A couple things from me.
First of all, what was with Wash’s leather/plastic harness thing? It seemed so weird and out of place.
Second Inara’s bow fit in with their whole Zen/Shinto/GenericEastern Companion philosophy. Much more appropriate for her than a gun, IMO.
Third - What were Book’s last two words? Nobody in the group I went with could understand them.
-Joe, loved it
Wow, I really liked this movie. What I’m really glad about is the tone of the movie. It starts out same old Serenity, laughing, having fun (at Simon’s expense), and stealing. But once they get started on this path, things get alittle more serious, until the end, when everyone is hurt, there’s no humor, and the final atempt at humor “I’m a leaf on the wind” get’s cut short, which really shocked me. I’ll totally agree that I couldn’t tell who was going to live in the end if any of them would.
Please do well! I want the whole world to see what a mistake the guy at FOX who cancelled the show made! May he be eaten by reavers.
point-for-cake!
since I am posting on page 4 of this thread, someone else probably already said what I am going to say but f%&#-it, here goes.
I loved the movie. I am a BIG Whedon fan, and intended to see this movie, when I saw his name on it, long before I had any exposure to Firefly. I’d heard of Firefly from friends who know what a big Buffy/Angel and StarTrek fan I am. They tried to make it appeal to me by saying “imagine the two universes combined” (which, now that I’ve gotten into Firefly/Serenity, is a horribly simplistic and inaccurate description)
Whedon killing off a major, albeit secondary, character? Typical Whedon. Jenny, Joyce, Tara, Anya, Doyle, Fred. But it really did seem like he was going to kill off the entire crew
And am I the only one who thought the wife-bot bore a resemblence to Kaylie? I couldn’t find a credit for the wife-bot on IMDB
Jayne is a great character and Adam Baldwin plays him to the hilt.
Early last week I happened to be home from work and noticed SciFi was running a FireFly marathon, so of course I watched so I’d have some background. It took 4 episodes for the lightbulb to go off: Caleb! Jasmine! and I’m sure the others have shown up in some Buffy or Angel epsiode along the way - Adam Baldwin was in the last several eps of Angel/5 - I like that JW has a “stable” of actors to depend on
River’d make a great Slayer
As for a sequel - I can’t decide if I’d prefer that, or a few more seasons of the FireFly series
and slightly off topic - have there been any inklings of a Buffy/Angel movie? Is there a thread someone can direct me to? I’d hate to hijack this one.
Just picked it up at Tower last night after seeing the movie - haven’t listened to it yet tho
Yes, inklings, but nothing is signed. Tim Minear is reportedly writing a “Spike movie” (made-for-TV), which he is also slated to direct, according to both Joss and Tim. Amy Acker told E online that she’s been told it’s going to be “a Spike/Illyria movie”. But, I repeat, no contracts have been confirmed signed.
That undid the move for me, and I’ll add a few more:
How could a population like this sustain itself (ie, reproduce)? One generation, and they’re gone. Why not make the effect subtle, so that you maintain your facutlies but lose much of your moral compass? Or, just have a really weakened sense of empathy. That’s all you’d need to create a criminal class that would be every bit as ruthless as the Reavers, but who’d actually be believable.
I also found the odd bits of language thrown in there to be distracting. Rather than weaving slang into the dialogue seemlessly, it was more like they’d just suddenly switch to slang-speak and then back to Standard English. It seemed contrived rather than interesting.
I give it a “B-”. I thought the first 20 minutes or so was good, but then it went downhill in a comic-bookish kind of way.
n.b.: I never saw the series and so had no expecctations either way going in.
It wasn’t slang - it was Chinese (Mandarin, I think) and appeared in the series as well
I think it’s meant to show that by the time humans had to vacate Earth, cultures had become homogenized
It’s also a way for them to curse and swear without pissing off the MPAA
They’ve been around twelve years, launching raids onto outlying, mostly defenseless planets. They started off with three million of them. Who says they’ll last more than one generation?
