Serenity Trounces Star Wars

DogBotherer writes "The BBC is reporting that the film Serenity has been voted the number-one Sci Fi film of all time. Serenity is a followup to the series Firefly. The 2005 film beat out Star Wars better than two-to-one for the top honors. This result came in a poll of 3000 readers of SFX magazine.

Comments

I hate Star Wars

[TodMinuit]

But Serenity wasn't that great of a film. Firefly was an amazing TV show, but the film was without the same depth.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[vux984]

but the film was without the same depth

That's what happens when you only have ~120 minutes (movie) instead of ~650 minutes (series)

Few people will sit through a 600+ minute movie, no matter how deep it is.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[Jason Earl]

Are you saying that Star Wars doesn't have a loyal fan base? That's quite possibly the most ridiculous thing that I have ever heard. "Jedi" is an organized religion in many countries. Serenity can't touch that.

Let's be realistic. Star Wars is popular to the point of becoming a cultural phenomenon, and there are more Star Wars fans that are completely obsessed with the franchise than there are people who even saw Serenity. Heck, more people dressed up as Wookies last Halloween than saw Serenity.

What's even more hilarious is that Serenity even made the top ten. Ten years from now people will still be talking about Star Wars, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and pretty much everything else on the list. Serenity won't even be a foot note.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[AigariusDebian]

I wonder why animated sci-fi was not included in the same vote. For example anime series such as Cowboy Bebop and Trigun could very easily compete with Serenity and Star Wars in all departments, especially in story and characters.

BTW: if you liked Firefly/Serenity, then watch Cowboy Bebop series - it gave a lot of inspiration to the Firefly. And Trigun is of very similar quality but with more humour and even more bitter end.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[julesh]

Let's be realistic. Star Wars is popular to the point of becoming a cultural phenomenon, and there are more Star Wars fans that are completely obsessed with the franchise than there are people who even saw Serenity. Heck, more people dressed up as Wookies last Halloween than saw Serenity.

Yes, but what's the cross-section of those fans with SFX magazine's readers? My guess is that most of those fans are pretty-much exclusively star wars fans, and therefore likely wouldn't read a general scifi magazine like SFX.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[Captain Splendid]

Hadn't thought about it that way, and I have to say you've got my vote on that, and I'm a huge Firefly geek. And when you stop to think about the styles and skills of the involved auteurs, it makes a lot fo sense: George Lucas, able at times to bring out work that is simply stunning, but leave him running too long and he'll fuck it up, whereas Joss Whedon's always plan for the long haul (yes, I know that's par for the course when you work in TV, but his methodology is evident in most everything he does.

One is a visionary, well-versed in the peaks and troughs associated with that status. The other is simply a master storyteller, laying his foundations like a brickie and keeping his eye on the finish line.

Dang, it's 4AM, Hope any of that made sense, as I'm not gonna preview it!

Re:I hate Star Wars

[Fallingcow]

Good point.

If that'd happened with B5, I'd be able to comfortably and comfortably call it the greatest sci-fi series of all time, past and future. Sadly, we've got a rushed 4th season, an off-kilter and mediocre 5th, and a couple of (reputedly, I haven't watched them out of fear of the suck) crappy tv movies, thanks to the bastard suits.

I really, REALLY want the US tv producers to get their acts together and start producing reasonably-long (1-5 seasons, not never-ending 10-season monstrosities) with full story arcs. Tell me a story, goddamn it, and don't leave me constantly in terror that you will yank the show JUST before it gets a chance to wrap up, or push the writers in to making it much longer than it ought to be, then making them rush in an ending.

If they do that, then I can stop watching anime. I don't WANT to watch anime, but their well-developed characters and pre-planned series-length plot arcs are such a draw...

So please, corporate media gods, save me from anime. For the love of god, save me. 90% of the other Americans who watch this stuff are ugly, introverted, cheeto-faced losers with no social skills, and I'm afraid that their disease is contagious :(

Re:I hate Star Wars

[HexRei]

"Ten years from now people will still be talking about Star Wars, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and pretty much everything else on the list. Serenity won't even be a foot note."

