Since this thread hasn't been posted yet...

Someone pointed out that the plot was a metaphor for trying to get a cult show shown on network TV. Discuss.

I just got back and enjoyed the movie a lot, but I've watched all the episodes on AIR, ON DVD 3 times and read the 3 comics. Anyone that didn't see the Firefly series go? I would really like to know what you thought.

I've not seen it but the NY Times seems to like it a lot: 4 1/2 of 5 stars.

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It probably isn't fair to Joss Whedon's "Serenity" to say that this unassuming science-fiction adventure is superior in almost every respect to George Lucas's aggressively more ambitious "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith." But who cares about fair when there is fun to be had? Scene for scene, "Serenity" is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucas's recent screen entertainments. Mr. Whedon isn't aiming to conquer the pop-culture universe with a branded mythology; he just wants us to hitch a ride to a galaxy far, far away and have a good time. The journey is the message, not him.

-Zeke

I'm hoping to go tomorrow night. Sitting at home working tonight...

This review was not so positive. It's the first negative reaction I've heard though, including non-fans of the series. But this reviewer seemed pretty against the whole concept of the show to begin with, so I suppose there's no helping that. Most of the complaints are either with the idea of the show or that some of the characters didn't get developed as well as they could have (which is a given, being that you have a large cast). And her last statement about Firefly deserving to be canceled is just inflamitory to all the many fans who love the show and bought the DVD.

Unfortunatly, both my wife and I have gotten pretty sick and are not well enough to go to the theater. Which really stinks because we are both totally psyched about the movie (my wife triend to convince me to take her to see it last night, even though she can barely walk she's feeling so bad), especially after hearing such great feedback (reel.com notwithstanding). So hopefully we'll be seeing it sometime this week after we're feeling better.

Let me say I am a huge fan of the series. I watched them all again in the run-up to see the movie and loved them still.

I hated the movie. I almost walked out. Dreary, dark, depressing, and humorless. It fails on almost every level; the dialogue was terrible and the banter was flat, the chemistry didn't work at all for some reason, the characters were inconsistant, the stylized camera work that worked on TV become just annoying on the big screen, and the plot was too contrived. There were good parts, but I haven't been this disappointed in a movie in years, perhaps ever.

I'm just back from seeing it. The 7:20pm Sat. show. Sad that attendance was truly poor.

The continuity with the series had some gaps, but it think it served to let you know some time had passed between the series end, and this story.

Some parts were predictable, others, not so much.

I'm somewhere inbetween. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but wasn't really all that good as a Firefly movie. The only character that really needed to be there was River, and several of them were just window-dressing. Book and Inara were barely there at all and the rest other than Mal and Simon just had a few lines here and there. And given that Simon's plotline was tied up as much as River's, he was given relatively little screen time. Anyway, the thing that made Firefly great was the character interaction, and we got so little of that as to be nonexistant. Then again, it's hard to have character interaction when most of them are barely there. And then the other characters whose storylines were closed, too, just felt heavyhanded and pointless. I get that that's how things go sometimes, and wouldn't have been out of place in the TV show, but it didn't really seem to fit the movie.

On the other hand, I liked the plot. It was pretty good, even if it felt more like Star Trek than Firefly usually did. I think that the way they wrapped up the River storyline with it was a little abrupt. (Why did the revelation affect her in that way, for instance?) But there was some good foreshadowing with the (to us) incidental portion of that storyline that I thought worked quite well.

I just saw the movie- I thought it was awesome. I can't wait to see it again. And I think it was much more fun than the newest Star Wars movies. Much more in the spirit of the first three. Time to get this T-Shirt!

[big spoilers]

I'll agree that it is dissapointing that some of the characters were killed off without telling their stories, Book especially, but I blame Fox for that. Imagine how much better this would have been if the story could have been developed over four seasons like Joss origionally planned.

As for killing off characters, I think Joss did what he needed to to make a great story, and as much as I hated to see Wash go (he was one of my favorites), it definitely heightened the intensity of the following scenes and made them much stronger. There was a very real sense of desperation in the characters and both my wife and I were on the edge of our chairs. And the River was awesome- it was fun seeing her finally let loose.

[/big spoilers]

I think at this point that it would be hard to bring Firefly back as a TV show, though I could see more movies being made. It would be nice if I were wrong, though. I'd love to have some more episodes to add to our collection.

Humorless?? Your kidding right? I thought it was great!! I didn't go into it expecting anything too complex, After all it is Firefly. The only shot I was disappointed with was when they made the crash landing. I always thought the special effects in Firefly were really well done. This scene, not so much. Beyond that it was great!! I'll be seeing it again!!

Yeah, I'm with you. Our showing (packed theater, with all showings that night sold out completely), the audience was laughing constantly. The movie was filled with humor.

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Humorless?? Your kidding right?

What was funny? I can remember parts of the series that had me in stitches for extended periods of time. Them staring at the statue of Jayne, the first appearance of Saffron, Inara's female client, etc. The movie got little more than the occasional chuckle and smile from me. I don't recall hearing many laughs from anyone else in the theatre either. The normal banter that was a primary source of humor in the series was largely absent from the film...if they talked at all it was arguing. Halfway through the movie they didn't even really try to be funny anymore. Not that I think that was a bad decision since it would have been pretty out of place considering the massive quantity of death and darkness the film was serving us at that point, but it certainly didn't make for a fun film.

