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Joss Whedon's Firefly Coming To The Big Screen
lhouk281 writes "According to this article in the Hollywood Reporter, Universal is turning Firefly into a movie. Firefly lives!" This show deserved a chance to run a full season. If this comes out, I'll sure be there opening weekend.
Firefly is a prime example of how Fox is populated by PHBs. Fabulous show, great concept .. and they show the episodes out of order and at random intervals so the audience just can't get into it. They could have capitalized on Farscape's cancellation [SciFi: A channel for SF fans run by PHBs], but nooooooooo!
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
My god, man. If "Everybody Loves Raymond" (lies! The title is a LIE! I hate that fucking show) can go on for how long now?, then Firefly deserves a run at least as long as Buffy.
But, what do you expect? Great show, great premise, nice twist on typical plotlines, great writing, great "settings", great girls er actors and actresses.. It had all the recipes to be axed.
"Hey, this show is too good. Gotta give it the axe."
Remember, America doesn't want quality. We want convenience and entertainment that doesn't require thinking. Hence, Jackass.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
This show deserved a chance to run a full season.
A full season? Don't be too generous now. Most good shows don't start to click until at least the 2nd season. Try watching first season next generation, or Seinfeld. It's so wooden it looks like the actors have underwear 3 sizes too small. I liked Firefly, but even if the network didn't, they should give it at least a couple of seasons to bring in some numbers. Even Enterprise is dumping, and they haven't given up on it yet.
lower costs to own a DVD?
Are you kidding? With the exception of video games, DVDs represnt the best value in entertainment. What would *you* call a fair price to own a DVD?
No one would watch the show when it was broadcast into the comfort of our living rooms for FREE. But yet we're going to run out and watch it at our local theater after paying high ticket prices.
Heck, if it succeeds on the big screen, here's my vote for his next project: Flo the Motion Picture!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding the concept, but I was always under the impression that to "do" civil disobedience, you were supposed to do it in public, and get arrested for it.
Just breaking the law because you don't like it is not quite the same thing, IMHO.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
They should put shows like this on the internet, and charge a buck to download and/or stream each episode. At least then, the show can control its own destiny, and the fans can watch it any way they want to.
Hell, I'd pay a buck an episode for it, even if they left the commercials in.
How about an anthropology class?
1) She was quite a bit more than just a prostitute, she was very well educated, well mannered and was not the top of the hierarchy.
2) What if your ship breaks down, and you have no way of mining resources, economical constraints, and there is no incoming trade with your planet? Yes, wagons are a possibility.
3) Ethnocentrism. Look it up.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
First of all she wasn't exactly a prostitute, but more importantly a companion is not the "top female in the social hierarchy", yes she ranks better than the semi-criminal/black-market/smuggler crew running around in their obsolete junker of a spacecraft, but that isn't exactly way up the social chain.
And second, depending on how you got to the planet you might well drive a chuckwagon pulled by a team of horses. Just because you got dropped off in a spaceship doesn't imply that you are rich, or that the spaceship deposited a set of modern machine tools with the colony.
A planet could be colonized much like Australia, a place to dump people that aren't wanted in the parent society. With a low level of trading between the parent planet and the colony, there wouldn't be much ability to import needed items, and maintaining or building up a technological society from near scratch isn't easy. You need a lot of energy, which you don't necessarily have, a lot of raw materials, and some expensive machining tools to even get as far as the 19th century tech.
The nice thing about horses and wagons is that horses are self reproducing, you don't need a tech base to fix them when they break or build new ones. And grass or hay is easier to get than petroleum, or electric generation, or fission/fusion. And wagons can be build and maintained with little more that basic hand word working tools.
That's a clear indication that the studios have no respect for the viewers; why should I have any respect for them?
Firefly the movie is being released by Universal, who bought the rights from Fox. So you can still not respect Fox and enjoy the Firefly movie.
The only thing I'm worried about is whether or not Joss will have enough clout with the studio to make the movie HE wants, not the one that Universal wants. He has a track record of getting screwed over by Hollywood (albeit in the role of the writer, not as director.)
"The women at work..."
Dude, if you have enough women where you work to make a statistically valid statement, you're on the wrong website...
This is the same person who also said...
"I never watched it myself which means that most of the general population did not either"
I don't think they understand what a "statistically valid statement" means.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
What the hell is a western and space fantasy doing on the same page?!
Yeah, most westerns are about high adventure on the frontier of civilization. Whereas most sci-fi shows are about high adventure on the frontier of civilization. I don't see how they are compatible.