Out of all the other hyperbole in your post, this stands out as the most inaccurate. Serenity was an important scifi film and will be talked about still in ten years, as will the Firefly series. Perhaps not as much as Star Wars, but it doesn't help your argument any to overstate your case and alienate fans of both properties.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[master_p]

But Lord of the Rings was a very successful 600+ minute movie, and many went out and bought the DVD with the extras, despite having watched the movie at the theaters. And I have been in a few Lord of the Rings whole-day-viewing marathons myself.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[@madeus]

Who gives a rat's who reads SFX? Gosh, I cant see how that would be relevent to the poll. You may want to RTFA.

And the grandparent's comment stands: "More people dressed up as Wookiees last Halloween than saw Serenity." People. Not SFX readers. People. Period." Star Wars is more popular, it doesn't mean those who like it feel more strongly about it or make them 'loyal fans'. It's pretty hard to be a 'loyal fan' when the quality of the material varies so greatly. If anything, have a wide popular fanbase it means the strength of feeling is likely to be much diluted - think Manchester United supporters, for example.

I know people who are loyal fans of a few different stories/franchises. While most people I know really like Star Wars and we'd trape along to the cinema if a new trilogy was coming out, I don't really know anyone that feels as strongly about it as people do about smaller, tighter (i.e. more consistantly good quality) franchises like Firefly.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[Cappy Red]

"What's even more hilarious is that Serenity even made the top ten. Ten years from now people will still be talking about Star Wars, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and pretty much everything else on the list. Serenity won't even be a foot note."

I disagree. People will still be talking about Serenity because people will still be talking about Firefly. It isn't a question of Serenity's value by itself, in a similar way to Star Wars' appeal not being a question of the original film by itself.

Without the latter two films in the original trilogy, Star Wars wouldn't have nearly the fanbase it does now.(Yes, including RotJ, Ewok haters) The three films of the original trilogy came out in a manner that allowed the series to span the childhoods of its first generation fanbase.(and as much as it pains me to say it, there's a good chance that the second trilogy will benefit from a similar effect) Anyway, none of the films by themselves would have inspired the fanatical devotion they enjoy now.

Though Firefly and its associated stories won't have that childhood-spanning quality, with the revolutions and evolutions in media and entertainment, Firefly won't need it. Star Wars came out at the dawn of the VCR. Firefly was born into an era where the home entertainment industry is not just well established, but arguably as important as the theatre industry. Even more importantly, Firefly was born into an era where movies and television shows are traded on file-sharing networks. It isn't nearly so hard to stay in the public consciousness now as it was in 1977, 80, or 83. If you raved to a friend about this movie you saw then with lasers and swords and intensive breathing apparatuses, and it was out of theatres or on its way out, there wasn't much chance of your friend seeing it.(not that you would have been a particularly good friend had you waited that long to tell them about it) Now your friend can get the show off the net and be on their merry.

And then, of course, there's also the penchant of the internet to foster geeky forums devoted to minutiae. If the internet can resurrect a forgotten Sega Mega Drive game from 1989 and turn its horrible translation into a cultural phenomenon, then surely it can foster a fanbase for a well conceived but ill-fated sci-fi franchise from 2002.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[holysin]

I think jarjar would be Judas, I can't see Jarjar starting a "new" religion. But he did cause the first movie to be fairly crucified by a lot of the Star wars lovers, so yeah, I stick with Judas (and not the Book of Judas sort of Judas either ;-) )

Re:I hate Star Wars

[p3d0]

... an utterly unoriginal storyline. You know, it's only fairly recently that originally trumps all else as a measure of value. God help Shakespeare if he were trying to make a living with today's critics.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[TheRaven64]

Your comment sums up the most important difference between Serenity and Star Wars. Star Wars stood on its own. Serenity was a great film, but it did not make much sense without the half-season of character development that had gone on before it. Characters died in Serenity, and the audience cared because they had been introduced earlier, and we knew them.

