Firefly, Solaris and Star Wars AotC

Cafe Society
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I’ve had three thoughts relating to SF movies and such that I wanted to post to this board, but none are substantive enough to be worth a thread of their own, so I’ve created a cluster thread.

Firefly: In a discussion of short-lived TV series, many people said Firefly was great. It wasn’t. Oh, it was better than most TV series, but that’s hardly high praise. It’s just short of an insult, in fact. I found Firefly to be dull – a bunch of losers rattling around in a galactic backwater getting in scrapes. When I first heard the buzz about the series, I thought it might be kind of like Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League stories, or Andre Norton’s Sargasso in Space, which were exciting stories. All three dealt with traders/smugglers trying to eke out a living in an interstellar trade society, but the Polesotechnic League stories and Sargasso both vividly conveyed the sense of excitement involved in that kind of lifestyle – the sense that you might strike it rich at any moment, get killed at any moment, or encounter something so fucking alien you wouldn’t be able to look at it and remain sane (the literal truth in Sargasso).

Firefly just never seemd to connect in that respect. The usual boring garbage about a repressive interstellar society and the brave band of outlaws … never heard THAT before …

Why the fuck did they redo Solaris? It was boring when the Soviets did it, it was boring when Clooney did it – what the hell else did they think was gonna happen. So many shots of people staring into space – I was just dying to see a Monty Python foot come down and crush them. There are so many much better SF properties out there they could have made with that money – Sargasso of Space for one, or a Polesotechnic league story, or Ringworld, or The Looking Glass War, or The Forever War, or On Stranger Tides or The Light of Other Days or … most of the really Good Shit written since the fifties. But they hadda do Solaris.

I know why they did it, though. Solaris isn’t really SF. It’s just a story about a man longing for his dead wife. Solaris is just a big magic bean. Piece of crap, too.

Did any of the people who didn’t like AotC actually look at it? You know, with their EYES? It’s been on cable lately and DAMN! It is so fucking good to look at it. It’s not just eye candy, for someone who lives SF, it’s soul candy. I know Lucas doesn’t write the most natural dialogue in the world, but his stories trundle right along and his characters are likable. Is there some strange planet sending over folks who think Solaris is Good and AotC is bad, ultimately planning to replace real humans completely?

Jeebus.

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Some time ago, in my more optimistic youth, I would have told you that, yes there is, and you should bow down to your future masters. However, I am now older, wiser and more bitter. We have kindly tried to raise the intellectual level of the inhabitants of this dim planet. Unfortunately, they seem content with watching purty pictures with no regard for introspection, thought, or even pathos. They have proven immune, resistant, to all our profoundest artforms. I fear. I fear the great dumb din, annihilator of things slow and simple and true. This is how I feel.

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Firefly, the biggest sin of it being canceled was the untapped potential. The characters were all murky with unclear loyalties and desires. None of their backstories were totally revealed and they weren’t your typical “this guy is career military for 15 years so the most exciting thing he ever did was a prank in the academy” And I loved the captain…finally a dark cynical captain that COMMANDED those below him instead of politely suggesting (like every start trek captain and heck even the B5 captains.) All that said I think the plots mostly sucked. Gee I wonder what’s going to go wrong with the heist this time causing a shootout where nobody dies in a town that looks like the old west Yawn I believe it would have grown out of this if it had become successful enough to earn some creative licence. And how can you watch “Objects in Space” Without weeping for the potential being wasted. (and I LOVE the fact she really didn’t ‘melt into the ship’ like every other psychic experiment in any other sci/fi show would have)

Solaris? I’ll grant you that one. What a pretentious boring film. I read the story once but I barely remember it anyway.

