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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.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/serenity/
Currently 83% fresh!
Saw it this morning. I never go to the theater, either. Props to Marcus Theaters in Gurnee. Great sound, great visual focus. Benefit of missing Navy pay day by a day.
Serenity has great Free Market plot lines, just as Firefly did. My "beloved" LRC has some good insight here andhere.
Even the theme song is freedom loving:
Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out
to the black.
Tell 'em I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea.
You can't take the sky from me.
Have no place
I can be
Since I found Serenity.
To bad Whedon's a socialist. Weird.
Maybe we can change that. I'm ready to pay Joss Whedon a nice annual subscription to have him bring Firefly back (web based video, high quality codec) to an online format. Fuck ox and Cable producers. Anyone know of a way to contact him about the idea?
FWIW the movie does feel TV-ish. I'd like to know what it was filmed on and edited on.
For the uninitiated, Serenity is based on the short-lived Fox television show Firefly
If you're that uninitiated, you'll need to know this-- Slashdot is a "Web Site" where we talk about geeky things.
Surely, if anyone on Slashdot hasn't heard of Serenity, it would cause a quantum singularity and we would all get sucked into a blackhole.
Not to get all Treky or anything.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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.
liqbase
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.
-nod- It's probably because I grew up on STNG, but I've always had trouble accepting the dystopic view of the future that a lot of sci-fi goes for. Most of the suffering that takes place on earth boils down to some combination of energy scarcity, resource scarcity and population density; once we have the resources and the energy to fling a life-supporting tub through space at speeds that make interplanetary travel practical, all those problems are relaxed a whole lot even given that you will still have petty warlords and barons exerting influence in their own little fiefdoms.
It's depressing (and I think/hope, implausible) to imagine a world with both warp drive and hunger.
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*ducks*
Good bye, karma. I barely knew you.
From what I have been told by my friends that went to the midnight screening (here in AUS) with me you need to know absolutly nothing.
/. post. I've seen it twice now (a preview screening and a midnight session) and I can tell you it is so amazing it wont matter how much or little you know about the 'verse.
Joss did such a good job introducing everyone that I don't think it would help for someone to try and cram that much back story into a
I know I'm bias but I can't recommend this movie enough. The raw emotion that comes from the ship, the characters and the story is overpowering. The throwaway lines that make up Joss' work fit are always in the right places.
Trust me as much as you trust any slashdotter, but you will enjoy this movie.
In case you didn't realize, 12:01 am was today. Just wanted to clarify.
End transmission.
Joss Whedon's feature-film debut, the science-fiction western "Serenity," is beautifully made, written with more wit and intelligence than we get from most contemporary movies of any genre, and features an ensemble of actors whose rhythms are almost supernaturally in tune. There's only one problem with "Serenity": It's not "Firefly," the TV show that first gave these characters, and this story, life in autumn 2002 on the Fox network.
Both "Firefly" (which is available on DVD) and this new movie incarnation of it detail the adventures and tribulations of a loner-rebel named Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and the ragtag crew of his space vessel, Serenity. Their story unfolds in a future world -- the 26th century, to be exact -- in which humans have left an uninhabitable earth to populate a new-old, way-out-there solar system. More Sam Peckinpah than "Star Trek," this isn't a shiny, sleek vision of the future: For one thing, the various planets in this new world have been recently divided by a brutal civil war, and the winning side -- the Alliance -- is now trying to gather all the outlying hoi polloi planets under its rule. Many of these planets are hardscrabble frontiers whose citizens still ride horses, use old-time firearms, and even, occasionally, wear sunbonnets. The idea isn't just that civilization as we know it has largely disappeared, but that people have been so buffeted by hardship that they've had to start practically from scratch.
The "Firefly" episodes burn slowly at first, but their emotional heat intensifies as you learn to live, and breathe, with the show's characters. That's an ancient narrative strategy, and one that Whedon had clearly mastered with his earlier series, the magnificent "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its less resonant but still deeply enjoyable spinoff, "Angel." But apparently, this newfangled mode of storytelling intimidated Fox executives. They pulled the plug on "Firefly" after airing only 10 of the 14 episodes Whedon and his cast had completed -- and broadcasting them out of sequence. "Firefly" was seen by almost no one when it aired, partly because even those who desperately wanted to watch it -- namely, the many fans Whedon had earned with his previous series -- couldn't even find it when they turned on their TVs at the appointed time: The episodes were shown in fits and starts, several of them having been preempted by the World Series.