If you haven't seen FireFly, then I wouldn't expect you to think much of Serenity, because you don't have the correct context in which to place the film. I would thoroughly recommend the series to you, by the way, but your comment highlights exactly why the movie did so badly. The potential audience for Star Wars was everyone who liked cowboy films, space films, or both. The potential audience for Serenity was a subset of people who had seen FireFly. From the DVD sales, this was a fairly large number, but still tiny in comparison to most other films.

Serenity was good...

[evanbd]

Excellent, even. I can see it beating Star Wars. But the likes of Blade Runner? I mean, nothing against Serenity, but I really don't think it's the Best Science Fiction Film Ever.

Re:Serenity was good...

[Threni]

> I can see it beating Star Wars. But the likes of Blade Runner?

I've never even heard of Serenity. Isn't this just an example of a film doing well in a poll because it's new? It's possible that in ten years time it won't even appear on the list.

Re:Serenity was good...

[scotch]

The Blade Runner soundtrack is by Vangelis, and it stands on its own quite well. You may be too young and immature to realize that the technology involved in art changes, but that change doesn't diminish the value of the earlier art. You must be a real hoot to watch Casablanca with.

"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following

[DavidinAla]

I wanted to like, "Serenity." I went to the theatre expecting to like it. But I was bored silly by a boring plot that was full of holes. The characters weren't especially compelling. I couldn't figure out what was so great about this. After finishing it, I couldn't even figure out what was tolerable about it. From what I've seen since then, it seems as though "Serenity" fans are fanatically loyal and vocal, but most people who weren't already fans didn't find the movie especially entertaining. Obviously, I haven't taken a poll, but the box office results must mean SOMETHING.

As for "Star Wars," I don't agree that it necessarily ought to be classified as fantasy, but it's also silly to see it as representing all of science fiction, as so many people do. "Star Wars" was an example of one particular branch of sci-fi, but it came to be seen as what sci-fi really was because ignorant studio execs all tried to clone it after it made a lot of money. Good science fiction is easy to find it books, but very hard to find on screen, IMO. It's hard to see either "Serenity" OR "Star Wars" as the best sci-fi movie ever.

David

Re:"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following

[Bodrius]

If you had not seen/followed Firefly before, I'd have to agree with you, even though I really liked Serenity (to be expected, being a fan of the series).

I think the movie is pretty good, technically speaking, but it made some gigantic assumptions on the exposition of the characters, plot details, etc. It felt like a really good TV season finale, not a theatrical movie that stood by itself.
I can see how watching the movie without following Firefly would feel like catching the last episode of a series you don't watch, with closures for plot points that were never opened, and characters that you have no reason to care about... fine for late night cable, but not the same entertainment bar for paying a ticket to watch a movie in the theater.

Admittedly, I doubt adapting it to a stand-alone movie would work. A lot of what was great about Firefly as a series depended on having that span to explore the universe and the characters over an episodic show. The tempo would have to be very different.

As part of the show, I think the "movie" was great and well worth it.
As a movie per se, it was overrated, because the very vocal fans are Firefly fans, and saw it (and hyped it) as part of the show.

It reminds me of the X-files movie in that sense, except Serenity was better made and had more of the grass-roots-hype, and less of the bovine and equine abuse.

Re:"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following

[quantaman]

I wanted to like, "Serenity." I went to the theatre expecting to like it. But I was bored silly by a boring plot that was full of holes. The characters weren't especially compelling. I couldn't figure out what was so great about this. After finishing it, I couldn't even figure out what was tolerable about it. From what I've seen since then, it seems as though "Serenity" fans are fanatically loyal and vocal, but most people who weren't already fans didn't find the movie especially entertaining. Obviously, I haven't taken a poll, but the box office results must mean SOMETHING. I watched and really enjoyed firefly, when I heard about the movie I was very sceptical that it would translate onto the big screen, I found the movie enjoyable, maybe even good, but I'd stop far short of labelling it great.

