Would you prefer an uncompromised Serenity?

POSTED BY: Haze
UPDATED: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 20:16
VIEWED: 5721
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SHINY

Monday, October 17, 2005 9:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
What some folks are forgetting is that Firefly itself was a result of several compromises--such things as lightening Mal's character from that seen in the pilot.

Great point; and in fact even within the pilot he was lightened somewhat (e.g. replaced Mal's 'acerbic' comment about Inara's profession with the one about 'someone's got to make an honest living...')

I agree with everyone saying there were very few compromises in Serenity, and I'm not sure what I'd change specifically to tailor it more to the existing fans.

---

Serenity is coming. 9/30/05.

DREAMTROVE

Monday, October 17, 2005 10:07 PM

I think it was compromised well. He pleased movie audiences, and fed that flame, but kept the through story rolling. Serenity was definitely much better with the show's backstory, so I don't think it's intended to be a break. It's always something of a compromise, but I suspect we'll see more pure fan stuff coming.

QUEENOFTHENORTH

Monday, October 17, 2005 10:22 PM

To an FF nut like myself its pure Nirvana. Honest to God I wept with joy the first time I saw it.

Hey! Another Final Fantasy fan on this website! I love FF7 too. In fact I'm playing it over again right now so when I finally get to watch Advent Children I'll catch everything. Anyways, that being said, I think Serenity is fine the way it is. I loved it (except for the Wash thing) and would love to see two more. Though I'm sure I'll weep for joy when I see Advent Children too.

Tree burn, fire pretty.

MICHAELANGELO

Monday, October 17, 2005 10:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haze:
Serenity is a good movie...
So I put forward the question again would you have rather seen one Firefly movie that was made just for the fans but would do noting in the box-office or what we have a somewhat compromised movie for Joe and Jane public that will most likely lead to two sequels? (and despite the doom and gloom that’s around im convinced it will)

Who do you suppose is in there?

I'd have to say that the character re-establishment was quite minor. A person watching the movie with no knowledge of Firefly must have been wondering how all these people got together on this ship & what roles they played (or maybe they went to see an action movie & don't care...).

I don't think the movie was compromised at all. Let me make an exception to that last sentence. I think the character play was minimal in the movie as compared to the series with the exception of the 2 biggies, Mal & River. Their character history drove the storyline of the movie. Other than that, character background was of no consequence. At heart I knew this would be so. Hollywood isn’t so much about characters as it is about CGI.

Serenity was an action movie, the series was a drama. That is obviously the biggest difference between the 2. Action movies just don’t have time for good character development. When they try, people whine the movie was too slow. By the end of RotK (some 10 hours later), we felt Frodo’s weariness, his sorrow, etc. Not so much in a 90 minute bang-fest. Our blood is still pumping from the 1st fight scene & we can't calm down to enjoy a tender or sorrowful moment.

Sure, it's a hoot to see Mal punch or shoot a baddie once in a while, but i'd don't want that to get in the way of seeing Kaylee *almost* kiss Simon, or the discomfort between Mal & Inara, or Wash feel left out of the military brotherhood Mal & Zoe share, or River ripping pages out of Book's Bible, etc.

Serenity was a great movie; good action, good FX, good story, and I’ll take more movies ONLY if it’s not at the expense of the return of the series. I want the drama!

~
"You can't take the sky from me"

DONCOAT

Monday, October 17, 2005 11:23 PM

I think that if we get sequels, they'll be a little closer to Firefly.

Remember "The Train Job" and its rapid-fire reintroduction of the main characters? Compare that to the original pilot. I think the same thing would be true of sequels: quicker and sketchier introductions, leaving more time for the kinds of treasured scenes we love from the series.

Serenity had them too, of course -- just fewer and faster ones, with less luxury of time. A good example: Kaylee's exchange with Simon after the mule departs to do crime. Only a couple lines, but the camera did linger a bit on Kaylee's forlorn expression. (Great moment there, Jewel!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain't about you, Jayne. It's about what they need.