I'm beginning to get really pissed at the TV networks. I live in the UK, and as everyone knows, we get things late. First I spotted "The Lone Gunmen", which was a quality series, and was cancelled after only a few episodes. Mores the shame. Then my long time favourite Futurama got prematurely cancelled. Soon after I found that out, I discovered firefly showing for the first time on UK networks - then about two weeks later I found it had been cancelled. Pretty gutted. Now after reading through these comments, I see that "John Doe" has also been cancelled. That show has only just started to be advertised over here, it starts on Monday and I was really looking forward to it - and now I find it's been cancelled even before I've seen an episode. There is something very wrong at the TV networks, and if they don't get themselves sorted there's gonna be one hell of a backlash.
The word for that is "cartel."
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
I watched it, but...
I was willing to:
Most people aren't THAT dedicated to a completly new show.
And BTW, not only were people watching the show when it was on for free, but we also TOPPED OFF THE PREORDER LIMIT for the DVD in one day. Jeez, think about it for one second will ya...
You can't take the sky from me...
And those other shows you mention: "gambled the future"? Where have you been? These are reality shows. The genre's been popular for a long time, and they cost a pittance (by Hollywood standards) to produce. Especially American Idol which is just a retread of a British show.
I did think that Fox would give Firefly a decent change, mainly because Fox Entertainment is run by Gail Berman. Back when she was a studio person, she persuaded Whedon to turn Buffy into a TV series, and got him the backing to do it. But Buffy was relatively low-budget, and Firefly was very expensive indeed. I guess that made it a lot of enemies in the network, who begrudged the resources and air time for a show that would take a long time to find an audience, and that would probably not be profitable even when it did.
It's sort of ironic that Whedon's turning Firefly into a movie. He passed up a chance to direct Ironman because he thought that he could have more creative freedom with a TV series. But after watching Buffy's pathetic whinding-down (and re-watching older episodes enough times to see their flaws), I have to think he's better off doing stories that can be told in one sitting.
Not that it matters. I'm still a rabid fan, but I think Joss Whedon's 15 minutes is over. He tells good stories, but he sucks at the political and social negotiation you need to do to make a TV show or a movie.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
But, I will tell you this... Women don't care about much other than reality-TV. I have to curtail my football watching so that my gf can tune into Temptation Island and Paradise Hotel. The women at work ONLY care about Paradise Hotel and the like.
Except a large part of the Firefly fans ARE women. They loved the relationship stuff Whedon manages to throw in without the men noticing.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Umm, basically it was Cowboy Bebop with live action toys, good looking people, and Joss Whedon attitude.
Men or women, it's the dumb gossipy types that love those shows. My gf hates them with a passion, considering them the worst form of tripe on the tube. Who wants to watch dumb, mean spirited deceitful people backstab each other? People who need to feel superior to someone, that's who. Men watch these things too, even straight men.
As for Firefly, (desperately trying to keep on topic) I loved it. It was killed by a poor timeslot and lack of network support. I don't think they gave it a fair shot, but these days, if something's not an instant hit, networks just can it and bring in a midseason replacement. Originality is not their forte.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> Except a large part of the Firefly fans ARE women. They loved the relationship stuff Whedon manages to throw in without the men noticing.
It wasn't merely "Relationship" stuff: though the show was in the guise of a SF series in the guise of a western (or vice versa; I never figured that out), what it was really about was the characters and their interactions. That may not push everyones' buttons, and it demanded a lot more mental investment from the viewer than the standard captain-gets-in-a-jam-and-then-out fare that you expect from SF television, but in some ways it really was a very sophisticated show as compared to, say, Star Trek.
If you watch much SF TV you'll notice that all the plot-based series are really in a rut. How many shows have you seen with the tired old stuck-in-a-time-loop plot? It was high time someone tried a different approach, and IMO it's a damn shame it didn't work out better. I think if FAUX had managed it better and given it time to grow it would have generated a large and very loyal fan base for that very reason.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Whatever her name was. The engineer of the ship, the cute blonde with a wrench in her hands and slightly greasy face, she was crazy cute! Keep her for the movie! I'd watch two hours of just her, thanks, you don't even need the rest of the crew, although the crazy sister character was pretty interesting, and the fact that the pilot and first officer were married.
Actually, now that I think about it, the whole show was rather good, well cast, good acting, decent plots, and some very witty dialogue.
Overall, a pretty decent show. Where do I go to order that DVD again?
Anyhow, the mechanic chick was really cute, did I say that?
Firefly ruelezzz....
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