Now, to see if someone can answer my reaver question…
Daniel
In Bushwhacked
Reynolds explains that the Reavers torture a person into madness and then recruit them.
For a little perspective, I watched about 30 minutes of Firefly and I really enjoyed Serenity! I went with three fans and they all grilled me after the movie to see what I thought. It actually felt like the movie of one of those old Han Solo adventure novels from the 1980’s. And I’ve always wanted to see a movie like that.
True, but wasn’t that just speculation?
Daniel
Yeah, I got the cultural homogenization thing (there was plenty of Japanese Katakana and Arabic script as well), but there was Enlgish based slang thrown in there some, too.
I can’t think of specific examples, but it reminded me of the slang used in the episode of Star Trek Voyager when Chakote and others were kidnapped and brainwashed to fight in a war. Can’t remember the episode title, but they used a very stilted form of English was that perfectly understandable, but odd. Anyway, it wasn’t integrated into the conversations well-- just like they switched to it from time to time for no apparent reason.
I can’t believe how poorly it is doing at the box office. I’m really let down. Looks like there may not be a sequel.
The reavers weren’t intentional. They were an accidental side-effect of the ‘pax’ drug. No one was trying to create monsters or a criminal class or anything.
Did you watch the series? The Chinese cursing was much more pronounced, and I liked it. I once read somewhere (Heinlein, I think) that Chinese is a much richer language for cursing.
Okay, that answers my question above. Do yourself a favor, and rent or buy the series. It’s better than the movie, and the movie was great.
David Edelstein in Slate has an interesting take on the movie and series.
Yes, Reynolds was speculating, but I believe it was intended as explanatory.
Perhaps it was. Since it was a character’s speculation, though, and since it doesn’t make sense in light of the movie, within the universe I think it was an incorrect explanation.
Daniel
Yes, I know. When I used “create”, I was referring to the writers, not the characters in the story. If the writers want to create a race of villains… Interestingly, I used the “28 Days Laters” analogy as well with the group I went to the see it with.
See my note above-- I wasn’t talking about the Chinese words…
I may try to catch a few episodes on SciFi channel. But I can’t see it being anywhere near the quality of the new “Battlestar Gallactica”. I’d take almost any random episode in that TV series over “Serenity” any day.
But some of this is just my own personal tastes. The whole wisecracking, misfit crew thing just isn’t that appealing to me-- at least not when it’s so central to the story line.
Or #3, they hope not to be intercepted by the Alliance but if they are they have a whole mess of Reavers to wreak havoc on the Alliance, either allowing them to get to Me Universe’s facility or keep the Alliance busy until they get to someplace else to make the broadcast, and not incidentally getting some payback on the people who wiped out their friends.
My feeling was they thought they had to get the information out to everyone at once rather than allow the Alliance time to locate and remove the postings and generate another cover-up. Posting it for other people to discover wasn’t good enough. They had to make everyone see it at once.
It’s doing poorly at the box office? Box Office Mojo estimates a 10 million opening, and it’s only showing on 2100 screens. That’s not bad, especially for a movie that A) has no big name stars, B) cost only $40 million to make, and C) therefore needs word of mouth to be successful.
The real measure of how well Serenity does will be next week’s box office. If it drops off the radar, then yeah, the franchise is in trouble. However, if it does as well or better next weekend as it did this weekend, that means it’s finding a new audience, and that will bode well for a sequel.
Also, the international box office is very important, and [i}Firefly* was very successful in England because it was shown in the proper order all the way through. I read that there were 200,000 copies of the DVD set sold in England alone. And the multi-cultural flavor of Serenity might make it do especially well in Europe and Asia. We’re just going to have to wait and see.
I don’t know if I can express in words how badly I want this never ever to happen. AtS ended as perectly as was possible and the idea of a S/I buddy flick that takes place after the end of AtS turns my stomach.