TUNABELLY

Monday, October 17, 2005 11:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:
I suspect the number of people who have played Final Fantasy VII to the point that they don't need the back story explained is a lot higher than the number of people who have seen Firefly all the way through ;)

Besides, I'd agree that the compromises in Serenity are minimal.

i agree. FF is generally recognized far more than Firefly. it's been around for ages and has been able to reach out to a much larger audience. the movie is a step towards this type of brand recognition, isn't it? Firefly needed the reach beyond and it has. the movie didn't feel too compromised. it needed to appeal and make sense to an audience that has never seen Firefly. it did and without too much of a cost. i think fans will still enjoy the movie to a greater degree. other than the girls being prettied up i don't feel ripped off in the slightest. i would have preferred River stayed gangly and kinda ragged instead of the flowy version we see in the movie but it needed to sell and i get that.

Jewel Staite had to gain 20 pounds to play Kaylee in Firefly. did else notice that she got to keep that 20 pounds off for the movie.

"we've done the impossible, that makes us mighty."

-Mal

HKCAVALIER

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 3:14 AM

(WARNING: sour-puss alert; still pretty frustrated with the movie.)

I'm kinda incredulous how folk have swallowed this "dumbing down" of Firefly as necessary to insure a good box office take. Hello? What box office take? What make's y'all think a more adult, more complex, less wise-crack-a-minute Firefly movie would have done any worse than Serenity has?

And furthermore, I sure don't think any, ANY of the first twenty minutes of exposition served non-fans of Firefly. Alien didn't need any, Pitch Black didn't need any. There are all kinds of movies about small, quirky groups of people lost in some terrible situation that tell an excellent story and make you want to see more of the characters with minimal exposition. Half the fun of such a movie is figuring out what the relationships between the different characters are. Nobody wants or needs a connect-the-dots. All the exposition did was take away any of the surprise of finding out who these people are; and remind all the non-fans in the audience that there was a t.v. show once where all these people had really complicated relationships that, I'm sorry, we can't really go into here, but we can give you a taste. The very title of the movie is bad for business unless you're a giant fan! The gorram title! That's supposed to be the sellingest thing about a movie and Joss wasted it on the fans! Call the thing "Into the Black" and tell a good story about Reavers. If we get to know the characters along the way, fine, if some remain under developed, tell folk to get the Firefly DVD.

The way I see it, with Serenity Joss was trying to serve too many masters. Firefly was the best t.v. show ever aired, EVER! Of course a movie based on it is gonna have a lot going for it.

Look at it this way: not too long ago, every intelligent person I knew dismissed t.v. as the lowest form of life. Then Firefly came along and changed that perception for all of us (you know, 'cept folks that loved Buffy and Angel already).

So now, every browncoat and his brother is defending the so-called "decision" to sex up the t.v. show for its cinematic debut. Taking a uniquely intelligent and subtle work of art and turning it into a more or less crowd pleasing funhouse ride. How is it that folks who have seen conventional t.v. wisdom turned on its head by a visionary artist, defend that same artist when he panders to a mass audience because "that's what movies are about?" Seriously, do you think film is a more conservative medium than t.v.???

Batman Begins was a huge hit, single handedly revitalizing a moribund franchise--a franchise, I might add, dumbed down and sexed up nearly out of existence; and did it by extensively downplaying the sensational subject matter, exploring very adult moral themes with subtle characterization and one decidedly dark anti-hero at its center. The thing was ostensibly a superhero movie but it played like a bio-pic and made big $$$ at the box office.

In short, Firefly was groundbreaking--and sold like hot cakes on DVD; can anyone honestly say Serenity in its own right was groundbreaking? Aside from being the capper to the best t.v. show ever, at best it's a quirky high-energy B-movie that just enough folks will see to get the sequels greenlit.

