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Whedon Calls Death Knell For Firefly
Ant writes "Entertainment Weekly is reporting on the end of Firefly." From the article: "Alas, Whedon's fond memories are also tainted by Serenity's status as a franchise nonstarter; despite Universal's best marketing efforts, the film only mustered $25 million. 'In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,' says Whedon, adding that it appears the Firefly saga has reached its conclusion. He has no regrets -- and he's moving on."
"...despite Universal's best marketing efforts..."
Sorry to say they must not have marketed hard enough. I watch more than my share of TV and don't recognize the movie title.
If indeed that is the best they can do; me thinks they should get a new ad agency...
Firefly is one of the most original and true series I have seen in a long time. I have been a fan of the TV series ever since it aired (or close to) and saw the movie in the first day, which was also exceptional. Having humor, action, drama and horrir mixed together in a palattable form is a nice change to degraded shows like "Nip Tuck" which are about immorality and things that are fucked up. Do people not take to anything somewhat wholesome anymore?
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Of course you could be cynical about it.
Joss realizes that this news will get out to the rabid fans IMMEDIATELY BEFORE RELEASE OF THE DVD... Is it coincedence?? I don't think so.
Because Fox owns the rights to the TV series, yes still. That's why it was made into a movie. Whedon was trying to keep it going
... And so it comes to this.
Is that a joke? Lost gives you a few mysteries at a time? When lost does give an answer, it opens up 10 more questions, and doesn't even really answer the question. Here are some examples.
Who is desmond, the french lady, and ethan?
What is the really big thing in the woods?
What is with the numbers?
How is hurley not losing any weight?
That is just a small sampling of unknowns. I have never seen firefly so you may be joking but your complaint is what I am starting to dislike about lost.
Pardon my ignorance if I didn't get the sarcasm.
Perhaps not so ironic.
Viral marketing?
Bueller?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
The show flopped. It was cancelled. If someone can't be bothered to watch a show when it's on his TV in his lown iving room, why in the world would he be bothered to leave his house, get in his car, drive several miles to a theater, wait in line for tickets, watch the movie, and then drive back home?!
I'm not saying the show was bad or that the movie was bad. I've seen either. But a flop via broadcast will almost certainly lead to a flop in the theater. Why anyone would think otherwise is beyond me.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I guess that's the difference.. I couldn't watch Lost because I thought the writers were just spoon-feeding the audience. I thought Lost was the worst writing I'd ever seen, down there with Buffy and Angel.
My opinion of Firefly was that it was briliantly written, excellent *realistic* dialogue, and very witty.
I'm also of the opinion that most other SF shows are crap. Finally Firefly gave us a show that was action-packed from beginning to end, unlike those shows that wallow in political "intrigue" trying to make some clever statement about life. Sod that!
Action is where it's at; Firefly and Serenity had it in spades.
This is a sad day indeed, but I hold out hope that comic books will continue the tale of our favourite crew.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
C'mon, there are all kinds of equally, or more entertaining shows.
Huh? What the hell are you on?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think of Firefly as the TV version of Christ's second coming, but what exists on TV that's worth watching? And what shows exist in sufficient quantity to warrant the "all kinds of" label?
Whenever I flip through the major network stations, all I see is new reality shows and faceless "family dramas". Surely you're not suggesting anyone watch that crap?
Only new show this season I watched completely was HBO's Rome, and it wasn't so much because it is a great show, I'm just a fan of all things Roman. When new episodes pop up in on demand I'll watch Mythbusters as well. Other than that.. TV is absolute crap.
Sci-Fi is owned by Fox so I don't see them picking up the TV serie again to be a problem. Especially since Sci-Fi have been showing the first season already.
I know a lot of people found themselves enthralled in the whole "cowboys in space" theme, but why I cannot fathom.
It's not just "cowboys in space". It's about a man who is struggling to stay true to his heart. It's about the crew that grows up around him. It's about extreme civil disobedience in an opressed society. It's about doing what's necessary and about doing what's right. Space is just the scenery.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
We won't make it and we can't take the chance that someone else will make it, it will be a success and we will be shown to have made yet another bad decision.
If we don't want it no-one can have it.
Why would he do that? It wouldn't work. Anyone who is going to panic and rush out to buy the DVD because of this news... was going to buy the DVD anyway and probably had it pre-ordered.
