New International Serenity Trailer Released

Tenken writes "The international Serenity trailer has just popped up online and it looks to be even shinier than the first. This new trailer doesn't really spell out the plot of the film as explicitly as the first one, but for that reason it may play better with fans. Chiwetel Ejiofor's "Operative" character is also shaping up to be one of those memorable Whedon villains along the lines of Jubal Early from the episode "Objects in Space.""

Comments

Can't wait!

[nuknuk]

[fanboy]

Someone tipped me off about the original TV series about a year ago...after getting the movies from Netflix, I was blown away by how great they are...what an unfortunate turn of events that they got cancelled so soon. I can't wait for this movie!

[/fanboy]

Re:Can't wait!

[Eagle5596]

I worry about this movie. With luck, it will be good just as the TV series was, but I keep on coming back to Joss Whedon.

Lets face it, I know a lot of Slashdotters worship the ground he walks on and think is the next best thing since sliced bread. In reality he has done a lot of shallow shows with crappy pseudo-witty dialogue (which in reality is just childish and moronic), lame plots, and shoddy writing. Firefly is his shining gem of achievement.

Even Firefly had it's moments of idiocy though where you just kind of frowned and said "Boy that didn't work at all, what the heck was he thinking?" that made it obvious Joss Whedon had been involved. Most of the best episodes were written by people other than Joss.

So when it boils down to it, I'm hopeful but afraid he'll sink it with a crappy movie, and pull to many "Josses" during the show. There are already some evident in the trailer. I just hope the movie overcomes this weakness.

Re:Can't wait!

[Rei]

A couple things:

A Firefly-fan friend of mine already saw the movie. He was very apprehensive after seing the trailers, and left quite, quite pleased with the movie (and has had to resist spoiling it for me).

Unrealistic fight scenes

How many fight scenes did you see in firefly? Or are you judging a movie and the series that it is based on from a few seconds of (barfight?) scene in a trailer?

utterly anachronistic one-liners

Actually, some of the best parts of Firefly are where one-liners would have been used in most shows, but weren't. For example, Mal's "huh.." after the discovery of River.

cookie cutter set and ship design

Firefly actually stands out in that they built the entire ship set as one complete piece.

queue the messianic character

Are you referring to River or Mal? If you're referring to River, I think the Bible would have been a lot more interesting with Jesus talking about how quickly the human body can be drained of blood given adequate vacuuming systems, claiming that he's a ship, speaking incoherently, and threatening to kill people with his brain.

Re:Am I the only one?

[TheCabal]

Yes, I saw the premiere on Fox, and predicted the show was going to get the axe. Shame on Fox for screwing it up like they did, but the premiere left me with no desire to see what the rest of the season was like. I don't think I'd even waste a selection getting it from Netflix at this point.

Apart from BSG, the current state of sci-fi shows sucks. Fox killed off my other fav sci-fi show before its time... it seems they have a knack for doing that. At least with Firefly it wasn't upsetting.

Re:I concur

[SpryGuy]

If it helps, I can't stand Anime either. But FireFly (and the new Serenity movie) are nothing like that. And while the trailer may have concentrated on those aspects you cited, trust me that the show isn't "all about that" at all, or I would be completely bored with it.

The show was all about the characters. The culture. The universe they inhabited. It wasn't about the sci-fi technology or technobabble or any of that stuff. It was about connections and motivations and wit.

Seriously, give the show a chance. Rent the first DVD on NetFlix, or force yourself to watch the first four hours of the show on Sci-Fi when it reruns in August/September. Chances are, you'll get as hooked as I am. And if you do start watching the series, each episode gets generally better and better. I found the last episode ("Objects in Space") to be nothing short of brilliant.

It's a show that's worth the investment and the risk. You will be rewarded.

Gotta pop my cherry sometime!

[ChickenBone]

I've been lurking on /. for about 5 years now. This is my first post. I had to for this one. I freekin loved this TV show. From day 1. I'm stoked about the movie, (hope they did'nt dumb it down too much) and i'm really hoping it comes back to TV on the sci-fi channel. I'm not a Josh Whedon Fanboy at all. I never watch one episode of Buffy or The other one...(can't think of the name right now), but Firefly I liked alot. Nothing more important else to add....on second thought, maybe I wasted my first post ever? Dammit! CB....

From the Whedon-hater-camp

[ChozSun]

I love SciFi. I love comics books. That noted, I hate everything else Whedon has done. His two other shows are spikes through the head at best and his comic writing is meh at best.

That said, Firefly freakin' rocks. Stop basing opinions off of what you saw on Fox. Fox kept jacking the order of the shows, content of the shows and towards the end, didn't even show it in place of sports. Even if you did see it in the first run, you really didn't see it at all.

Fox has jacked up other shows in the past, this is true. But either plenty of people have lost their jobs or they learned a stern lesson when they are going to bring back Arrested Development and brought back Family Guy.

Firefly was one of the balls they dropped. Unfortunately, since they have sold the rights to Universal, they cannot bring back Firefly. Thus, we have Serenity and reruns on SciFi.

Life is good again.

Pwned the DVDs. If you still don't believe us, check the reviews. If 1409 reviews with an average of 5/5 stars is still not good enough for you, rent the DVDs.

I, for one, envy newcomers. They can see "Objects in Space" and think, "oh cool and Serenity will be here soon." Imagine getting the DVDs way back when and no talks of any sort of movie. It was the only time I screamed at my TV.

Re:will someone please explain this to me

[BewireNomali]

September is still a very weak month for moviegoing in general, which is why it tends to be reserved for what are called "soft" movies.

Perfect example of such a film is "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" which was released on 9/17. It went on to gross ~$60 million worldwide boxoffice, with a production budget of about 70 million (the budget was actually closer to 100 because of CGI cost overruns).

It was originally scheduled to be released in the summer, but it would have been crushed. With little competition it was unable to earn back its budget domestically.

Serenity's production budget is listed at $40 million. This means its marketing budget is somewhere around $20-25 million, probably... Let's assume $65 million as the figure in question.

The film has to double its budget (assuming equitable split between exhibitor and distributor, which isn't always the case) in box office receipts to ensure zero risk for Universal at stage one of the revenue stream. It has to earn $130 million at the box office in OCTOBER! That's a stretch.

So what is more likely is that Universal is willing to take a loss on box office, which they are conceding by moving it to September so that they can get all the box office revenue possible (less competition). Geeks are loyal DVD purchasers, so they are banking on DVD sales to not only offset any loss, but for DVD sales themselves to buck the trend of flattening DVD sales as the DVD market matures.

No one releases a press release stating that they think their movie is going to fail, so refering to one in this instance doesn't amount to much. Also, other films released early summer, with established stars and directors (for example: Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom and Ridley Scott) failed miserably... with much bigger marketing budgets and the entire summer audience to cater to.