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Serenity Trailer Out Tuesday
SiliconEntity writes "Joss Whedon's movie Serenity, based on his much-loved but short-lived TV series Firefly, will have an official trailer out on Tuesday, according to an announcement from Joss: 'EXCLUSIVELY on Apple movie trailers (and linked through this site as well of course) will be a small, medium, large or FULLSCREEN trailer for Serenity the major motion movie. Yeah, THE trailer. And the following Friday said trailer hits theaters. Which theaters? Until I get confirmation you'll have to guess, but I'm betting you can.'"
He created Buffy then its spinoff Angel: both doing well, especially the former. Now every TV exec will be expecting him to produce shows that pull in the kind of audiences the likes of Buffy did. Firefly was a victim of that: here at least, the first few episodes didn't bring in the ratings, so the rest of the series got put together in a muddled order and just wasn't given a chance. After being burned by this experience, at least with a movie he gets to write a script and a story that WILL get shown in its entirety.
It's likely that the Serenity trailer will be attached to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
a world in progress...
Wow, you really didn't get what it was all about, did you?
One of the points of the Firefly universe, if I may be so bold, was that things wouldn't be too different from what they are here and now! There's still good and evil, there are still hierarchies, things are dirty, messy... and the old motivator of wealth is still driving people on...
And as always with Joss, it's about people. So yes, if your only reason to watch a show is to experience hi-tech gadgets, then Firefly isn't for you. It never was.
If you're going to evaluate something, at least do it in it's proper genre.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Firefly was a western set in, what, the future? I mean they used revolvers, had train robberies and all of the characters were predictable and pedestrian. I mean, c'mon - the ship's preacher is named Shepherd Book?
Right. Just like now in our modern times no one uses horses, or swords, or lives in farming communities.
Read up on the anachronisms of the present day (Mongolia, The Amazon, etc.) and you won't be surprised if guns are still a cheap way of killing in the future. The modernized alliance forces (and rich people) had futuristic laser guns and non-lethal stun guns. Just like...forever, people with nothing get by with what's cheap or available.
So you're saying everybody should just shut up and stop telling new stories because it's all been done?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Or know criminal psychopaths by name. Or can identity guns used by analyzing their burn patterns. Or know a lot about a lot of shady things.
You know that Book was probably a made-up on the spot name right? When Kaylee asks him his name he looks at the book in his hand and says, "Book...yes, my name is Book." Kind of odd. He's probably someone in law enforcement, except that I don't think even cops get that kind of treatment. So my favorite theory is that he's an alliance general (or high military), specifically one that orchestrated the battle for Serenity Valley. After the war he checked into the Abbey to start a life of peace. Then got to feeling that he needed to make some kind of amends. At the spaceport on Persephone he was looking at the ships, but he was searching for Serenity.
Let me know when Tolstoy writes about vampires or spaceships. Half of War and Peace was enough for me.
Pompous ass.
"farmboy saves princess from black knight using magic sword a wizard gave him"...
You call THAT a western? Star Wars was a Space Opera.
River was predictable? She was unpredictable by way of insanity.
Inara was pedestrian? If you consider high-class space call girls commonplace!
Wash was an hawaiian shirt-wearing, amazon lovin', plastic dinosaur playing spaceship pilot. Neither predictable nor commonplace.
There, that covers a third of the cast.
No, you damn troll (who's modding that crap up?), the ship's shepperd's last name was "Book", and it's probably not his real name, either.
What?!?! I call shennanigans! How is it possible for a slashdotter, by definition a subset of the greater set "uber-geeks", is wholly ignorant of Firefly? Get thee hence to a Netflix subscription or Amazon DVD order page, you pseudo-geek, and prove thyself worthy!
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
I've heard that Firefly is the Sci-fi fan's latest wet dream
Yes, because it is:
1. Black box. There is no rambling techno-babble. Fixing the ship in Firefly is no more technical than Han Solo wrestling with some kind of wrench in a bundle of wires while telling Chewie to put "that one here, that one there."
2. Same goes for driving the ship, how the ship gets from one solar system to another in a reasonable time frame, how one model ship goes faster than another, etc. The pilot just pushes on the controls and the characters just walk down the loading ramp on a new planet in the next scene. Sometimes the Captain worries about affording enough the (apropriately generic named) "fuel".
3. Good sci-fi is not about techno-babble in repairing the ship or moving the characters from one place to another. Good sci-fi is about human society in new situations. What other genres offers more variety of places in which to imagine humans trying to get along than sci-fi since the entire galaxy (universe) can be used? It's when sci-fi focuses on the people that it becomes excellent. There are no aliens, no bumpy forehead people, bored omnipotent beings, etc, etc in Firefly. Good sci-fi doesn't need those things, if done properly. And Firefly is exceptionally well written in that regard.