Odds are this sort of public pessimism will have a minimal positive impact on DVD sales. What it will do is make it that much harder to pitch in the future, having expressed this skepticism.
Much as I enjoy Firefly, I'm inclined to take this at face value, and I can't see anybody making any more movies out of it. Sure, Serenity will make a profit in the end, but not enough to make up for the opportunity cost of the profits you can make with $40million on another movie.
Oh come on, he happens to make this statement on the very day the DVD is set to be released? Sounds like a marketing gimmick to me... If the DVD sales are amazing - and they might be, considering the cult status of the show - he can then announce a miraculous comeback.
Actually I think this could have a negative effect on sales. The fanboys were already planning to buy multiple copies of the DVD (as gifts to family, friends, strangers on the street-corner...), all in hopes of pushing sales high enough to get a remake. But with the creator implying that he's done with the franchise anyway, what's the point? So some people might decide to "only" buy copies for themselves instead...
I never really got into Buffy though I often saw it and enjoyed it, especially the "Grrr...argh" zombie at the end of every episode. Same with Angel, though I thought that was a much better show but only caught a few episodes. I heard Firefly was a good show and thought "what the hell" and bought the DVD, loved it. Until I watched it I didn't even know who Joss Whedon was, or that the show was made by the guy who made Buffy and Angel. "all" the computer nerds and sci-fi geeks (I'm one myself, what of it?) didn't jump on because of Joss, so stop throwing around accusations like we only love it because of its creator because that's gorram bullshit.
Firefly is obviously not a huge hit.
Firefly the series is the 6th most popular DVD sale at Amazon.com and Serenity is the most popular DVD sale on Amazon.com today. How do you define a hit?
This is one of the things that made Firefly so great. These days, aliens, robots, artificial intelligence and time travel are the tired plots of conventional stories, and the concept that the universe really isn't so different from home and we'll never really evolve past the emotions and biases we've got right now was a very new and different presentation of our future. It's a refreshing take on the genre that I always thought they pulled off brilliantly.
I hope that this is just a marketing gimmick, but I don't think it is. Oh well, who knows? If DVD sales are high enough, you know they'll do more with it. No one turns down free money when it's waved in front of them. I just hope that whatever Firefly's future holds, it lives up to the standard set by its past. I'd rather see nothing else happen with it than for it to be dumbed down for the masses.
But the fans already know there won't be a sequel without strong DVD sales. What this interview seems to be saying is that even with strong sales, Whedon may not be interested in continuing. That makes the buying argument weaker than before, and probably depresses many fans just when you'd want them out hyping your product.
They only got $38 mil total for the Serenity movie, about $ 3/4 mil short of the public production costs.
Which they will more than make up for when it goes to DVD. So don't feel to sorry for them.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Broadcast rights != Production rights
SciFi got a deal to run the reruns, just like Cartoon Network got Family Guy reruns. But the rights to make new episodes are still tightly guarded by Fox.
I think it's because we assume that the people that run large corporations are vastly more competent then they actually are. That's where you get all of these conspiracy theories and stories about hating a particular show.
The truth is that they probably have no idea how to make a product work and they're just fishing around hoping to make it work out right for their bottom line. There's probably a good deal of petty squabbling and bureaucratic squabbling that gets things pushed around more than the merits of any particular program.
Surprisingly, network people are just that, people.
By the way, I never saw Buffy or Angel
You, my friend, are lucky. I guess I was too old when they came out to see them as anything but LCD pandering.
Joss Whedon really came into his own when he made Firefly. Hopefully its financial tanking doesn't set him on a backslide.
As Tolkein once noted in his essay "On Fairy Stories", if you have to suspend disbelief, the author failed. The true test of a good story, Tolkein argued, is that you shouldn't have to suspend anything. It should feel real to you, at least to the point where things "just make sense". Lengthy technobabble and explanations shouldn't be necessary.
Again, though, most of this is equally true, no matter what the setting. When the setting is exceptionally difficult, expensive or unusual, therefore, the setting has to be relevent. Asimov's Foundation series could not work in a Wild West setting. The original Star Wars trilogy uses space to express enormity - something no other setting could provide - so whilst the story is a fairly trivial quest in and of itself, it couldn't carry the range of expression in any other setting. The Matrix is also a fairly trivial quest, but requires the deformable, maliable nature of virtual reality in order to cover the metaphysics of the story. It simply couldn't work anywhere else.