AofC? Are you joking? Boring. Stupid. Smack my forehead with my palm painful. Awkward bad acting? Check. Awkward unbelievable romance? Check. Terribly drawn out action sequences that drew me out of the movie (especially one near the beginning where he JUMPS onto a little bot thing and lets it drag him around)? Check. Stupid plot? Check. CGI crammed down my throat until I wanted to puke? Check (ok this one is my personal basis I’m not a fan of CGI I’d rather watch the guys in rubber suits in Aliens run around then a CGI creature any day) And I’m not real strong on Star Wars lore but Yoda leading an army strikes me as being against everything he stands for. If he can’t even be consistent with his own characters give me a break.

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I haven’t seen either version of Solaris, so I can’t comment on that. I disagree in the strongest possible terms about Firefly, but since you didn’t really offer specific complaints, I can’t offer specific rebuttals. All I can say, is I found it endlessly entertaining. Funny, exciting, poignant. But I doubt I can change your mind by throwing adjectives at you. Anyway, I can understand not liking Firefly. It was pretty high concept, and there’re always going to be some people who just don’t respond to the concept. Whatever. Different strokes, and all that.

What absolutely boggles my mind is that anyone could watch Attack of the Clones and like it. I know, I know, taste is subjective, everybody likes different stuff, but c’mon! This is hands down the worst movie* I’ve ever seen in a theater. Sure, it looked pretty. And that’s all it had going for it. Let’s start with the writing. It was very badly written. So was Star Wars**, but Star Wars wisely avoided having any scenes that were dependent on dialogue. AotC has those endless romance scenes, which rely entirely on George’s insanely bad dialogue and the non-exsistent chemistry between Anakin and Padme. Any MSTies out there remember Sidehackers? Did the love scenes between these two cardboard cutouts remind you of the love scene from Sidehackers? I can’t be the only one. These scenes are agony to sit through. Agony! And they bring the entire movie to a crashing halt. Worse than Ani’s mom did in the first movie. The pacing for both films is awful. In the first one, the pod race was a neat scene on its own, but it should never have made it past the first draft of the screenplay. It’s like a bad side quest in a video game. “You want my HYPERSPACE PART? Well, to get it, you’ll have to win an arbitrary contest of my choosing!” <Cue minigame> They might as well have been racing chocobos. And then there’s the acting. <shudder> The less said, the better. Ewan MacGregor was the only actor who showed the faintest hint of talent in AotC. At least Phantom had Liam Neason. Ankin is a puling junior varsity psychopath with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Horsehead Nebula, and Padme is such a dishrag she’s attracted to that. I half expect the third movie to premiere on the Lifetime network. What the hell is likable, or even interesting, about any of these characters, outside of Obi-Wan? And let’s face it, even with him, most of his appeal is carried over from knowing that he grows up to be Alec Guinness.

Sure, it had great special effects. So what? Great special effects are a dime a dozen*** these days. Special effects aren’t enough to impress me anymore. And frankly, technical proficiency aside, none of the F/X in AotC was particularly interesting. PM had those great sea monsters, and the novelty of seeing Jedi fights rendered with modern effects and stunt technology. AotC didn’t have anything that grabbed my attention. The clone trooper assault was pretty good, I guess, although by that point in the movie I was so sick of the whole thing I just wanted it to end, and was no longer properly attentive. The Yoda fight was cool by comparison with the rest of the dreck in the movie. It could have been handled much better, but it since it wasn’t a total catastrophe, that puts it head and shoulders above anything else in this mess. Most of the movie, it’s like watching someone else play a video game. Looks neat for a while, but gets dull real quick.

I think of myself as someone who “lives”**** sf, and lemme tell you, if Attack of the Clones is my soul candy, it’s that kind that has a razor blade in it. Give me sf that places more emphasis on characters, story, and ideas and not so much on pushing the boundaries of computer simulated explosions.

Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.*****

*Well, okay, second worst. I saw Virus in the theater. Remember that movie? No? There’s a reason for that.
** George, what the fuck is a “learner”? The word you’re looking for is “student,” you hack.
***Okay, maybe three billion dimes a dozen.
****Up to a point. I don’t own a Starfleet uniform, or anything.
*****But I’m not. :wink:

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PM wasn’t a video game? But it had a water level and everything…

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If you don’t like the movie that’s your business, but don’t blame it on the novel on which the movie is based. Solaris is good solid SF novel which measures up to any “really Good Shit” by American authors.

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No, actually it was.

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I kinda agree with the OP a bit on Firefly. I watched several episodes, and really, none of them were that interesting or intense. I liked the premise, and agree that had it lasted a little longer, they would have finally hit what they wanted to with it, so I’m sad it never got to that point. Problem is, it never got to that point, so what aired really wasn’t all that genius.

Still, the fact that this guy found Solaris dumb and boring and yet found Attack of the Clones full of substance…WHAT? Okay, sure, Solaris was boring for most, but so was 2001:A Space Oddessy. The thing is, they still had a point and a lot of substance to them. AotC was nothing but another one of Lucas’s CGI masturbation fests, and it was downright disgusting. What does this guy have against building sets? It’s so fucking pathetic when someone touting themselves as the pioneer in CGI technology can’t even get a friggen green screen background to look realistic (best case in point from AotC, the scene where Obi, Yoda, and Mace are walking along having a conversation in this big hallway of pillars…so fucking blatant that this simple set, which could have been built in no time and at minimal cost, was nothing but a cheap add in).
And don’t even get me started on Hadden Christiansen, or whatever his name is. He acted like a friggin’ date rapist! No woman would go for anyone that fucking whiny and pathetic, especially after he just admitted the universes larges pacifist to slaughtering an entire village of people, including women and children. And talk about turning one of the universe’s biggest badass into the universe’s biggest pussy! Admitadely, Anakin could still grow up to be a badass, but did anyone ever think that Darth Vader was this fucking pathetic when he was younger? I know I sure as hell didn’t.

Man, I hope some alien race is sending over replacements, because if the human race is developing into a species that finds movies like AotC cinematic art, we deserve to be replaced.

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You either like the kind of slow story that both movie versions of Solaris (as well as the book) are or you don’t. If you don’t, there’s nothing I can do to convince you of its merits. I agree that Attack of the Clones wasn’t nearly as bad as some have claimed. I don’t understand why its detractors are unable to acknowledge its visual interest, even if they are right about how bad the script is. It’s the opposite of how I feel about the Peter Jackson films of The Lord of the Rings. I don’t understand how the fans of those films are unable to acknowledge what a mess the script was, even if they are right about its visual interest. Peter Jackson can’t adapt a novel to save his life.

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I suppose it depends on what you value in entertainment. I like pretty visuals, cool effects, and thrilling plots, but I like great dialogue and interesting characters more. This is where Firefly blows most science fiction out of the water. Some of the plots weren’t the most original, but the writing was fabulous and the characters were fascinating. There was depth there and stories that you knew might never be fully explained.

OTOH, AotC had the visuals, the fight scenes, etc., but the dialogue and characters were utterly flat and unconvincing. I didn’t care about any of the characters–in fact, due to the poor writing, I actively loathed most of them. And if you can’t make me interested in your characters, why should I become invested in the rest of your movie? Other viewers have a different attitude, and that’s okay, but working in the SF genre is no excuse for slacking on your writing and character devlopment, IMO.

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It does not surprise me at all that a person who didn’t like Firefly, liked AotC. They are complete opposites.

Firefly, IMHO, focused on the characters and dialog being interesting and believable. Yes, the setting is way out there, the individual plots are not breaking new ground, but the people themselves seem very real. They act the way I would expect people to act, they have depth to their character. I LIKE the people, I identify with them, I want to take a ride on the ship, break bread, and hear their stories.

