Film: Serenity

[Frustration]

But everyone knows the Confederates were monsters and the Unionites were saints, because slavery. Slavery!

[Madner Kami]

The only difference between ''general'' and ''war criminal'' is the winner.

In the US, we had a Civil War with the losing side top General has never been called a war criminal. General Lee.

But there could be an argument made about the winning side with the Union Army about war crimes.

You're kidding, right?

[Makeshift Python]

3) Killing Wash? No. Just no. And it was such a Tasha Yar death as well. No meaning to it, no heroism. He just dies and the film moves on save for the bit with the dinosaurs.

No heroism? He got the crew to the signal they needed to get to just before dying. Without his skills, they would have never made it.

There would only be no meaning or heroism if Mal didn't broadcast the signal. He would have died for nothing. But that's not how it played out.

[Riedquat]

3) Killing Wash? No. Just no. And it was such a Tasha Yar death as well. No meaning to it, no heroism. He just dies and the film moves on save for the bit with the dinosaurs.

No heroism? He got the crew to the signal they needed to get to just before dying. Without his skills, they would have never made it.

There would only be no meaning or heroism if Mal didn't broadcast the signal. He would have died for nothing. But that's not how it played out.

No heroism in the actual death. It was just random and out of nowhere. It also didn't influence the plot in any way.

[Madner Kami]

3) Killing Wash? No. Just no. And it was such a Tasha Yar death as well. No meaning to it, no heroism. He just dies and the film moves on save for the bit with the dinosaurs.

No heroism? He got the crew to the signal they needed to get to just before dying. Without his skills, they would have never made it.

There would only be no meaning or heroism if Mal didn't broadcast the signal. He would have died for nothing. But that's not how it played out.

Vash didn't die saving the crew. Vash died specifically after the crash landing was done, by being impaled out of nowhere. It's just a petty kill because the actor couldn't comit to a sequel and not a heroic "My Life for your Life!".

[Frustration]

Actual death is usually sudden, unexpected, and meaningless. It's a mark of how good the writing is that they can make drama out of realistic events rather than 'dramatic' ones.

[Fianna]

It absolutely counts as a heroic sacrifice. Everything from the moment they drew the Reavers attention to when they broadcast the signal was all one mission, a mission where they knew going in that tons of people would be shooting at them the entire time. Anyone who dies in the course of that effort, dies doing something heroic.

What you may be getting at is that Wash's death didn't in some way advance their heroic goals - if they'd been sitting a little to the side and hadn't been impaled, the rest of the movie could have continued unchanged. But that seems like a very narrow definition of heroic sacrifice.

Like, if a firefighter carries someone out of a burning building, but on their way out something inside explodes and the blast kills them (but not the person they rescued) I would absolutely count that as a heroic death, even though the firefighter's death wasn't strictly necessary to save that other person.

[Madner Kami]

No. The firefighter goes in, saves the people, sits down to take a breather and suddenly gets struck by lightning. That is a more appropriate comparison.

Or wait, it was a Reaver spear, wasn't it? Well, the firefighter sits down on a fire-truck to take a breather and something in the house explodes, sending debries flying and gets impaled by a broom. That's Final Destination, not a heroic death.

[Fianna]

You're acting like the entire mission for Wash was simply "get down to the surface", and that once they did, their job was done. That's not the case. The mission was to broadcast the Miranda message across the system - landing on the surface of that moon was simply one step in completing that mission. When Wash died, they were still in the middle of their heroic endeavor.

[Riedquat]

You're acting like the entire mission for Wash was simply "get down to the surface", and that once they did, their job was done. That's not the case. The mission was to broadcast the Miranda message across the system - landing on the surface of that moon was simply one step in completing that mission. When Wash died, they were still in the middle of their heroic endeavor.

But the manner of his death, the impact of it, would've been the same if he hadn't died then but tripped over his shoelaces and hit his head getting back on board after everything had settled down. He just randomly got killed whilst things were still happening. It meant less than Tasha Yar's. You need more than "happened to die whilst taking part" for a death to be heroic. See Book - and that happened off screen (and for the same off-screen reasons). His was portrayed as the cost for helping Mal and crew, one he'd have known about and accepted, nothing random, and it influenced the characters and their decisions and actions afterwards.