Serenity, on the other hand, had nothing new in it and required nothing from the setting. The story looked like a simple mesh of a cowboys-and-indians western with Matrix-style combat, Libertarian vs. The Evil Commies politics, and stole the "alien enemy" from an Asimov short story.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Which mysteries have they wrapped up exactly? Do we know what the island is? No. Do we know why there are polar bears there? No. Do we know who The Others are? No. And these are all mysteries that were introduced in the first season.
Lost is pretty popular and I used to like it a lot, but I stopped watching because the writers NEVER resolve anything of real importance.
Firefly, OTOH, was cancelled before they had the chance to pay off any of their setups.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
I don't understand how you can say that allowing Wash and Book to be killed was an attempt to reach a wider audience.
If anything I felt that it showed the core audience that this was not an episode of a TV series, where much could be expected to end up the same at the end as at the beginning. New viewers would not know of their earlier contributions to the story and would be much less attached to them.
I don't see how new viewers can have been a factor in the decision to let them die. New viewers would have gotten the same effect of seriousness if new characters had been added and then killed.
Also, River had been shown as having a 'super weapon' mode in the Firefly series, where she closed her eyes and killed three armed troops with three shots in about one second, so the movie was not 'turning' her into something new.
I loved the movie and will own the DVD today (first day out). If nothing else, you finally get to see what a Reaver really looks like.
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
Joss Whedon quotes:
''I should say I'm above reading reviews,'' he says. ''But I would be lying.''
''In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,'' says Whedon
As for Serenity, ''I have closure,'' he says. ''And now, I can have it in my home which means that finally I can actually stop working on it.''
Wow, how enlightening. Not a fucking word outta Joss's mouth about the end of Firefly (as opposed to Serenity - the movie.) Sure we have some screwball reporter's interpretation of whatever was said in the interview. Some say the reporter is paraphrasing him when he said that even if there is no more Firefly, the movie at least has some closure. For the number of times Joss talked about ideas for the future (ex. about Jubal Early - "Oh, I know he survived.") and how DVD sales will help determine Firefly's future, it's hard to imagine him totally giving up on the Firefly universe. Until I see exactly what Joss said, I have a real hard time swallowing this story whole.
On a side note, I am a rabid fan. Firefly is Joss Whedon's masterpiece so far. Astonishing X-Men is alright, Angel was good, and Buffy never really drew me in, but I do plan to watch my brother's copy of the series sometime. But if Joss is giving up on Firefly for good, he is throwing away the crown-fucking jewels , imho (which matters not, i am well aware...)
Thanks for letting me rant. This article is just really ticking me off right now.
Which executives? What grudge? They're in the business of business. If they're not making money, they're fired.
iTunes would be great for shows like Firefly
You really think 320x240 video would do it justice? It's rather sad to see so many people pinning the hopes for internet TV delivery on iTunes video, when the 320x240 rez puts it so far below tvtorrents.net in quality.
Talk about a flashback. This was the most common thing I heard on the boards "they live in a dangerous world and killing wash made that world more realistic".
But I think that's really superficial. First of all, realism isn't the goal of entertainment. Realism is boring - we spend 1/3 our lives unconcious. That's real. Try that for a movie. When people say they want a movie to be "real" they mean they want it to be an immersive experience. This is something that fans of schindler's list and braveheart have in common with fans of the original star wars: we all want the movies to SEEM real, but not really be real.
And so the problem with killing Wash to me was that it DIDN'T help immerse me in the world. We've already seen one village decimated by reavers, the recording of another woman raped to death by reavers, AN ENTIRE F***ING PLANET where everyone's dead, every one the crew has ever met has died, one of the crew die, a lot of extra people die, and we're about to see Mr. Universe die. Oh and by the way the captain has threatened to start shooting his own crew. So for me, anyway, the whole "dangerous world" point had already been made.