I find people have a tendency to ally themselves with a certain bit of media or subsection of culture, they'll then defend any show, movie, or book that falls into this subsection even though they realize that it isn't very good. Conversely they'll denigrate anything that falls into categories that they don't like, regardless of its quality. I know I've often found myself wrestling with these very tendencies.

Simply put firefly fans were fanatical enough about firefly that they earned themselves a movie. When this movie came about, even though it wasn't as good as the series, they had so much personally invested that they continued to push it every chance they got. I'd suspect that a good portion of those firefly fans who voted for Serenity realize, and would even admit that Serenity isn't the greatest science fiction movie ever. But they perceive an attack on Serenity as an attack on their community, and therefore themselves, and thus feel the need to defend it.

Who Has the More Active Fanbase

[Coryoth]

These sorts of surveys are more about who has the more devoted and active fanbase at the moment. That doesn't make the result less significant, its just a matter of what the result is actually saying: Firefly has managed to develop and extremely devoted and extremely active fanbase. This isn't that surprising; I've loaned or recommended the DVD set to several people, only to have them become devout fans of the series. Still, interest in Firefly is obviously still going strong, which is, again, notable. The other side to this is that the Star Wars fanbase has apparently grown increasingly apathetic -- and the blame for that can be laid squarely upon the prequel trilogy which left many Star Wars fans (myself included) feeling flat, and has taken a little of the shine off the franchise. Oddly enough it still remains far more likely that we will see another Star Wars film than a sequel to Serenity (though neither is that likely). Star Wars fans may be apathetic about the films these days, but they still exist in vast numbers.

Why did either one win?

[edwardpickman]

Neither one is much of a scifi film they are both fantasy films. It's not a value judgement I enjoyed both they just aren't really scifi films. 2001 and Bladerunner are scifi films. Neither of the films, Star Wars or Serenity, gave more than a passing thought to science. Star Wars had little to do with science and Joss Wedon seemed to keep confusing solar systems and galaxies. Both films were fantasy space operas. Really entertaining but in no way predicting a future that will or could ever happen. Star Trek has faired remarkably well as has 2001 but Star Wars is still fantasy. There's nothing wrong with space operas, they actually go back to the Buck Rodgers era, it's just they aren't science fiction. There's so little real science fiction people seem to be forgetting there's a difference.

3000 people?

[bushboy]

It's been voted best by a one magazine with a tiny poll of 3000 readers?

Hardly conclusive evidence, given the fact that 99% of people who have seen Star Wars have never heard of the magazine in the first place ;)

Serenity was excellent, but definately not ground breaking - that's the difference.

Re:Obvious unfair advantage.

[Faylone]

To be even, wouldn't it have to be a prequel with Jar Jar?

Re:Damn Brits!

[masterzora]

The main argument against Star Wars being sci-fi is that it is better considered science-fantasy. More to the point, the whole Force thing is generally considered to kill the science fiction-ness and turn it into science-fantasy.

In reality, science fiction is fairly loosely defined and Star Wars fits very well under some definitions and not at all under others. Firefly is given more science-fiction credit because of the fact that it didn't have random fantasy elements (well, except for River's psychic-ness, but we never got around to getting a good enough explanation of whether it would be better classified as a faux-science or a fantasy element, but from what we did get, it seemed as if they wanted to at least try to make it more the faux-science route.)

Star Wars *was* the top

[DrYak]

Star Wars *had* a loyal fan base.

That is, until Lucas started to repeatedly rape the fan's memory, trying to squeeze the last penny he could get out of the franchise.
I think the the new trilogy has done more harm to the fan base, than actually a concurrent franchise stealing fans.

Re:Serenity/Firefly: overhyped?

