No Horsies Here
Posted on | October 5, 2005 at 8:55 pm | 4 Comments
What can I say about Serenity that hasn’t already been said? Not much. No one can ever accuse The Cult of Joss Whedon of being non-vocal.
Back in 2002, being a big fan of Buffy and Angel, I was much anticipating Whedon’s new SF series Firefly, the failed TV series that Serenity is based on. I watched every episode, but didn’t really start to warm to the series for several episodes. I admit it, the western trappings really turned me off initially. I couldn’t figure out the reason for it, aside from maybe the producers wanting to save money by filming most of the action in the canyons around Los Angeles, which doubled for the frontier alien planets. But as always with Whedon’s work, it’s not the setting or the concept that’s important, it’s the characters and the writing. And that’s the kind of thing you can’t grasp right away – it takes spending time with the characters to really connect. By the time the show was canceled (with the last episode being the all-important pilot, which should’ve been shown first instead of last), I was totally hooked. When the DVD set came out, I bought it right away and dived into the three unaired episodes, followed by a re-viewing of all the episodes and a rare (for me) devouring of all the special features, including commentaries.
So, despite the off-putting hype constantly pumped out by the more fanatical Whedon faithful, I was really looking forward to the movie that would pick up the story of our intrepid brand of space brigands and their mysterious passengers. Happily, the movie does not disappoint for fans of the show. (I can’t really say how it plays for non-fans, though I thought they did a good job of bringing everyone up to speed and making you care about the characters.) It’s a bittersweet reunion in some ways, but that’s all part of the package. If the stakes weren’t high, it would be just another episode of the show. The movie doesn’t concentrate much on any of the characters aside from Cap’n Mal (don’t call him “Han Solo”) and River, but that’s okay too. There’s only so much you can do with a large cast in a two hour movie, and it was logical to focus on those two in order to have a real story. The characters all got expanded and you really got a sense of a change in them by the end of the movie. It also did a good job of resolving some unanswered issues from the show while still leaving plenty for sequels (wishful thinking after opening weekend box office results, but you never know). I thought the effects and cinematography were well-done, and it looked a mite more expensive than it was. I’m ranking it as Again! on my scale.
Speaking of how there’s been so much written and said about this movie, I think this review by Orson Scott Card sums it up much better than I could (thanks to Ben for the link).
Latre.
Comments
4 Responses to “No Horsies Here”
October 6th, 2005 @ 6:52 am
Maybe I’m being dim, but…isn’t being the second-highest-grossing movie on its opening weekend a pretty good sign for the possibility of a sequel? Granted: opening weekends don’t necessarily predict overall profitability (unless the movie already makes a profit after the first weekend) but that’s true of every movie. And it was playing on fewer screens than _The Movie With the Really Boring Title That’s Set On an Airplane_ (the #1 box-office film).
October 6th, 2005 @ 10:39 am
These days, it seems like that unless a movie makes half its cost back in the opening weekend, it’s considered a failure. Since Serenity supposedly cost $40 million, it actually should make back the money (counting international box office and DVD sales, which I’m sure will be through the roof). But I think everyone was hoping for more than $10 million for that all-important opening. Subsequent week b.o. drops have been really severe this year, but maybe it will buck the trend as word of mouth spreads…
October 10th, 2005 @ 2:56 pm
The wife and I contributed $28 to the second weekend’s box office take yestereday, and we both give it a couple thumbs up. I could point to a number of plot elements that were less strong than I’d have liked, and I found many of the effects to be lackluster, but Whedon did a remarkable job and made an entertaining movie that did not disappoint in any important way. I’m actually considering a second viewing myself, which I haven’t done for years (but I’ll wait until it’s somewhere that costs less than $14 per ticket… and then I maybe should get around to seeing that Batman thing too…)
The opening wasn’t huge, but with a fan base like this and the growing influence of DVDs and other non-theatrical, non-TV methods of distribution, who’s to say we won’t someday get more episodes done straight to DVD or made available for subscription download? So long as enough major characters remain alive to drive a story…
October 12th, 2005 @ 11:09 am
I believe this won’t be the end of the Firefly story and that it will continue in some form. Who knows? Maybe even a second TV show.