What really bugs me, however, is that people act as though realism means people dying. How many people die in a real war? That are shot, I mean. In Iraq there's like what, 9 injured that survive to every one that dies? And yet in movies it's binary. You are shot and you either live or you die. So to me it seems amazingly hollow and superficial to be like "people dying is realistic". No, people GETTING HURT is realistic. When was the last time you saw a show or a movie where a main character got hurt and had to learn to live with the disability. I mean aside from the sub-genre where that IS the plot most characters exist in this crazy world where you're alive or you're dead. Could Wash have been paralyzed, lost an arm or a leg? THAT would have been realistic and challenging - but the truth is that that's not what we want in our movies - no matter how dark of a tone we're after.
I'm not desperately trying to say "why did they have to kill him", I'm saying that a world where bullets either kill you or you make a full recovery is just as escapist as a world where none of the hero's die. I would like to see a movie, this or any other, where a character suffers a serioues, permenant injury and the show goes on. That's not the whole plot, he never recovers, he just learns to live with the disability and the rest of the characters learn to deal with it.
In America we all avidly follow the body count in Iraq, but when we see someone without a limb or in a wheelchair we either stare or look away and in the end go back to our escapist world where you're either whole or gone. That's not reality at all.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Whether you like the scene or not, you have to stand in awe of Joss for having the balls to pull something like that.
No, you don't. It was a stupid, arrogant descion by Mr. Whedon that had no greater effect than to alienate most of his audience. It doesn't cause the audience to believe that all of the rest of the characters might die. It doesn't do anything to give heighted meaning to anything that happens in the rest of the film. And it doesn't allow for any character development in the others whatsoever.
He dropped the ball, just like a news anchor who suddenly starts telling dirty jokes.
Actually, it's more like "We won't make it, and we won't allow anyone else to make it, because it's ours. We don't care that it might make or lose money for someone else. It's our football, and nobody else gets to play with it."
Come on. It sucks that the show is dead, but Mr. Whedon did make a deal, and he did make a lot of money. When Josh sold Firefly to Fox he was just coming from Buffy and Angel, both very succesful (Buffy more so, of course.) I guarantee his deal was for six figures, if not seven. Universal probably got a better deal since the show wasn't so much of a hit, but it probably wasn't cheap to negotiate either. He could have held out for an option that returns the property back to him after a period of inactivity (though the major studios may or may not have gone for that.) Or better yet, he could have gone to Sci-Fi or another cable channel in the first place and got a deal that would have been more to his favor-- and put the show on in a place that would have a better chance of nurturing it, where a small but loyal fan base could carry a show. If he really felt this was a story that must be told he could have arranged for independant financing, produced the film himself and held on to all of the rights. He did not do that. He went for the major studio money and made a fair deal on their terms, knowing full well that the stakes are higher and most ideas don't make it. Yes, it's theirs and they can say what the future of Firefly/Serenity is... But the studios did invest quite a bit of money and time into productions that had a chance and failed. Why should they be expected to give back the rights? Because a relatively small fan base wants them to? Does Whedon even want them back?
Did the studios give the property a fair shake? Fox didn't, IMHO, but at least it was on the air for a while, which is more than most good ideas can say. Universal promoted it pretty heavily but it still tanked. Maybe this is just an idea that wasn't meant to find a mass audience. Anyway, Whedon's a creative guy, I'm sure he has more projects in the works.
Don't Panic!
It appears that Joss was taken way out of context.
http://whedonesque.com/comments/9027
Nothing to do with cowboys in space. It's not about genre. It's about character development and good dialogue. And please don't come back with other examples of character development and good dialogue in sci-fi. It's not the olympics you know, there's no competition for a single gold medal. We can have any number of good shows on TV in a given genre.
Oh, wait... I guess we can't.
Cheers.
I though that killing Wash and Book was a great move. At the end I actually thought the good guys might fail, that Joss might kill them all off (my friend, who I saw it with, thought they would send the message, but still all die). I can't remember the last time I actually believed a movie might end with the good guys failing and dying (of course, this belief was helped by previously having seen everything else Joss has made).
If Wash and Book hadn't died, the ending wouldn't have been nearly as good because I never would have doubted that they would succeed.
But, damn, the fact that they killed Wash and that they were willing to kill Wash is what gave the movie much of it's power.
I came out of that movie thinking, gee, that was a hard-hitting movie. The fact that Wash got killed, and the way that he did, was in the forefront of my mind when I thought that.
