, you never will find out" calls back to Mal kicking Crow into the engine in The Train Job.  [First reported by Shiny]
  

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