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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.'"
Firefly was the best scifi series on tv since Babylon 5. Fox canned it to concentrate on reality shows... Great characters, great stories, and a cool blend of cowboy and tech.
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 EXCLUSIVELY in FULLSCREEN this SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY. THE trailer. Get your tickets now.... TO THE MAX, EXTREME!
The short (and not very detailed) explanation is a "Space Western." But that's not doing the series justice. Like so many other innovative series, Firefly was sandbagged by network execs that have the same level of comprehension as Paris Hilton. They nixed the pilot that explained who everyone was and set up the situation, so everyone was confused as hell. The suits then used that as justification to kill the series in favor of Queen Latifah's latest vehicle, or whatever. Google for it, and you'll find plenty of info.
I really doubt it, I do.
Joss likes to tell stories about people, and the interesting thing is people who change. I've never found movies to be the best medium for that. There's just not enough time to get the audience to bond with the character at A and experience the complete transistion to B. I like series where it sort of starts out slow and change come creeping up on you.
I loved it in Angel how Wesley moved from being this uptight unintentionally (from his PoV) funny character, to a dark and gruesome killer, ready to do whatever it takes -- pretty much apexing with him taking an axe to the body of his former lover.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Joss also warned in that post that the trailer has major spoilers for Firefly fans who are familiar with the TV series and would prefer to see the movie unspoiled. For what it's worth, Firefly is one of the better SF series ever made. For one thing, spaceships don't make whooshing or rumbling sounds - scenes in space are completely silent. :-)
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.
Shiny!
How AWESOME was that mirror universe episode?!
Oooo! I missed the episode!
Was it about a mirror universe where time-travel wasn't an over-used plot device?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Didn't see him produce a tv-series though. Kinda "lose by default" on that one.
That seem right to you? :-)
...the world gets excited not about the film, not about the trailer for a film, no... we're excited about an announcement of a trailer for a film. Hot diggity, it's that good.
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.
In the commentary for Objects in Space, Joss Whedon comments that the bounty hunter takes people out in the most efficient way possible for their characters. (Something he didn't realize until his wife pointed it out.)
...
So
He beats up Mal.
He threatens to rape Kaylee.
He uses logic on Simon.
And the clincher
He comes at Book from behind, when Book is distracted, and knocks him out as fast as possible. He also comments, "That's no Shepherd."
Answer your question?
People use what's cheap and does the job. Did the four wheeler hinder them? Guns kill people and don't require expensive batteries and care like laser guns did in the show.
I keep saying this, but read about people living in Mongolia or the Amazon. In our age of cars they still horses to pull things? In our age of construction equipment they still build houses by hand? They still use machetes to clear brush?
There are people that live long and happy lives (even in the US or other modern countries) without ever personally using a computer. On a present day tv show do you complain that some people still do their taxes on paper?
I guess people like to hope that in the future we will all be in the future. Sorry, as a species we will never all be at the same technological level. Print out that prediction and read it every fifty years, it will always be true.
For one thing, spaceships don't make whooshing or rumbling sounds - scenes in space are completely silent. :-)
...
My cousin does sound mixes for movies, and pointed out that all those sound effects are actually a pretty significant budget item in special effects-heavy movies. Whether it was part of the calculation or not, they actually saved a bunch of money by doing it that way.
I like to think that was on purpose -- I'm definitely prepared to give Joss credit for being clever in more than one way at a time. And for the record, in a symbolic way at least I get sad for the world every time I remember that Firefly was cancelled. Groups of people with that much talent who like what they're doing that much shouldn't be broken up over money.
And babies should never die and no one you love should ever stop loving you back and war sucks too, I guess. It's just one of those things
one of the reasons the tv show didn't go well is that it was played in a confusing order. the show has a logical flow which the dvds are shown in... but on tv it was all mixed around.
Don't worry, fans of Firefly will not be dissapointed. The first 30 minutes of the show will be played last, while the last 30 minutes will be played first. And they'll throw in some commercials, and announcements for other movies at the bottom of the screen halfway through the movie. Just so it feels like the television show, for us purists out there. Yeah baby!
If I'm contemplating whether I want to get to know someone, I lend'em firefly and ask them what they thought of it.
It's as good a personality test as I've ever found.
I'm too lazy to summarize what really happened. Okay, maybe a short version: Buffy and Spike's reconcilliation took an entire season, never actually led to Buffy loving Spike, and required great sacrifices from him. He suffered greatly for his sins, got a severe alteration to his personality, and finally sacrificed his life (to save the world, of course). Meanwhile, Willow's transition was foreshadowed throughout season 6, and her powers were crippled by her own fear until the very end of season 7. Yes, there were dissatisfying elements to both plot arcs, but Whedon had a series to wrap up.
In closing, use bloody whitespace, and learn to spell "misogynistic". Thank you.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
But are TV shows required to just repeat the same old stuff over and over? I guess that's a dumb question -- of course they are. But every once in a while somebody who doesn't know any better tries to make a show that's sort of original. In this case, Whedon was trying to make an SF show about real people, who who don't have access to phasers and tricorders because the best technology belongs to rich people who don't share. What they end up with is a mixture of high-tech cast offs and revived 19th-century technology.
If you think in Hollywood stereotypes, than that's just a lame combination of "western" and "SF". But if you're into serious "hard" SF, or you know anyything about the history of technology, it's a thought provoking premise.
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?