In any event, it looks like I am in the minority here. I am glad you'all liked it, even if I fail to understand how we could all like the original series and have such radically different views of the movie.

s/Mel/Mal/
s/Kayle/Kaylee/

Thanks, I realized both later when reading a review. "Mal", was more of a typo, but I didn't know how to spell Kaylee

Quote:
Joss Whedon is my master now.

Just seen it....

... Exquisite.

Thanks, Doug, Tony. You are my masters now

Heh. I didn't realize the cult of Joss Whedon was a pyramid scheme.

Does 'goram' really literally translate to 'God Damned' in Mandarin?

Also, is just me or does the president from BattleStar Galactica, Mary Mc-Something resemble Kaylee?

Quote:
No one could possibly be as beautiful and as emotive as my beloved Kaylee

.. who just so happened to come up with the funniest, and rude-ist snappy line about battery power I've ever heard. I was the only one in the cinema who caught it: the bloke in front of me must still be picking out the bits of popcorn from his Barnett.....

Yeah, that was a great line.

That was a hoot.

Ok, that was pretty funny. But "Whedon, you bastard!" is the least of the curses I have aimed at him.

I went to see Serenity last night, and while I didn't feel it was up to the standards of the TV series (how could it be, with only a couple of hours to do all the character development and plot structure) it wasn't as bad as I had feared it might be.

However, I think there was a departure from reality in one place...

There were quite a lot of Reiver ships surrounding the planet Miranda. (Run and hide, Tony -- we're about to venture into (are you ready for this?) math!)

Lets assume that the Reiver ships were in low orbit around Miranda -- say, 200 miles above the surface of a planet about the size of Earth. Let's further assume that the Reiver ships were spaced 500 feet apart (about a tenth of a mile). They certainly seemed to be literally brushing rockets to tailfins! And finally, lets assume that Mal and his intrepid crew had to pass through a mile of wall to wall Reiver ships to get through the blockade.

Well... a sphere 8,400 miles in diameter (Earth diameter plus 200 miles above the surface on each side) would encompass a volume of about 310,338,826,560 cubic miles.

A sphere 8402 miles in diameter (Earth diameter plus 200 miles above the surface on each side, plus one mile through the blockade on each side of the sphere) would encompass a volume of 310,560,549,932 cubic miles. Subracting the volume of the smaller sphere from the larger leaves 221,723,372 cubic miles taken up by the Reivers.

If the Reivers are spaced 500 feet apart, there would be 1,178 Reiver ships in every cubic mile of space in the blockade zone surrounding the planet. That means there would be 261,190,132,216 Reiver ships. If each ship had a crew of 10 Reivers, that means there would be about two and a half trillion Reivers.

It does not seem plausible that 2.5 trillion Reivers could support themselves by the expedient of occasional raiding parties on small (<1000 inhabitants?) colonial outposts.

It does not seem plausible that even under the most optimal conditions, that an initial planetary population of 30 million people, of which 99.8% died due to the effects of the drug administered through the air handlers, leaving only 60,000 Reivers to begin with, could be fruitful and multiply and increase their population by a factor of more than 40,000,000 in, ummm, what timeframe are we dealing with here? It's only been six years since the end of the secession wars, and the "experiment" would have happened after that. So, say 5 years. Even with cloning and forced maturation, I don't see it happening. Each original Reiver would have to produce about four and a half million clones, or put another way, about eight clones every minute, 24 hours a day, for five years.

So, I guess the question is this: Was Serenity a true documentary, or was it a work of fiction and imagination? My research would tend to support the latter.

tanstaafl.

It's a standard sci-fi trope to assume that you can't just fly around a blockade, even when that blockade is just a small rectangle of ships, as opposed to a sphere.

The closest analogy I can think of is the Star Trek: Next Generation episode where there is a net of federation ships scanning for Romulans sneaking out of the neutral zone. The first question any intelligent person would ask is "the net is a relatively small two-dimensional grid, they could just fly around it."

I would hope that some script writers would actually have a reason for this standard cliche, if not actually shown in the movie, then perhaps in their heads when they're writing it.

If I were writing it, I'd probably make the weak argument that the orbital mechanics of the particular solar system prevent approaches along any other path. Or that such other approaches are logistically much more difficult because of the amount of energy that you would need to expend. This argument is especially weak in any 'verse where FTL travel allows you to pop back into realspace at any chosen point. As opposed to 'verses where FTL travel requires the entry point to be someplace specific.

I thought it was 13 years since the Reavers were created. Anyone else remember this? I also only noticed the Reavers around one side of the planet. But I'm sure if they noticed a ship coming from the other direction they would have moved.

Firefly Wiki - Reaver info. Contains TV and Movie spoilers.
http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/Reavers

Now Now, Don' be letting the facts, get in the way of fiction. That ain't right.

I suppose that was inevitable.