If you're going to engage in literary criticism, check your spelling.
That being said, I'm curious as to why you consider Firefly sufficiently advanced only for ten-year-olds. Is it because it's science fiction, or because it's a TV show (and now a movie)? Either way, of course, your prejudices are clearly blinding you; I'd just like to know which variety of pretentiousness I'm looking at.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Try some Tolstoy
Done that: terrible drawn out stuff. Not a hint of the wit that pervades Whedon's stuff.
Good eyes, BTW. I did not pick up on him looking at the book. Here's one for you to look for. In "Trash" when Kaylee's reprogramming the garbage drone, the screen looks like it's displaying a Windows 9x install with a wizard open. Coincidence? Cost savings? Or is Joss a Linux/Mac geek? I can see their slogan in 500 years. "Windows...It Just Works...As A Garbage Disposal."
Dunno about Serenity, but it's interesting finding people trying to come to grips with Firefly.
First, I'll say that I've seen maybe 3 episodes of Buffy tops, and never seen Angel. I can't stand the silly prosthetics and nonsense of Babylon 5, and frankly haven't enjoyed much science fiction television lately. I happened to tune into to Firefly for Bushwacked, and saw maybe 4 episodes broadcast before it was pulled. Since then I bought the DVD set and have watched it religiously. It's just damn good, and I haven't met anyone whose seen (or to whom I've shown) the show who has found it anything less than great fun.
Enough about me.
Folks around here seem to be posting a bunch of things about Firefly, and they don't quite seem to have "gotten it".
Yes, Firefly is a science-fiction show.
Science-fiction often gets used on television and in movies to explore irreal circumstances: time travel, the nature of reality, how many lines of probable-sounding technobabble an actor can read with a straight face. Firefly didn't do that. Firefly used science fiction as a= means to bridge several traditional genres of action entertainment: Submarine Movies, Heist films, and yes, some westerns. At times, the plot is lifted from somewhere else: Unforgiven and Silent Running are both "borrowed" for episodes.
Like your 'Star Trek'-class show, the cast of Firefly play characters who are good at what they do; but they're not superheroes, and they're working neither for high-sounding ideals, nor for a faceless bureaucracy. Sure, there are times when the show slipped into cliche; almost always it would then wink and subvert tradition.
And yeah, as science fiction and on television, it's about as light entertainment as you can get. Don't get all worked up about it; but yeah, I gotta say I'm excited, but slightly apprehensive. Can they actually get 9 characters to work convincingly in a 2-hour movie?
Sigh. You took a perfectly valid observation, utterly misinterpreted it, then mocked it mercilessly. Net result? You look like an uninformed ass.
Look, friend, let me explain this to you in terms that might sink in. Good and evil are real. The term you want to look up is psychomachia. It literally means "the war for the soul," but it's used to describe the internal struggle in every person between choosing to do good and choosing to do evil. This is, like, modern storytelling 101.
It's also some pretty fundamental philosophy.
To deny that good and evil exist is to succumb to the worst kind of moral relativism. It's that kind of moral relativism that lets terrorists blow up buildings or a president kill 100,000 Iraqis. Denying that evil exists is a horrible, horrible error, and a big part of what's wrong with this world today.
It's that kind of moral relativism that motivates terrorists and neocons? Now that's a laughable statement!
Bush, who paints an "Axis of Evil". Osama who calls USA the "Great Satan". These guys are moral relativists?
You're right, it is pretty fundamental philosophy. It's Machiavelli. It's Hitler. It's Platos "Noble Lie". Good and Evil are perpetuated myths that people like Bush and bin Laden use as their power bases to manipulate their followers into righteous frenzies. They are the very concepts that are at the root of all the animosity and self-righteousness.
And that's a big part of what's wrong with the world today.
If you don't buy this, which I'd be surprised by if you did, watch the BBCs The Power of Nightmares and I think you'll find that your view on the world today and moral relativism is somewhat misconstrued.
Finally, I'm very sorry if I came across as a merciless mocker. It was not my intention in my post. But of course, you did the same to the great-great-grandparent, didn't you?
Yes, the ship's "Preacher" is named Shepard Book.
If you watch the show for very long it becomes obvious that it probably isn't his real name. From the weapons training he has had, the military knowledge and the control over the government I'm guessing that preaching isn't his full time occupation.
This is just one of many areas where it would have been nice to watch the show develop.
Buffy WAS good until it ran out of places to go, Angel was "interesting" and Firefly had potential.
Citoahc