I'm finally warming up to the Serenity movie....

Cafe Society
1

last month, i picked up the Firefly movie, “Serenity”, came home, watched it, and was underwhelmed, yes it was a decent movie, excellent production values and special effects, but i just never warmed to the characters (well, aside from Zoe, River and Kaylee, ROWR! :wink: )

since the movie had been hyped up so much here and on the 'Net in general, i had unfairly high expectations (all this gorram "Joss is a genius! dren…) and it utterly failed to meet them, it was an interesting diversion, but not much more than that, certainly not the work i’d expect from a “genius”

so i put it in my DVD rack and figured i’d come back to it later…

the last couple of days i’ve been watching it off-and-on, and…it’s starting to grow on me, i still don’t understand the “Joss is a God and can do no wrong” mindset, he’s a damn sight better than George Lucas (heck, a room full of monkeys could piece together a better, more coherent script than Mr. Lucas, but i digress…), but no genius…

i’m picking up on the little subtleties in interaction between the crewmembers, and i’m actually contemplating renting the series to see what the fuss is all about, to see how it compares to my “Gold Standard” series favorites of Farscape and Battlestar Galactica…

that said, i still think this Joss Whedon idolatry is a little…strange

2

It seems you haven’t watched the series. I was a bit familiar with the characters when I saw the movie, but I was also pretty underwhelmed with the movie. Most notably was my lack of shock at Book and Wash dying- after watching the series a few times and then the movie, those scenes are a lot more moving.

It’s been more or less accepted that Serenity wasn’t particularly special as its own entity. If it were an episode of Firefly, it would have been on the low end of the scale. Do yourself a favro and Netflix the first disc of the series- you’ll get a much better sense of what makes the characters so lovable; quirks and traits that the movie simply didn’t have time to re-introduce.

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It is, but Whedon’s strength is the long form series. The movie is good, and hangs well, but watch the series a few times then watch the movie again. There are two movies: One for people who didn’t watch the series and one for everyone else.

He builds character over the long haul – that’s the genius. (the idolatry is rather strange, I agree, but he is one of the first writers to expressly write a series as an ongoing story, but not a soap. Stories stand alone, some threads continue, characters and relationships are built. Sure, he screws up, and let’s other people screw up for him. He’s not perfect, but he writes great dialogue and characters).

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You know, I’m one of the hardest core buffyheads here, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. You have any cites for Whedon-can-do-no-wrong idolatry?

5

I watched Serenity too aware of the fact that it was basically the second-season-of-Firefly-that-never-was condensed into two hours. Storylines that should have been allowed to play out over several episodes had to be introduced and wrapped up too quickly.

6

It would have been a killer season, wouldn’t it.

>Sigh<

7

I gotta stand with the “Joss ain’t perfect” people. But then again, Joss at his worst is still better than 95% of the dreck out there. Even disasters like Beer Bad and *Seeing Red * (BtVS) or The Train Job (Firefly) have moments of character interaction or snathces of dialogue that lift them above the dross.

Yeah, watch Firefly, at least the pilot and maybe Ariel or Out of Gas, then watch Serenity again. Then join the rest of us in a <sigh.>

8

Train Job is a Disaster? I rather liked it. After Serenity(the pilot), the Train Job finally sold me on the show. I guess because “Serenity” has a tendency to drag at times and feels a bit too long( they have to introduce all the characters, but both times I’ve watched the pilot there are points where I get bored). The Train job flows better and has the Jet Engine kick.

I can see the problem people had with it being shown before the pilot, but that doesn’t detract from the quality of the episode.

9

I saw the movie and really liked it.

Since seeing it, I’ve been watching the TV shows. I’ve watched the first two discs (haven’t met Mr. Universe yet – was he in the show?). I plan on watching the movie again after finishing the show.

That’s probably actually a nice way to do it because you can watch the movie without any preconceived notions. I watched the movie with ZERO and I do mean ZERO knowledge of the show beyond “it happens in outer space”. I couldn’t have told you one more thing about it.

Given that, watching the movie. . .I found all of the characters distinct and fairly well-developed. They didn’t all have an excessive number of lines, but there was definitely a distinct sense of character to all of them.

The movie was well-paced and well-structured, filling in important back-story details with pretty good action, good F/X, and a steady plot.

The quality of the dialogue didn’t suffer. Music is terrific.

It’s actually too bad that fans would be bogged down with thoughts of “this should have been a whole season” because Serenity stands alone as a very good movie.

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For those of you who can stand to have something you love poked at until it kind of falls apart, there’s a recap of Serenity up at Television Without Pity, as well as (in their archives) a full set of recaps for the series.

One of the key points to the recap of the movie that struck a chord with me was that in order to make the movie keep up the pace, all the characters got boiled down to their main characteristic, whereas in the series, they were whole people who, by the way, also had this main characteristic. So, what you’re seeing in the movie are literally caricatures of the actual characters… and Joss’s work is all about the characters.

Oh, and skinny girls beating the crap out of things.

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A lot of it is tongue-in-cheek but there is definitely a certain fanatacism in the Whedon camp that turns even me, a fellow Whedon fan and former/quasi-Trekkie, off and resulted in at least one Pit thread on the topic, I believe. Being born in '82, I’m not old enough to actually know firsthand but the idolatry surrounding him seems much like I imagine the rabidity of Trekkies in the Seventies and Eighties was.

No. He was a hamfisted plot device invented solely for the movie.

12

I LOVE Beer Bad! Not that I think Whedon can do no wrong, that episode just had me in stitches. Yeah, I’m a philistine.

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I knew very little about Firefly before seeing Serenity, which I saw just last night - and really enjoyed the movie. Spent an hour or so this afternoon perusing all of the Wikipedia entries for the movie and the characters, and definitely want to see the TV shows now. I guess I’m hooked.

14

Seems like that to me as well. I did like Firefly when it was on (though I didn’t see all the episodes, my best friend HATED it, and I didn’t own a DVR at the time, so I caught half of them), and I was sad to see it go off the air (another brilliant decision by Fox :rolleyes: ), but all this hype around it has really turned me off.

I’m sure its similar to those that don’t think “Arrested Development” is the show of Gods (which I do) though.

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In the novelization of Serenity, Mr. Universe’s story is fleshed out, and he’s a much more interesting character.

He and Wash attended pilot school together. Wash perpetually placed second in the class, and finally learned that Mr. Universe always got the top spots by hacking into the flight simulators and reprogramming them.

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So . . . no examples; just a subjective impression.

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That was one thing Firefly had going for it that Serenity didn’t. River wasn’t the focus all the time, and when she was she wasn’t the generic supergirl she was in the movie. Whedon is cheerfully upfront about enjoying his continual revisits of the teenaged supergirl theme but I find it pretty boring and was happy that the series (which I saw after the trailers but before the movie) seemed to have a lot more depth planned for River than psychic martial arts badass.

Also that the main character is definately Mal, who is a much cooler cat.

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I bought the series after seeing the film (which I enjoyed immensely) and frankly, I got bored of it. I’ve still got a least the last DVD to go, and there were two episodes before that that I largely skipped.

19

Though Mal really is the main character in the movie, too. The story is about him finding something he can believe in, since his faith in God is gone.

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I think I would find it amusing to encounter people who worship Joss Whedon, since I’m pretty sure he’s an atheist. Regardless, I think there’s little disputing how good a writer he is. I haven’t seen Firefly or Serenity yet, but as I’ve seen most of Buffy and a lot of Angel, I don’t imagine I’ll be disappointed.

Unless, of course, I suddenly hear everyone and their dog verbally fellating Joss and the Firefly-verse to the point of overhyping.