Did I like it that Wash died? No! But I think it helped make for a great film. I didn't like it in the sense that I liked Wash and wanted him not dead... but I didn't think that it made the movie bad, nor did I see it as a slap in the face. Indeed, it made the movie stronger. The depth of the suffering and challenge that the characters went through in that movie would have been more implausible if they all came through it alive. If you aren't ever willing to kill off characters you really care about, then it becomes harder and harder to sustain any thrill or fear for the characters you really care about when watching any movie or series.
Frankly, Firefly fans who saw that as a slap in the face to them wanted not good film and a good story, but wanted to be coddled with warm and fluffy stories of mock danger about their favorite people. It's not really what Whedon does. Watch Star Trek for that kind of thing; there, you only have to worry about a character's life after you've heard about contract disputes or dissatisification with the show on the part of one of the actors.
-Rob
Look at the three Whedon television shows (Serenity included) and you will see one glaring detail.
If there is one thing that Joss loves to do, it's to get people really engrossed in the characters and then kill them off. Both Buffy and Angel have each died twice and many other side characters have bit the big one in many ways; some very touching and others just pointless.
Joss even teased us with Mal's death in the movie back in June 2004.
Without advance spoilers, I watched the movie knowing full well that some of the beloved crew would not be coming out alive. The deaths in the movie could be used to convey a sense of realism; the idea that everyone dies, even loved ones. They could also just be included because Joss is a sadist and never got to kill anyone when the show was on TV.
it's good storytelling. You can't tease viewers with life or death situations if your main characters are invulnerable. Wash's death was gut wrenching to fans but it also set up the final part of the movie where you really had no clue if they were going to make it. That, my friend, is why they died.
I was just really, really hoping for the movie to be popular in order to bring back the TV show.
Then you were full of false hope. Joss Whedon only got the movie deal by signing an agreement not to bring it back as a TV show. Furthermore, he had been expressing an interest, ever since the "Firefly" cancellation, in getting out of the TV business entirely and just doing movies. Notice how he hasn't started anything new in the wake of both Buffy and Angel ending?
If "Serenity" did really well, it might have meant two more movies, but that's about it.
Killing Wash was a brilliant move. The fact that it was a "meaningless" death feeds directly into the almost nihilistic worldview which Whedon (a militant athiest with a fetish for objectivism) had been injecting into Firefly almost from the beginning.
If you don't see how perfectly it fits in to his universe to have Wash take a reaver grappling hook (just like the one he pointed out in the pilot episode when a reaver ship passes nearby) right in the chest just as everything looks like it will be okay, then you weren't watching the show very closely. Sensless brutality is the world in which Joss Whedon pretty much always sets his stories.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Wash was Joss Whedon's proxy in the cast. He looked like a young Joss Whedon, talked like him, had his attitude, and got all the funniest lines.
In short, that character was the author's voice.
Killing Wash established that "all bets are off." It was just about the last thing any fan of the show expected, and Whedon had to do something on that scale of unexpected tragedy to change the tone and make it clear that you weren't just watching a two-hour TV epdisode and paying eight bucks to do so.
It's also typical of Whedon's M.O. Everything you said so far throughout these threads sounds exactly like the complaints of thousands of angry lesbians which erupted when Tara (Willow's girlfriend) was shot in Season 7 of Buffy. "It wasn't needed" "the show will be weaker now" "it seemed meaningless to the story." Heck, do a global replace of "Wash" with "Tara" and throw in a little whining about how big media hates real lesbians, and your posts would fit right in to the whine-fests from back then.
News Flash: Whedon is not only willing to kill off well-loved characters, he's actually eager for the chance to do so. He's an evil god who never wants his creations to be happy. Bear that in mind when watching anything he makes.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you don't see how perfectly it fits in to his universe to have Wash take a reaver grappling hook (just like the one he pointed out in the pilot episode when a reaver ship passes nearby) right in the chest just as everything looks like it will be okay, then you weren't watching the show very closely. Sensless brutality is the world in which Joss Whedon pretty much always sets his stories.