That's probably the worst thing you could do to a Whedon show, considering that he builds his narratives with the dramatic precision of 19th century novels. They don't always grab you with the first episode -- they're not made that way. Whedon prefers to reel us in gently, first setting the scene and then, week by week, drawing us into a web of complex character relationships that become a kind of home for us. Fans of Whedon's shows are the modern-day equivalents of those readers who so long ago got hooked on Dickens, people who would wait on American docks for the next installments of his newspaper serials to arrive on these Godforsaken shores. (Dickens biographer Edgar Johnson recounts how "waiting crowds at a New York pier shouted to an incoming vessel, 'Is Little Nell dead?'")
That's how it should have worked with "Firefly." The show finally did find its audience when it was released on DVD in late 2003, and Whedon, who had never given up on the show and its extraordinarily well-matched cast, sought ways to spin its posthumous success into another project. And almost against all odds, a major movie studio, Universal, put its money (perhaps not a whole lot, but enough) on a show that had earned lots of love but not a whole lot of cash.
"Serenity" -- which Whedon wrote as well as directed -- is both a primer on "Firefly" and an extension of it, a picture carefully calibrated to satisfy fans without leaving newcomers stranded. Whedon sets up the back story neatly at the beginning, introducing all of his characters in a few fleet scenes. Their dialogue comes off as casual, but it's really tightly scripted, a compr
- Spryguy
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I'll be brief about the movie, it's excellent and much more so if you have watched the show.
With that out of the way I figured I would comment on this constant Whedon people versus non-Whedon fans. If you don't like anything he has done and think he is a hack, fine. I don't really care. What troubles me is not people who dislike Whedon or don't think that this movie going experience can compare to a late 50's Goddard film. What troubles me is that it seems a lot of those who continually put down his work don't follow up with what they feel is superb in the realm of cinema or TV and when they do it is usually the most testosterone driven, mindless drivel. I know it's a crime to say this but Star Wars is terrible. I am not just talking about Episode 1: Jar Jar's hijinx, I am talking about all of them. I have begun to think that what really gets to people on sites like this and AICN is the gender role reversals that regularly pop up in Whedon's work as this type of hegelian master/slave status switching makes this movie (as well as the show) an impossible vehicle for all of our masturbatory jingoist fantasies.
So, if you dislike Whedon but actually a brain resting inside your cranium then I salute you with the whole of my heart.
On the other hand if you enjoy all the forms of art that encourage passive participation and little to no critical analysis or thinking then please go back to watching some tits bounce around your TV screen.
./revolution
I caught a preview showing on monday here in Portland, OR. The crowd there very much enjoyed the show and there was a standing ovation at the end. While I did cheer with the rest of them and did enjoy the movie overall, I have to only give it 4 out of 5 stars. I won't spoil it for anyone and go into detail, but I was dissapointed with a couple things that seemed to detract from the flow of the movie so that's what knocked off a star. But there were plenty of good quotable lines, a decent plot, and quite a bit revealed about the FireFly universe that we didn't previously know about. I hope it does extreemly well in theatres and the actors come back and do another movie (the cast already signed a contract to do another movie if this one does well).
To save time searching for reviews (if that's what you're looking for), here you go. http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/serenity
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The biggest change people will notice, is the near-complete abandonment of the western theme. They still strap on their six-shooters, but that's about it. There's not a horse in sight. And finally, there's the Buffyication of the character of River. There's no indication in the series that she had been turned into the ultimate killing machine (no spoiler that, it's all over the trailers). But Riverbuffy goes on a couple of killing sprees that would look right at home at Sunnydale High.
The pilot wasn't very good. Just watch some of the other episodes. There's only six or so. It wont take long. It's the humor and cast chemistry that makes the show work. There's no science in the show, its pure entertainment.