AotC, on the other hand, is all about the setting. They placed a bunch of cardboard cutouts in the Star Wars setting, and wrapped them in a storyline. Keep the visuals pretty, and you’re done. The characters are pathetic, and the dialog is worse. Can you imagine Anakin and Padme sitting at the dinner table, just having a bite to eat? I sure can’t.

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The OP seems to be blaming Firefly for not being a different kind of story, rather than assessing its success as the kind of story it actually is. Not much point in that.

Solaris is slow-moving. So is a painting or sculpture, but if it expresses sufficiently deep thematic elements and/or complexity, I don’t mind looking at it a while. As noted, 2001 is pretty darned slow-moving too, but it’s rightly considered one of the great works of cinematic science fiction. I will grant that you may be looking at your watch before the Russian movie is over; the American version flows a little faster. I recommend Stanislaw Lem’s novel, which expresses deep Eastern European sadness and sentiment.

When I watched Attack of the Clones, I remember thinking, “How can this be so boring when there’s so much activity on the screen?” It didn’t even work for me as eye candy because of the crappy digital image. George Lucas fell in love with digital technology, but it’s nowhere near matching the image quality of good cinematography on film. (In some theatres where the movie was shown with a digital projector, people noted motion blurring and could make out the stars as individual square pixels. Not what you want to see on the big screen.)

Oh yeah, and the script was truly lame. What the hell are R2D2 and C3PO doing in that movie?

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As noted before, AotC looked like a video game. there was a racing sequence, a space chase/fight sequence, and even a jumping puzzle where the hero had to dodge dangerous machinery with split-second timing.

The truely sad and ironic thing is that the most celebrated recent Star Wars video game, “Knights of the Old Republic” had more compelling characters and plot, and even better acting, than the recent movies!

It’s the characters that make or break popular scif-fi. Firefly had 'em in spades. The original trilogy had 'em. LOTR had 'em. AoTC and PM, no. Not at all. I’ll see Episode three, once, to get my geek card punched, but mostly to see that whiny brat get his ass handed to him by Obi Wan.

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Sounds like the inhabitants of this distant planet have a massive problem with Not Getting It. Solaris is one of the most inviting targets for parody I have ever seen, unfortunately, virtually no one has seen it so the referents would go flat for most folks. Sigh.

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[QUOTE=Darkhold]
Firefly, the biggest sin of it being canceled was the untapped potential.[/qoute]

I’ll grant you that. It might have evolved into something interesting.

Yeah, the whole cowboys in space thing revealed a distinct lack of imagination.

[quoteAofC? Are you joking?[/quote]

Not joking. The plot rolled right along, the characters were interesting. The acting was OK, but the dialogue suffered from Lucas’ tin ear for speech. The awkward unbelievable romance – check. Still, the place where the romance occurred was beautifully realized.

As for CGI – I like it – best thing that ever happened to film SF.

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Hyperbolize much? I’ve seen much worse SF films – to name a few, Terminal Virus, Warlords … oh, toss in virtually everything Roger Corman has ever done there. In Big Budget stuff – Minority Report, AI. And I WANTED to like them, I wanted to like them a lot, but Minority Report had the usual Dick problem – after awhile the paranoia just goes flat and you don’t CARE which version of reality is “real.” None of it’s real if you arent’ getting your meds, which was essentially Dick’s problem. And AI was just another tired Pinocchio retread after all the shooting was over, though there was some really startling imagery there.

No, it’s not. It would have bored me. It had a plot that trundled right along. It maintained your interest as you got deeper and deeper into the plot. I’m sure that a certain amount of it had been set up by the previous Star Wars movies – I was very interested in how the Dark Side would take over Annakin’s psyche. I had expected him to have gone over completely to the Dark Side when his mother died, figuring there must have been an enormous amount of guilt associated with leaving her in slavery. I think they coulda managed something a little more heartrending there, but that’s a quibble.

I have already conceded the dull romance scenes and Lucas’ tin ear for dialogue. Doesn’t bother me that much, as the story is mainly action/adventure.

