Serenity

[Cail]

Worldwide I believe it broke even, it'll make money on DVD. $40 million is chump change to make a sweeping sci-fi film, so I'd like to believe we'll see another one. From the studio's standpoint it'd make sense to do another one, as the DVD will recruit new fans.

[Cail]

Since we lost the posts, I'll restate this. This is one of the best sci-fi films I've seen, and the TV show is damn good as well.

[Sorus]

[Revenant]

I had absolutely no knowledge of the 2002 Firefly tv series, and when the trailers for a movie called Serenity came out, I thought it was just one of those lousy sf movie that come out every year with not much inside, including marial arts scenes to bring ridiculous action to a void script.

Well, recently I rented the Serenity DVD (at $1 in a club near me, so nothing much to lose except ~ 2hours...) and watched it.

Untouched by neither hype nor proselitizings ( ) nor reputation nor emotional attachment, I came out of it impressed.
Not outstandingly so, but more than enough, so that back home I searched a bit more about it, which is when I found out about the tv series, the mid-season cancelation, the fans' reaction, their various web sites, etc.

So, of course, had to get my hands on the tv series, which I found at some other vid-club.
And offered myself a little Firefly marathon, watching all within two days.

And I loved it.
Not outstandingly so (again), but alot of it very quickly stuck to me, to mind, to heart, and after what I knew was the last episode produced, knowing that there wouldn't be any more left, I felt some feeling of loss... which I guess was much less pain than what the 'original' fans felt in 2002 when the cancellation news came!
I'd have loved to see more, to give time to the story to evolve into what it was destined to be... which came out as the movie.

I did find that they made the main thread, which is River's plight, evolve a bit slowly, and I guess they wanted to build her thread little by little as the series went on... But the consequence of this is that some episodes felt like fillers (which I guess is what Murrin meant also). Not that the fillers were bad — we got to know more about the characters —, but I felt empty-handed if I didn't get one more piece of River's puzzle in each episode.
But that's my problem. And that's the only main negative comment about this series.

[Now: better than Babylon5? Hard to compare. B5 got some time to evolve, got better, but also had a lot of fillers; but when JMS hit the ARC, it was great, hard to beat. The tv movies mostly sucked though, and I'm not at all sad that the big screen movie project has been dumped. The Arc is done JMS, let it go.]

[Cail]

I think that had Firefly been given 5 years, it certainly could've rivalled B5, but as it stands, we'll never know. Which is a shame, because I think that the episodes Out of Gas and The Message are just outstanding, and I'd really like to see more like them.

Totally agree about the B5 movies.

[I'm Murrin]

Watched this for the third time yesterday. Really struck just how good the visuals are.
Disregarding Star Wars (those films have a particular feel to them that seems to set them apart) this is probably the only really impressive sci-fi film I've seen in years.

[Cail]

I've become a complete junky. My daughter and I usually watch an episode a night, and we've probably watched the movie 4 or 5 times so far.

I found the effects in the Star Wars movies to be a bit to obviously digital, while the effects in Serenity look relatively realistic. Stunning that it was done on a $40 million budget.

[Revenant]

Stunning what a little blurring can add to a digital effect

(ok, just kidding... a little)

[Cail]

Absolutely...The blurring, the shaking, and the zooms add a ton of realism to it.

[Cail]

Sorry for the double post, but I just watched it again with my daughter, and we both still love it!

[taraswizard]

Serenity. A smallish local Con, Capricon www.capricon.org/index.php , this weekend and rewatched the BDM as part of their film programing. IT'S STILL GREAT! Something I'd missed during my first viewing,

Spoiler

I'd never seen that the spike that impaled Wash was not wreckage from their landing but a projectile shot at Serenity by the Reavers.

So guess that makes me stupid.

[Revan]

It's out on dvd soon here... I can't wait!

[dANdeLION]

Something I'd missed during my first viewing,

Spoiler

I'd never seen that the spike that impaled Wash was not wreckage from their landing but a projectile shot at Serenity by the Reavers.

So guess that makes me stupid.

Nah, that was just an oversight. Now, if you want to hear something stupid, let me share this gem: After seeing Phantom Menace, a co-worker of mine bemoaned the fact that at the end, Lucas chose NOT to follow the descent of Darth Maul down the shaft, because, as we all know, Luke fell down a shaft just like that one back in Empire Strikes Back, and he managed to survive the fall......ahh, you should have seen his face when I explained to him Maul had been cut in half.....there was this other co-worker who was amazed at how well Gary Sinease could walk in Apollo 13.....oh, God, this one still makes me cry from laughing.....you see, he saw Sinease in Forrest Gump, and was convinced Gary was actually missing his legs!

[Revan]

Something I'd missed during my first viewing,

Spoiler

I'd never seen that the spike that impaled Wash was not wreckage from their landing but a projectile shot at Serenity by the Reavers.

So guess that makes me stupid.

Nah, that was just an oversight. Now, if you want to hear something stupid, let me share this gem: After seeing Phantom Menace, a co-worker of mine bemoaned the fact that at the end, Lucas chose NOT to follow the descent of Darth Maul down the shaft, because, as we all know, Luke fell down a shaft just like that one back in Empire Strikes Back, and he managed to survive the fall......ahh, you should have seen his face when I explained to him Maul had been cut in half.....there was this other co-worker who was amazed at how well Gary Sinease could walk in Apollo 13.....oh, God, this one still makes me cry from laughing.....you see, he saw Sinease in Forrest Gump, and was convinced Gary was actually missing his legs!