Part of the point of Firefly that you miss in the pilot is that the captain and crew are fleeing the sterile, oppressive environment of Star Trek. In Firefly, the Federation/Alliance are the bad guys. The crew of Firefly want to live as they please. The life is crude and dirty, but they live every minute.
I didn't like Star Trek because it was overly contrived, condescending morality, and very little cast chemistry. It only got worse with each spinoff.
It definitely is sad to think about a future that isn't better than the world we live in today, but it's also hard to imagine large corporations and government departments truly looking out for the interests of the average person.
-- Reality is for people who lack imagination.
Julian Sanchez, over at http://www.reason.com/ has an interesting article about the Camus and Sartre influence in Serenitty.
*Warning MEGA Spoilers* *Warning MEGA Spoilers* *Warning MEGA Spoilers*An excerpt: (full text behind this link.)
You need to know nothing. I never watched "firefly" and I got it. It takes a little bit to come together but it does.
The male residents of Kashyyyk are probably just as disappointed that Jewel Staite looks nothing like a Wookiee.
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I'm sure the comparisons to Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Outlaw Star (nevermind Blake's 7 from 25 years ago) have been done to death ever since Firefly first aired. The thing is, it has some elements of these shows, yet it doesn't feel derivative of any of them. Yes, every time they land on a frontier world it feels like Trigun, but thats like saying Trigun feels like Big Jake or Cowboys (John Wayne films). The shows are borrowing from history, and attaching a bit of fiction along the way.
What I like is not where Whedon is necessarily getting his inspirations, but what he does with them on the screen. Firefly/Serenity is a lot of fun, and spared the heavy-handedness of the Trek and SW franchises. The show sort of takes itself half-seriously, and the latent humor in such an approach pays off rather well. I hope Whdeon gets to make more of this, although I read (somewhere on fireflyfans.net, I think) that Fox still owns TV rights.
While Energy and Mineral Resources won't be as Scarce in a Futuristic Space Society, Communication and Community will be. Even in the Firefly 'Verse, which is set in a little "Planet Village", It still takes days, or even Months to travel between Colonies. FTL reduces that time period, but the three big FTL Mechanisms, (Warp Drive, Hyperspace and Wormholes) all violate most Laws of Physics.
Also, an Art Deco Space Ship would be impossible to keep clean. All that Polycarbonate (like in the Tantive IV of StarWars) scratches real easy (like my iPod), and Brushed Metal stains quickly when it get's some Body Oil on it. They'd need more Cleaning crew than Tech crew.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
10:30pm showing at Century Eastport 16 (4040 SE 82nd Ave - 503-775-0000)
They apparently also have a ""Big Damn Pre-show Dinner" at Grand Buffet 4410 SE 82nd Ave (503) 788-8000 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm."
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I consider myself a reasonably discriminating movie enthusiast, and I abhorred the "War of the Worlds" remake and enjoyed "The Island" (also a remake, btw). Of course, I was expecting "War of the Worlds" to be good and "The Island" to be bad, from their respective previews. Cry_Wolf looked so bad I'm basing a parody submission for a trailer contest on it.
But to get back on-topic, I'm totally looking forward to Serenity (loved the series on DVD, not on Fox), but I have to admit the trailers make it look pretty dumb. Unfortunately, I'm not expecting much from the movie (hopefully it will wow me!), and I don't expect it will have a particularly awesome opening weekend, not only because of the trailers but because, frankly, who is going to want to watch a movie called "Serenity"? Sure, the title makes sense from the series, but isn't the whole point of any movie to have some sort of conflict? "Serenity" sounds like a sleeper, literally. Maybe it's a marketing snafu on Joss' part, or perhaps it's genius, if the movie is also genius. Sure, only an ignoramus will judge a book by its cover, but considering our current president, ignorance currently has majority representation in the US.
Strictly speaking, you only watched the first episode. Fox hated the actual pilot, and was not at all interested in airing it. AFAIK, it was first broadcast recently when sci-fi picked it up.
As for the clean look, after so many years of star trek, I find it boring. The Alliance in the show look very clean and proper. It makes an interesting contrast.
