As long as the bean counters count this then it should be good news. However I’m not sure if that means they’ll decide to go straight to dvd for a sequel or go for another tv series.
At any rate, if neither happens I feel that the movie made for a good final episode. If you go for British TV at all we got the equivalent of 4 seasons worth of Red Dwarf episodes plus a really good movie so in the end I’m happy :).
Damn. I agree – how can utter dreck make so much money, and something like Serenity not? :mad:
It’s not like the movie is esoteric or anything. Plenty of ‘slam, bang’ action…
Actually, do you suppose part of the problem is the title? I know when I was dating (back in the Iron Age) it wasn’t at all unusual to end up at a megaplex theatre on Saturday night with no plans beyond seeing ‘a movie.’ “Serenity” doesn’t exactly sound like ‘hot SF action film’ to the uninformed consumer, does it?
The title might in fact have something to do with it. When I was at the theater the other day, two large groups of people were ahead of me, and they were still debating what to see. They were just reading the names of films off the marquee, and clearly didn’t know much about any of them. ‘Serenity’ doesn’t sound like the kind of movie you’re just pick on a whim.
Well, here’s some good news:
Serenity knocks ‘Pride and Prejudice’ out of #1 Spot
It will be interesting to see if the perception of the movie is very different in Europe, but this is a good sign.
More (slightly) good news:
Serenity Beats Weekend Estimate.
Serenity was estimated to make 4.81 million, for 9th place on the weekend. The actual was 5.35 million, moving it to 8th place. I don’t know how they do the estimates, but tracking ahead of expectations is always good. Maybe word of mouth is starting to have an effect.
AerynSun already mentioned this, but I thought I’d be more specific.
Dr. Caron, the woman in the holograph who revealed the source of the Reavers, is played by Sarah Paulson, the same actress who played Miss Isringhausen in Deadwood
I enjoyed that moment of Deadwood/Firefly Convergence.
Charon ferried the souls of the dead across the river Styx in Greek mythology.
Any explanations that involve her choosing to open the door go up against the fact that she went in there to close and lock the door in the first place. If she were only going through to kick some Reaver ass, why not just wait and do so one at a time as they squeeze through the bottleneck?
To keep them away from her friends, of course.
And her brother, especially him. She only went in after he was shot.
Because she went through there to get Simon’s medical kit, so he could help Kaylee. She even tried to get back through the door afterwards, but the Reavers dragged her back. Besides, even if she intended to slaughter all the Reavers, she still didn’t necessarily know she’d be succesful. Locking herself out there with them made sure her friends were safe even if the Reavers took her down.
Ah, yes, forgot about that medkit.
I thought that they mentioned locking the door, but Kaylee said that it could only be done from the other side, so River went through to get the medkit and lock the door. If the point was locking the door, it had to be more than just hitting a button could undo, else it would hardly stay locked to the Reavers.
And of course she could beat the Reavers. After all, no power in the 'verse can stop her.
Another possibility: Mal opened the door. That backup com center probably had overrides for the security systems. After he accomplished his primary mission, he used the security cameras to check up on his friends, and seeing that River had Roncomaticed the Reavers and that she was on the opposite side of a locked door from the others, he opened it. In this scenario, River might have been holding that pose for several minutes, while she processed what she’d done… She certainly didn’t seem in a hurry to move after the door opened.
No, that can’t work, because his dialogue when he comes back shows that he doesn’t know what happened to River.
I’m going with the Alliance remotely over-riding the door locks before busting down that wall.
Possibly encouraging precedent: The first Austin Powers movie didn’t do particularly well in its original theatrical run. Then it became an absolutely monstrous hit on video as word spread, which enabled the sequel. Interestingly, the sequel made in its opening weekend what the first film made in its entire original run.
I have to say, though, that having watched the machinations of Hollywood for a number of years, I’ve become pretty cynical about how the bean-counters make their decisions. If we get another Firefly movie, it will be after Whedon does Goners and Wonder Woman, and it will take both of those movies being extremely profitable (plus Serenity doing exceedingly well on video) for Whedon to have the clout to get it off the ground. I’d say odds are fairly heavily against.
Oh, and regarding all the plot nitpicking: Whedon’s narrative structure for the film is a fairly radical departure from the TV series. Whereas the show was largely character-driven, with long, leisurely storylines being played out, the movie is quite consciously built on a basic action-movie architecture. It is specifically and deliberately designed to rush past at a gallop, giving you no time to think, carrying you along with it. There’s really no wonder about why some of the plot points don’t exactly stick together in retrospect.
Example: What, precisely, was Jayne going to do when he went into the dining area where River was tied up? He has his weapon handy, and he mentions something about getting off the ship. Was he going to toss her out the airlock? Shoot her? Stick her in a shuttle and go collect the ree-ward? Or what? …Don’t bother thinking about it, because the answer is simple: Joss had a pretty big lump of exposition to deliver, i.e. River telling us what Miranda is about, and it would be boring if she just knocked and gave a little speech about it. He decided to layer the exposition in with an action-movie beat, so he had Jayne do something only vaguely motivated, and then launched into a cat-and-mouse game, culminating with River pointing a gun at Mal while pointing at the computer screen. In retrospect, those couple of minutes are completely unnecessary; they’re empty action-movie calories that don’t need to be there at all. It’s a spoonful of sugar with a droplet of expositional medicine on top. It’s entertaining while it’s happening, but in retrospect it’s kind of dopey.)
And the point is, the whole movie is designed to work like that. I know Whedon fans are sort of compulsive about revisiting material and looking for connections, and I’ll admit, there’s more here than in the average action movie that merits repeated viewings and detailed consideration. (Take the scene where River has her freakout on Miranda; the camera is whirling around her to suggest her confusion, and then Jayne steps forward, agreeing with her while the camera continues to circle. At the end, he says something like, “…and they all died for no reason.” At that point, the camera stops— with Wash in the center of the frame.) But I gotta tell ya, the movie just isn’t built the same way as the series, and trying to shoehorn all the bits and pieces together into a streamlined and sensible whole is a fool’s game.
Whedon, in a deliberate attempt to expand the film’s audience beyond the fan base, consciously made Serenity as an action movie, with all that implies. It isn’t supposed to inspire deep thinking, you guys. 
The Goooooogle ads are getting better targeted:
It is too a scam, at least by my definition (you’ve clearly got to buy a whole bunch of other stuff to get your ‘free’ vids), but at least ads for Firefly fans are showing up in a Firefly thread.
But…but…if we don’t obsess over every little freaking detail, we’ll have to have…
lives!!!
The horror, the horror…
I thought he explicitly mentioned the shuttle. But you’re right - it doesn’t make much sense. What was he going to do, just toss her in the shuttle and fire it off somewhere? They were in deep space, right? He wasn’t going to leave with her, that’s for sure. Maybe he planned to kill her, then throw her in the shuttle and rocket it away, so that he could claim that she must have taken the shuttle and run, and deflect blame from himself.
The thing is, by the end of the series, Jayne was much more integrated into the crew, as were River and Simon. The movie clearly regressed those characters back to the state they were in about the time the series started.
I agree with everything else you said.
To a certain extent that was done to further the story.
I disagree about Jayne though. He is integrated like a dog that gets beaten with a chain when he begins to turn bad. Jayne is ready to knee cap his employer if offered his own room, or sell out his ship mates for enough money. He chose to be crew only because Mal can sucker punch him with a wrench if he doesn’t behave and might do the right thing next time and defenestrate him.