I've heard there a certain colleges in America that make you more stupid... hone every aspect of your complete abject intelligence and make you even more deficient and nonsensical... did your friend attend one of these?

[Cail]

Something I'd missed during my first viewing,

Spoiler

I'd never seen that the spike that impaled Wash was not wreckage from their landing but a projectile shot at Serenity by the Reavers.

So guess that makes me stupid.

Nah, that was just an oversight. Now, if you want to hear something stupid, let me share this gem: After seeing Phantom Menace, a co-worker of mine bemoaned the fact that at the end, Lucas chose NOT to follow the descent of Darth Maul down the shaft, because, as we all know, Luke fell down a shaft just like that one back in Empire Strikes Back, and he managed to survive the fall......ahh, you should have seen his face when I explained to him Maul had been cut in half.....there was this other co-worker who was amazed at how well Gary Sinease could walk in Apollo 13.....oh, God, this one still makes me cry from laughing.....you see, he saw Sinease in Forrest Gump, and was convinced Gary was actually missing his legs!

Wow.

As my wife and I left the theater after Titanic, she turned to me and said (I'm not making this up), "So basically, the Titanic sunk because it hit an iceberg?".

At least she can cook.

[dANdeLION]

I've heard there a certain colleges in America that make you more stupid... hone every aspect of your complete abject intelligence and make you even more deficient and nonsensical... did your friend attend one of these?

Nah, Tim could only afford to go to a community college; never Berkley.

[Revenant]

Something I'd missed during my first viewing,

Spoiler

I'd never seen that the spike that impaled Wash was not wreckage from their landing but a projectile shot at Serenity by the Reavers.

So guess that makes me stupid.

Well, I caught on myself a few seconds later.

Spoiler

When Serenity lands/crashes, I still have the impression the vessel faces frontwise, away from where it came from, and since the Reavers come from behind it wasn't readily evident for me what the spikes were, since they punctured from the front. In fact, I'll have to watch it again to see the position of the ship as they leave it.

Maybe there should be a thread about meaningfull details that one only noticed on second or later viewing of a movie.
One that comes to mind is this:

Spoiler

In Spielberg's A.I., I only learned much later -- two or three years actually -- that the filliform aliens in the last part were actually robots that 'evolved' from the ones the humans created. I still have my doubts, still can't shake away the thought that these are the typical Spielbergian e.t.'s (à la"Close Encounters") that find Earth many centuries later in an ice age. But, hey, the 'evolved robots' does add some sense to the movie ending -- although I still find that ending irritably annoying.

[birdandbear]

Having seen Serenity way too many times by now to be considered completely sane, I can state with equanimity that:

Spoiler

if you watch carefully when the ship is crashing, you'll see her port engine get knocked completely off on the wall of the tunnel. This sends her into a slow widdershin spin that finally puts her at rest facing completely backwards from the direction she was going - with the Reavers coming at her head on.

It took me 3 or 4 times to figure out exactly what happened though.

[Revan]

I've heard there a certain colleges in America that make you more stupid... hone every aspect of your complete abject intelligence and make you even more deficient and nonsensical... did your friend attend one of these?

Nah, Tim could only afford to go to a community college; never Berkley.

Having seen Serenity way too many times by now to be considered completely sane, I can state with equanimity that:

Spoiler

if you watch carefully when the ship is crashing, you'll see her port engine get knocked completely off on the wall of the tunnel. This sends her into a slow widdershin spin that finally puts her at rest facing completely backwards from the direction she was going - with the Reavers coming at her head on.

It took me 3 or 4 times to figure out exactly what happened though.

Oh birdy! So good to see you again!

haha, oh birdy, you just shouldn't know that.

[CovenantJr]

Finally, the DVD release. My pre-ordered copy arrived promptly.

My verdict?

Disappointing.

As a film in its own right, Serenity is pretty damn good, but it's approximately a tenth as good as Firefly. Basically, almost everything I love about Firefly has been removed. The only character who actually has a character in Serenity is Mal; all the others suddenly shed the dozen-odd episodes of development they had acquired and become templates. Yuck.

And yes, the western elements were dropped too. Very frustrating.

The first thing that leaped out at me from the very first scene, other than the disconcerting shift to jumpy film camerawork, was the change of colour. The whole interior (in some shots, the exterior too) of the ship has changed colour scheme. Not devastating, perhaps, but a significant enough change to stop the ship feeling like the same ship I spent a series living in.

The second thing that leaped out at me very early on was the acting. I don't know whether it's because they're TV actors performing on a scale they aren't accustomed to, but in most cases the acting is way below the standard of Firefly.

Oh, and consistency. This made me stop the disc and replay the scene a couple of times to make sure these events were really happening. I might not have noticed had I not re-watched the first episode of Firefly yesterday, but as it stands I did notice. Call me a pedant or a perfectionist, but flagrant disregard for internal consistency bugs the hell out of me. And it's something Joss seems to do from time to time.

It happened in Buffy, when Spike specifically said Angel sired him, then it later turned out Dru sired him. And it happened here, when (in the first episode) Simon said (ha) some random rebels agreed to rescue River as long as he financed the attempt, and he could then pick her up on Persephone. But an early scene in Serenity shows Simon performing the rescue himself. No, no, no.

*sigh* As I said earlier, a good enough film taken on its own, but sadly it discarded most of the things that made Firefly great.