As a fan of the series, it's a great movie. Whedon did a great job of taking what I assume was several seasons of plot lines and collapsing them into a two hour movie. The result flowed well and didn't feel too rushed. I do suspect that spreading many of the developments over the course of many episodes would have made the important revelations all the more significant. As closure for the series, I'm very satisfied.
However, I'm pessimistic for people who haven't seen the series. Whedon does an admirable job providing a Cliff's Notes of the series. He even does so in a way that doesn't bug me as a fan; indeed several minor details that were never expounded upon in the series were cleared up. However much of power of the series was the attachment you formed to the characters. That's something that takes hours. You can't do it in a movie.
So I suspect the movie will do well in the short term as the fans flock to it, then it will quietly fade away. This will be the end of the series; it will remain with a cult fandom, but nothing more. (That said, I'm surprised at the positive reviews it's getting from people I doubt are fans.)
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It's got all the quick moving fun that made the first StarWars films so enjoyable. It's got the trade make character dialogue and that fans of Buffy will love. It's great, and you'll love it.
Recommended by 83% critics on the web, 93% users.
I havent watched the firefly series, but enjoyed the movie very much. Highly recommend it.
Sri
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.
I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
Unlike the above poster I only heard about the show from a couple of my friends. The were both discussing it pretty often after both bought the DVDs around the time they were released. I had never heard of it before and borrowed the set for a week. It surely didn't take much hype on their part for me to fall in love with the short-lived series. I'm not one to have a soft spot in my heart for scifi, even though I am a geek. I don't seek out sci fi like a lot of the more hardcore, but when things do find their way to me I am pretty discerning. Firefly succeded where others have failed because it was more than technological wet dream. It's got a very unique and well formed view of the future (which is what originally drew me to continue watching the series), the characters are very identifiable and empathetic, and the plotlines and story arc are, for the most part, very intriguing.
I often think that those who are unimpressed with the show felt so because it paints a very unglamorous pictures of the future. The way I see it, this could have been a documentary sent back in time. Everything is so believeable to me. I find that the Firefly/ Cowboy Bebop view of the future, one in which our toys have changed but that humanity hasn't, is as close to an accurate prediction of the future as I've seen.
Unfortunately, Joss never went on to explore that possibility. The series went on to become standard white-hats-vs-black-hats. The crew never does anything or says anything to make viewers question their values, and we never really get to see the Alliance side of the story. It's too bad. That would have made an interesting and challenging TV show.
Fox Networks screwed the show over pretty badly. The episodes have a pretty strong sequential order, and Fox aired them completely out of order: for example, the first episode that introduces the Captain & the ship was the last to be aired. The TV network just really mishandled the show, and then when (due to their mishandling) it didn't have a very high rating, they cancelled it before the season was even finished.
Anyway, even if you didn't catch any of the TV show, I'd still recommend seeing the movie: it doesn't require that you have seen any of the TV show to follow the plot, and is an excellent movie. If you like it, pick up the TV show's DVD box set.
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http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/25438/
...because, from these pictures of Jewel Staite, it's not would I, but how often would I. Serenity indeed.
I can't blame this Mr. [Matt] Anderson for being so happy. I wish her and the hotness-stealing bastard^W^W^Wgentleman luck.
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"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.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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and
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The first scene in the movie is the Allience's side of the story.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I believe Whedon has referred to the Enterprise-D as a "Floating Sheraton in Space"
I think it made me spit coffee out of my nose when I read that, and I'm a die hard trekkie as well.
There's something to be said for how much more interesting drama you can get when all of the main characters don't share the same ideals, though. The only thing keeping them together is that they're misfits and have no place in a society who has some rules that they don't believe in.
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Some Fox employee was running the projector. He showed baseball game before the film and then played the reels out of order. Oh well, I guess I'll wait for it to come out on DVD.
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According to:0 930.html
http://www.the-numbers.com/charts/daily/2005/2005
it did $4,200,000 over 2,188 cinemas, for an average of $1,920 at each.
Not bad for the first day out, I guess. It's recouped about 10% of the cost to make it. There are three new releases reported. Serenity is doing best, by a wide margin.
Disclaimer: I know nada about the movie biz, historical accuracy of data provided by the-numbers.com, etc. I was just curious, and Googling around.
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