Actually I AM watching it very carefully - and that is why I dislike it so much. Here's something for you to consider:
the world has gone nutty and contemporary art always paints the spirit of its times. Rodin died about the time the world started flipping its lid. His successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition and they copied that part. What they failed to see was that the master told stories that laid bare the human heart. They became contemptuous of painting or sculpture that told a stories --they dubbed such work 'literary'. They went all out for abstractions.
Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right --for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror. What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience. These laddies who won't deign to do that -- or can't --lost the public
This is the story of what happened with Serenity. Wheddon is very smart, and he's alwayss flirted with the border of nihilism. But what he had in Firefly was NOT nihilism - it was existentialism. It was the portrayal of a universe devoid of meaning but it was also the portrayal of men and women who through sheer force of will imposed meaning on that universe.
Consider Simon's arrival on the ship. When he asks why Mal came back for him Mal replies "'Cause your one of my crew. Why we still talkin' about this?" There is no rhyme or reason to whether or not Simon is part of the crew. Mal simply imposes his reality on the universe.
It is this imposition of the human heart onto the unfeeling universe that made people love Firefly. Sure - the universe was crappy and dangerous but Firefly (the ship) was warm and full of light because the crew made it so. The depiction of a nihilistic universe was a contrast to the existential power of the human soul - and this message resonated with viewers.
But in Serenity by killing Wash Wheddon stepped over the line into nihilism. There is no room for the human heart in nihilism - is is destruction and absense of meaning. In the death of Wash the warmth and emotion of Firefly is subsumed in the cold chaos of the cosmos.
Whether you like this or not isn't a factor of whether or not you can understand the philosophies involved - nor is it a factor of which is more "real". If you are a nihilist, if you get a thrill out burning meaning out of existence than this tickles your fancy. It's a big "fuck you" to every thing that humans care about as far as narrative and meaning are concerned. But if you wanted the existentialists to win out - if you believe that the human spirit can imbue a senseless realm of chaos with order, meaning and narrative then killing Wash is a stab in the heart.
Besides, I don't believe that Wheddon is a nihilist. If he was, then we wouldn't have the ending that we do - where Mal says "we're flying, it's enough". That's existentialism coming back.
The trouble is that you can't rectify nihilism and objectivism with existentialism in the final analysis. Objectivism is the ultimate denial of existentialism. Both start with a world devoid of meaning - existentialism imbues the world with meaning, objectivism denies that possibility.
As long as Wheddon holds the two in dynamic contrast throughout his stories - which he does in Firefly - propoenents of both can enjoy the series. But when he tries to allow both to win out - as he does in Serenity - than the existentialists will jump ship.
Argh - have to get back to work! What it comes do
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I can see the point about how killing Wash increased tension. I just think that that's an overly simplistic analysis. That's the trouble I get into on these messageboards (and msg boards in general). You score points by being fast and witty - not by trying to really see intricate details. So I'm not arguing that "killing off nice characters is bad" or that "tension and suspense don't matter".
I'm just trying to say that if you think about it carefully and weigh the benefits of killing Wash to the cost - I think it was a bad decision.
First, I think it was a bad decision in the specific sense:
Honestly I really think Simon should have died. I think that would made a much better story. He's already a kind of Messiah-figure to River by giving up his life (his job, family, wealth and status) to try and give her back her life (her sanity). The pieces are all in place for a final sacrifice. It would have been far more poignant - especially in demonstrating that while River may be able to kill hordes of Reavers she lacked the power to save her brother in the end. I think that's a much richer path that the film could have taken.
Furthermore I don't think Simon was an integral part of the crew. He was a fun character, but most of what made him a good character was his caretaking for River - and that was now over. Sure as a doc he'd be useful, but as a character I felt he'd run his course.
Now my second objection. Not only do I object specifically to the decison, but I object to it because of the larger philosophical implications.
You see it may have been more realistic to kill Wash because "anyone can die", but we don't go to see movies to see random. We go to see the complete oposite. We want to see form, symetry, plot and narrative - all of these things are the OPPOSITE of random. If we interpret realistic to mean "like it would happen in real life" we're going to lose what we like about movies - the fact that they are NARRATIVES for what we don't like about real life - that it's utterly meaningless at the core. I don't want meaningless movies, I want movies that HAVE meaning.
