Serenity Opens Today

joemite writes "As every Browncoat knows, Serenity, the motion picture based on the Firefly series opened today. For the uninitiated, Serenity is based on the short-lived Fox television show Firefly (created by Joss Whedon, [Buffy the Vampire Slayer]), which follows a group of outlaws in a unique space-western universe. While there are no aliens or temporal anomalies, the stage is set for our group of heros to out-wit and out-strategize the giant and evil Alliance. Go out and watch the movie this weekend and see why the Firefly series is an Amazon.com best seller." If you're on the fence, reviews available at SFGate, Wired, the Seattle Times, and IGN.

Comments

Firefly

[LiquidCoooled]

I heard all along that it was another sci-fi show that was from the creator of Buffy.
I left it alone because "another hit show from the writer of XYZ" is usually a steaming pile of bumpoo. This kind of hype is like a one hit wonder from the music charts trying to get his 2nd song sold.

I don't care who wrote it, I wanna know how good it is.

I'm currently half way through the dvd episodes and I'm hooked.
Why the hell didn't anyone tell me it was this good on its own merits?

Hope the movie is as good.

ps, even after my rant, how exactly do you hype a series about a rag tag group of cowboys flying around in a spaceship getting into scrapes? I've never been able to describe it to my friends properly.

Re:Firefly

[jason ward]

Now I went into this more excited about this movie than any other movie I've ever been to. My expectations were to be given the stars on a platter. While the movie didn't quite live up to that, it was still a damn good movie. It defiantly ranks as one of my favorites.

The back story for several key mysteries in the series were explored and laid open, which was nice I guess. I have to say that the best thing for Firefly was to be canceled when it did. That's what drove the Fans, and myself, into a frenzy. The mystery of it all. So many unanswered questions to make me want to know more. It made me watch it again and again hoping I'd read between the lines a little deeper to understand the way of it all. The mystery made me love the show more any anything.

There were parts in the movie that really moved me. Parts where the audience cheered and others where the silence was so deadening it broke your heart twice over. I don't know if people not having seen the show will have the same response, but I think they will. The movie does a good job making you feel for the characters.

But that's enough of that. See the movie. It's worth it.

This year in the movies

[ZachPruckowski]

It seems to me that this year has been a re-defining year in the movies. I think that in 5 years, we'll be able to point to this year as the year things changed.

The reason I say this is that what this summer proved is that movies now need more than pretty scenery and special effects to turn a profit in the box office. "Batman" had a deep story, and "War of the Worlds" was a remake of a classic. "Wedding Crashers" was hilarious. The movies that stunk, like "Stealth" and "The Island", didn't have anything more than special effects and good looking girls.

But "Cry_Wolf", a movie without any special effects, made it's money back 5-fold. It is possible that the same sort of thing will happen with Serenity. So if it does well, that may get us not only sequels, but movies with more plot and story and atmosphere, which would be great for us, as more sophisticated movie watchers.

Re:Group Gathereings: Vancouver BC

[wrecked]

Just saw it at the Paramount at 600 Burrard Street.

What is quite remarkable is that even though Serenity has been pre-screened what, 100 times? since May, you don't see cam torrents floating around. The restraint of the fan base from leaking spoilers and cams says a lot about their loyalty. Contrast that with say, the Hulk or Revenge of the Sith.

Here's hoping for the sequels.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes

[Anthony Boyd]

Serenity looks like it should be called "The Adventures of Han Solo." Is this not just a Han Solo-like character in a Millennium Falcon-like ship doing what Han Solo did (smuggling), and avoiding the organized oppressive bad guys with bigger ships?

Hmm. Well, first, I'd pay good money to see a trilogy of movies about the early adventures of Han Solo, so although your comment sounds dismissive, to me it sounds quite enticing.

Having said that, if you mixed Han Solo up with some precogs from Minority Report, and added a bit of Johnny Mnemonic, you'd have a more accurate summary. But even that's not quite right. It needs a bit more to put it in a box. Maybe some Gattaca -- the idea of a perfect society, outsiders living free but in sometimes less than ideal conditions, hmm. Add in some of that "space western" from early, early Star Trek, and maybe that's it.

I don't know, I feel like I'm not putting it in a box very cleanly. Someone else could do it better, I'm sure. What I do know is that it's selling the movie short to just say "Han Solo."

Re:I like the clean look

[Mac Degger]

"Warp Drive, Hyperspace and Wormholes) all violate most Laws of Physics."

Actually, they don't. Wormholes however would take massive amounts of energy to hold open, and massive amounts of energy to enlarge from their planck lengths to a usable size.

Hyperspace is essentially travel through another set of dimensions than the 3 (+1 for time) we're used to. No violation of physics there, but we have no idea if there are more dimensions (although we do have good indicators). It's something we have very very little knowledge of; hyperspace is the farthest off of the three mentioned technologies, due to our massive lack of knowledge on the subject.

Warp drives are probably the least far off; they depend on warping space in front of you (compressing space-time) so that the journey through that space takes the same amount of time for the observer, but less for the rest of the universe...you travel the same distance, but because that 'distance' is smaller, when you get to your destination it turns out that you spent much less time traveling that distance. Or maybe you comprss space time to the rear, so that that space time ends up 'pushing' you forwards. Again, this is stuff we know little about (the actual geometry of space time, or rather how to influence it), mainly due to our lack of understanding of gravity (which somehow seems to tie in very much with rotation).

But anyway, neither of the technologies you mentioned violate known physics in any way. It's just that wormholes seem unpractical considering the energy requirements (although this might change when we get a better understanding of the structure of the universe), hyperspace is purely theoretical (idem ditto) and warp drive (ditto) which might be concievable when we detect our first gravitational wave.