Movie thoughts (spoilers)

Saturday, October 1, 2005 5:52 AM

Well I just came back from a 10:25PM showing in Arlington VA. The pretty big stadium theater was less than half full, I hope that is because it was pretty late!

What follows are my reactions to the movie, so don't read further if you haven't seen it. As this is a blog, I'm not trying to convince anyone my opinions are right, so please no flames either. I just want to put down my thoughts on my blog so I can remember them later.


First off, I think this movie was great. I am going to write things that may sound like nitpicking criticism, but in general I liked the movie a lot. Not as much as the series themselves, but this movie was certainly better than any other movie out this year that I've seen.

This brings up one of the main thoughts I've had, the difference between the small screen and big screen. Some professional reviewers have mentioned this, but the BDM sometimes feels like it has the sensibilities of a tv show. While I don't think this is necessarily true, there are a few points.

It is obvious that a tv series, even an abbreviated season like Firefly's, has more opportunity for character development than a single movie. You don't go to see a movie (at least not anymore) to see character development. A good example to me is the Star Trek (TOS only, I hate TNG) series/movies. I derive pleasure watching Star Trek movies not to see further development of the characters I know and love, but to see them live and breathe and behave the way I expect them to do. I go back to watch the tv episodes to see the subtle and not so subtle tiny bits and pieces of scenes and dialogue that develop characters and their interaction with each other. Sometimes I even find something new or a different interpretation, even now after having watched each episode literally hundreds of times.

Back to Firefly/Serenity. Having less than a full season means that I haven't gotten to know the characters as well as Star Trek ones. That means any new avenue such as this movie is to me an opportunity to see more character development. I don't know them well enough to just be content seeing them "live and breathe" (and die too). And as I've said above the movie is not the best way to get character development. Also, 2 hrs is not enough time to develop all of the characters. I am sure Joss made a conscious decision to focus on a few characters (Mal and River) at the expense of others to tell at least part of their story well, both for us and for people who havent seen Firefly. But to me, I really miss the development of the other characters (they seemed to be playing roles as opposed to living their lives) and to tell the truth I don't think there was that much development with Mal or River anyway. We may come to understand why River is the way she is, but that isnt development, thats more like a living history we just read/saw.


For in essence, what made Firefly so special was not the ship (pretty and special as it is), Mal himself (dashing and heroic that he is), or any single character (although Inara IS hot ) What made me fall in love with Firefly was the way the characters interacted with each other, and how the interaction itself developed each character. Maybe why my favorite episode is Out of Gas, becase I think that episode more than any other was about how each character felt about the other, and the ship. In that sense, I would rate that one hour episode better than the movie.

I have more to write about that, but this is already getting too long. I will have to break this up into multiple entries over days I guess.

The other major point I thought was how the sensibilities of Joss and a tv-show based story affected my reaction to the plot. Call me heartless, but I didnt see that big a deal with what happened on Miranda. I never saw the inhabitants, I didn't see their lives or their hopes/dreams, in short I didn't care what hapenned to them. Now that sounds pretty cruel I know, but thats the way it is for me. I am sure that if this plot was in the tv series, we would slowly get introduced t

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