Imagine going to a movie where every pixel of every frame was randomly generated. That's "real". Or, if you think that's too much, imagine going to a movie where they just stuck camera glasses on a guy, taped for 2 hours, and put it on the screen. As an experimental flick it would be really interesting - there'd be stuff to talk about what it does to our perception of art. Now imagine that those were the ONLY movies made. Pretty soon it's not so interesting.
And so I'm opposed to "realism" in the sense of "shit happens". There's a place for that in the movie - but in order for it to be good I think you need to place the "shit happens" in the framework of a narrative.
That's one of our greatest challenges as humans - finding a framework for our lives. I think existentially speaking we're not "finding" so much as "creating". We impose our own narrative on our own lives day by day and moment by moment - creating meaning in what we do. We create meaning and we invest it in our lives, friendships, memories, possessions and aspirations. None of those things exist in the "real" world, but they do exist in our narratives. That's how meaning gets into life. And I think that sometimes we fail to make sense of things that happen to us, and art's greatest calling is try and succeed where we may have failed - to show that meaning survives all that life can throw at it. If art has lost meaning, than it ceases to be art. If art has lost the ability to convey meaning than it ceases to be art and becomes "pseudo-intellectual masturbation" intead (read the quote at end of post!).
If you take the opposite approach and give up and see that meaning doesn't matter - then where does that take you? In Serenity it takes you to killing Wash and thinking it was a great idea. But you still like killing Wash because it happens in the greater context of meaning. Wash was somebody
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
More to the point, the movie was the first time we got to see "the real Mal" as Whedon intended. On the TV series, he was constantly told to nice-up the character as a quirky and lovable anti-hero, rather than the broken man that he was supposed to be.
We got to catch glimpses of it, such as the scene when he locked Jayne in the airlock, but for the most part "Captain Thight-pants" was a rather happy-go-lucky character on the TV series, and it suffered for it.
I loved the series, but the movie finally allowed Whedon to do a lot of things he clearly had wanted to do with the show from the beginning, but lacked the free hand to do so.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Correction: It's a staple to kill disposable henchmen.
Firefly/Serenity is an interesting case. To fans Wash was indispensable. So for fans, it was successful to shock them. But those fans are the same ones that were fans OF THE TV SHOW. And therefore a lot of them - not all of them - were not happy to see their TV show treated like a common action movie.
Because newbies to the show had no way of knowing how indispensable Wash was - and so as far as they were concerned he was as dispesable as any of the characters from Predator that weren't Ahnold.
So you've got three groups of people.
1 - Newbies benefit little from seeing Wash die. They have no reason to suspect he (or anyone else) won't die, and so this doesn't really alter the movie for them.
2 - Whedonites who expect Whedon to hurt them so good. They should also not need any reason to fear the safety of the entire crew - they know his MO.
3 - Firefly fans who love the TV show and don't know much about Whedon. These guys are the only ones who have any reason to suspect that Wash et al are invulnerable. You'd think offing Book would clue them in. But killing Wash does show them "anyone can die". Trouble is, this is basically an attempt to turn them into Whedonites and as it turns out a lot of them don't like Whedon's universe where random people get killed in ways that serve the "in the moment" feeling of the movie but serve no greater purpose. When Wash gets toasted you think "anyone could die" but guess what - that only works the first time you see it! The 2nd and 3rd time it's pointless. So in the long range, killing Wash was pointless. It just made one viewing more exciting, and cut off the possibility of ever seeing him show up in a show again. A lot of Firefly fans considered this a bum trade.
I still don't know why the same people who lecture me on Whedon's MO are the ones that are like "OMG! Then I thought ANYONE could die!" If they knew Whedon's MO, and they STILL needed to see Wash die to know anyone could die - then they must be really, really dense.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
people get killed ... but serve no greater purpose.
Goddamn, you can stop repeating that any time now, it won't make it true.
Wash's death served the purpose of moving the story to where the storyteller wanted to move it. Just because the purpose was lost on you (because it crushed your fantasy of the show someday coming back on TV with all your favorite characters intact) doesn't mean that the purpose wasn't there.
I *loved* the series, and Wash was my second-favorite character after Kaylee. Women in the crowd audably gasped in horror at his death, as if an actual family member died right in front of them. The death of that character made the movie a better movie, which is the only reason to have anything happen in a movie.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.