[Paulrothrock]

I'll translate for those of you who don't feel like reading: Serenity and BSG have too much emotion and too little technobabble. I'm uncomfortable with the former and therefore dislike shows that deal with it.

Re:On topic of length versus quality

[syrion]

Dune will never produce a good cinematic version, either. You'd think people would learn to leave cerebral books with a great deal of politicking and internal monologue alone.

Re:Serenity will be relegated to trivia

[Monkeyboy4]

Then Blade Runner is trivia.
Nothing more came from that. (not directly)
If you want innovations, here are some off the top of my head:

space shot in handcam style - everything in BSG's external shots is Firefly derivative.

The wild-west space - a genre-crossing adventure with the idea that not everyone will have golly-gee technology

Inara was wicked hot. (sorry, not a valid point, but still true)

A bit of historical context

[oni]

Does anyone think there would even *be* a Mal Reynolds if there hadn't been a Han Solo first?

Well, there was a time when the hero in a story was always entirely good - I think the modern term would be "all american" (think Flash Gordon). The idea of a hero with flaws and conflicts was popularized by Lord Byron, oh about 200 years before Han Solo hit the big screen. Here's the wiki article for further research.

I realize that you didn't actually claim that Lucas had invented the Byronic hero. I just want to make it *painfully clear* that he didn't invent it. But you're right, Han Solo did make the archetype very popular.

It bothers me a bit that Lucas gets any credit. Lucas is an idiot who stumbled clumsily into a great movie (ep. IV) that he really didn't deserve. Lucas himself has no clue what a Byronic hero is. Lucas doesn't appreciate it or value it at all. This is why he was willing to change episode IV so that Gredo shot first. Lucas is a drooling idiot staring at a movie that is accidentally good, and going "deeerrrrr, lets maik hand shot first, har har. deeeerrr."

If Lucas understood Han Solo, he would have made it *more* obvious that Han shot first.

Also, in the scene in Empire where Han is getting lowered into carbonite, Lea says, "I love you" and Han says, "I know." How cool is that guy, you know what I mean? Well, Lucas actually wrote the script so that Han says, "I love you too" but Harrison Ford changed it. What a moron Lucas is. He has no clue whatsoever.

1977

[Infonaut]

Star Wars was released in 1977. If we're talking about the original Episode IV movie, we're talking about a movie that is 30 years old. Many movies have come and gone since then, and Star Wars still holds up remarkably well. I enjoyed Serenity, but I think its success in this particular popularity contest is primarily based on it being the best scifi movie to appear in recent years.

Take another poll in 2037 and see where the two stack up. I suspect Serenity will hold up well, but I don't know that it will have the broad effect of Star Wars. Despite its faults, Star Wars embraced big themes and grabbed hold of the imagination in a way that few films have.

Re:For what it is worth...

[mrbooze]

People who keep objecting to the "silly old-west" theme should perhaps talk to an anthropologist or historian or two who knows a little something about how remote or frontier societies develop, even when their parent societies are affluent.

There are places on Earth *right now* where people don't have running water or electricity, and do subsistence farming with domesticated animals. Western-style clothing evolved in the US because it was *practical* for low-tech manufacture with locally available materials and for the local environmental conditions. Why would you think that all remote space colonies would all have their own replicators and Mr Fusion generators?

Compared to almost all other sci-fi shows ever made, more of Firefly was realistic than fantastical. There was no faster-than-light travel or wormholes of folding space or whatever. People had to grow and raise their food, and it was real food not bioengineered food paste. The entire show took place within one single solar system. People had idiomatic speech patterns that were not simply "This is how we talk today with some made-up words thrown in". Which is not to say the show was pure science-based speculative fiction, but it generally took much smaller leaps than the typical sci-fi show.

Firefly isn't going to bring about a golden age of peace and prosperity or foster a new religion, but there was a lot of positive things to say about it as a representative of the sci-fi genre.