Well, it’s Anakin’s conversion to the dark side that I consider interesting. Having the good guys simply be good is kinda, well, dull. But how does Anakin convert? I figured that the abandonment of his mother to slavery – though hardly Anakin’s choice – would have created great guilt, etc. In short, there’s a REASON for the chip on Anakin’s shoulder, and a good one. The Premiere or whatever who’s actually the Sith lord sees this and works it hard, also working Anakin’s sense that he’s better than the other jedi and should be given more power, responsibility, etc. very hard.

In short, I deny your bad characterization charge. In terms of SF, the characters are really rather well thought out. I concede that the romance between Padme and Anakin could have worked out a lot better – she has been sexually and socially isolated because of her position in society, as has Anakin. Yet they are full of hormones. Instant storybook romance. Frankly I would have preferred something a little more John Norman, but there you go.

This is what I mean by not looking at the film with your eyes. The background effects were spectacular. Every scene on the Imperial capitol – let’s call it Trantor, because that’s what it was – was an amazing spectacle. Many of the shots looked like paintings. Let’s not even get into the amazing battle scenes. The scenes in the diner where Obi Wan is tracing the slug were amazing in how well every detail was rendered. Really, you CAN’T have watched the film with your eyes open and not seen this stuff.

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I can’t remember where I first read it (it may have been here), but the setting for the Padme/Anakin romance scenes were straight out of a “feminine hygeine” commercial. Syrupy-sweet and cloying. That was as clunky as the dialogue in the scene.

Couldn’t disagree more. CGI has it’s uses (it’s great for space battles), but making Yoda all-digital all the time sucked the life right out of him. Yoda was more believeable as a Muppet than he is as a collection of pixels. I mourn the loss of the Yoda from Empire Strikes Back.

I’m not one of the people who thinks Attack of the Clones was a complete failure. I went with fairly low expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s basically a dumb, but fun, piece of fluff entertainment.

However, comparing Firefly and Solaris to Attack of the Clones isn’t fair to any of these pieces. You’re comparing apples and oranges. Or to put it more pertinently, you’re comparing an evening of ballet to a day at the races. The basis for comparison simply isn’t there.

I’m not sure what the point of this “cluster” thread was, but it seems ill-advised from the get-go.

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I see your point, I was comparing apples to oranges there. For the record, I haven’t read Solaris, I was merely saying that rather than redo what was originally a dull move, they could have picked out some much more interesting stories from the ranges of literary novels which haven’t been made into films yet.

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I think the CGI was too spectacular. Special effects shouldn’t draw attention to itself. I kept thinking “wow, cool CGI” which meant I was looking at the movie, not immersed in the story. Granted, some directors use deliberately fake scenes to draw attention to the medium, but I don’t think that was the intent here.

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Why do you care how the imagery gets onscreen so long as it works? The CGI stuff was what MADE the movie for me. Absolutely cool to see other planets and wealthy socieities in the future so well realized. Before CGI, most SF looked so fucking cheap …

Are you an unemployed set designer, or what?

[quote]
And don’t even get me started on Hadden Christiansen, or whatever his name is. He acted like a friggin’ date rapist! No woman would go for anyone that fucking whiny and pathetic, especially after he just admitted the universes larges pacifist to slaughtering an entire village of people, including women and children.[/qoute]

Well, they had just killed his mom. Probably slowly. That was a lifetime of buried guilt unloading on those sand people. I’ll grant you, Lucas could have done a MUCH better job of making Anakin’s feelings clearer at this point. As for Padme, being such a bleeding heart how could she not have taken this opportunity to forgive Anakin and help him overcome the psychic flaw that made commit that massacre? It would surely have rendered him MORE attractive to her. Sealed the deal, as it were. Still, Lucas fucked up the romance at every turn, I’ll concede, and he could have done a much better job with Padme’s character … if he’d done anything at all …

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.