the differences were all cosmetic -- fx, music, slightly better look and feel.

i found wash's death particular cheap. joss does that sometimes -- kills a character kind of offhandedly because SHOCKING DEATH HAPPENS. but much of the time, it's just cheap. (wash: cheap. jennie calendar: not cheap. just for example)

I think part of it was how abrubtly Wash died. From the spoilers I saw, I didn't know exactly who was going to die, and by the time we had two confirmed deaths, I really wasn't sure how many people would die, which did help add to the drama.

I think the other thing that helps the audience feel more grief for Wash was that we get to see his wife trying to deal with the death, which adds a little more weight to it.

Personally, I think I prefer Book as a character, but I was still pretty choked up at the end.

For me, Wash's death was more shocking because it was so sudden and out of the blue. At least with Book, we had a couple minutes' warning as we saw the devastation of Haven, and he got in a few final lines as he was passing.

Also, I just liked Wash as a character a lot more. Although I will lament not being able to find out more about Book's background, and I didn't dislike Book in the slightest, I just had a greater character love for Wash. I think it was the dinosaurs that did it. :)

Book's death was a disappointment, especially since it left unanswered questions about his past, but at the same time you could see where his death was important to the plot to make it absolutely clear the seriousness of the situation they were in. Plus, I don't think he was nearly as well loved by fans as Wash.

Wash's death on the other hand felt really unfair, but I understand (not being a big fan of his other works) that this is typical Joss. My friend curgoth wrote the best mini-review, IMHO, and it made me sniffle.. I shall quote:

Audience: JOSS! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Joss: Ha ha! Mine is an evil laugh!

I felt, and have heard other echo, that Wash barely had enough screen time for the audience to truly understand how deep that betrayal goes, and that's the one part I worry will lose the non-fan audience a bit.

And I didn't see the preview, so I can't answer anything else.

In my no-spoilers review, I noted that I wished Book's actor had gotten more screen time, and didn't even mention Wash. Translated out of no-spoiler-land, another way to say that is, "Fuck, they killed Shepard Book! I liked him!"

So I'm that reviewer you're looking for, but since I didn't want to say anything about who was biting it, it's heavily obscured.

Also, while I did not see the workprint previews, I'm told no, there weren't any real scene or story changes: just more complete SFX and music.

And oh yeah, re: differences between final print and previews... the main differences I noticed were the addition of the credits and a lot more music. I didn't actually notice much in the way of added effects.

It's possible that some of the CGI might have been missing, but if it was, I didn't notice it! So it had to have been something small at most. Maybe control panel displays or something. I dunno!

Of course, it could also be argued that all my attention was on Nathan Fillion, so I could have just been heavily distracted. ;)

The reason noone will cop to: Book is older, and less sexy.

Personally, I was much more upset by Book's death. Both, however, made perfect sense, in the context of the story. This is the bigest objection I've heard, "It didn't make any plot sense," which is foolish.

First, what did Zoe say at the beginning og the movie? "A hero is someone who gets other people killed." For Mal to really be a hero, he had to get other people killed. Second, Wash had a "moment," something no one else really got. He was the only person who could do what he did, and he did it beautifully. After that, he no longer served a purpose. Third, Alan Tudyk is really, really hard to schedule around. Almost as hard as Ron Glass, which is a meta-reason both these characters died: it will make a sequal easier to schedule. Fourth, it made the last half hour of the movie really, really tense. With Wash dead, all of a sudden, every rule was out the window. Anyone could die at any time. As a result, those of us who are sci-fi-movie jaded were jolted each and every time another character was threatened. If Wash hadn't died, Zoe taking the axe to the back, Kaylee taking the dart to the neck and Simon being shot wouldn't have had the same impact.

I loved that Wash died, from a creative standpoint.

I also think that Wash and Book dying were both part of Mal's arc. To complete his transition to Hero, Mal had to lose everything. First his father figure, Book. Then his fallback places, "anyone who's sheltered us after a job." Then his ship. Then his crew (who he had to leave behind). In the end, it was Hero vs. Nameless Adversary, in grand literary tradition. For me, this made Mal more of a Hero than he had been in the series. (I capitalize Hero because I mean it in the classic sense, rather than "heroic person," I mean "character with a grand destiny.")

(And now, I'm going to snag this comment and expand it for my own post on the subject...)

What I couldn't say in my review of forever ago was that they killed off my favorite character and my least favorite character in the series (which I was barely lukewarm on). So yeah, I cared more about Book's death (I like Ron Glass as an actor in general), but I think Wash's just came out of the blue and was meant to shock people,which gets a bigger reaction. Also, more people seem to like Wash because he is the big voice for the Joss Whedon cute remark at appropriate time thing. I found him to be the Whedonest character (?) on the show, which is why I never liked him, but I suspect why a lot of people did.

Yeah, I'm a big West Wing fan, so it's not the general idea of stylized dialogue I don't like. I love old "snappy dialogue" movies too.

But yes, I tend to believe dialogue like Whedon's (which I trace back to the Giffen/DeMatties JLI of the late 80s/early 90s in a lot of ways and I suspect he'd agree with me) reads a lot better to me than it sounds. There's a big difference between reading and hearing, as I'm sure you'd agree.