The pilot of the t.v. series suffered because it took too long to get down to business. That's a real problem with a t.v. show, 'cause if you don't immediately grab folks, they're liable to turn the channel. Movies can afford to be a little more mysterious, a little more leisurely setting everything up because they have a captive audience who will be remembering the slam-bam ending more than the quiet start. I seriously wonder if simply giving the original Serenity a theatrical release, maybe with a CGI face lift and the like, wouldn't have done as well as Serenity the movie. We all would have gone, and non-fans wouldn't have felt left out.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you

HAZE

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 5:47 PM

Although I would not agree with all that has been said here I would definitely agree with the sentiment that “sexing up the female characters” is no good thing. Particularly River, as Iv said in other posts im sick to death of Hollywood patting me on the head telling me to be a good boy and sending me off to go look at boobs. Yes im male and yes I have a libido but that is just one aspect of me and it does not need it fed by EVERY damn movie ever made from now till the end of time.

What also annoys me and I would definitely class this as a compromise to the mass market is the shift of the role of violence in Rivers character. I just this weekend watched Firefly from beginning to end again and I just today went to see Serenity again and I am now more convinced that ever that River would NOT have used her academy “training” (by which I really mean torture) to take out those Reavers. She would have found another more cerebral manner of dealing with them. But that doesn’t play on celluloid, its not instantly cool and instantly gratifying. So she just kicked the excrement out of them. As iv said before when ever River used violence in Firefly it was creepy and disturbing. Not so in Serenity, in Serenity its cool.

Given Joss’s distaste for both writing and shooting fight scenes and the direction the character was taking in “Objects in Space” I can only assume that Rivers more action orientated role in Serenity was a concession to make the move more marketable.

I understand why he did it.

But damn if it isn’t annoying

Who do you suppose is in there?

VANCOUVER

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 6:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
(WARNING: sour-puss alert; still pretty frustrated with the movie.)

I'm kinda incredulous how folk have swallowed this "dumbing down" of Firefly as necessary to insure a good box office take. Hello? What box office take? What make's y'all think a more adult, more complex, less wise-crack-a-minute Firefly movie would have done any worse than Serenity has?

And furthermore, I sure don't think any, ANY of the first twenty minutes of exposition served non-fans of Firefly. Alien didn't need any, Pitch Black didn't need any. There are all kinds of movies about small, quirky groups of people lost in some terrible situation that tell an excellent story and make you want to see more of the characters with minimal exposition. Half the fun of such a movie is figuring out what the relationships between the different characters are. Nobody wants or needs a connect-the-dots. All the exposition did was take away any of the surprise of finding out who these people are; and remind all the non-fans in the audience that there was a t.v. show once where all these people had really complicated relationships that, I'm sorry, we can't really go into here, but we can give you a taste. The very title of the movie is bad for business unless you're a giant fan! The gorram title! That's supposed to be the sellingest thing about a movie and Joss wasted it on the fans! Call the thing "Into the Black" and tell a good story about Reavers. If we get to know the characters along the way, fine, if some remain under developed, tell folk to get the Firefly DVD.

The way I see it, with Serenity Joss was trying to serve too many masters. Firefly was the best t.v. show ever aired, EVER! Of course a movie based on it is gonna have a lot going for it.

Look at it this way: not too long ago, every intelligent person I knew dismissed t.v. as the lowest form of life. Then Firefly came along and changed that perception for all of us (you know, 'cept folks that loved Buffy and Angel already).

So now, every browncoat and his brother is defending the so-called "decision" to sex up the t.v. show for its cinematic debut. Taking a uniquely intelligent and subtle work of art and turning it into a more or less crowd pleasing funhouse ride. How is it that folks who have seen conventional t.v. wisdom turned on its head by a visionary artist, defend that same artist when he panders to a mass audience because "that's what movies are about?" Seriously, do you think film is a more conservative medium than t.v.???

Batman Begins was a huge hit, single handedly revitalizing a moribund franchise--a franchise, I might add, dumbed down and sexed up nearly out of existence; and did it by extensively downplaying the sensational subject matter, exploring very adult moral themes with subtle characterization and one decidedly dark anti-hero at its center. The thing was ostensibly a superhero movie but it played like a bio-pic and made big $$$ at the box office.

In short, Firefly was groundbreaking--and sold like hot cakes on DVD; can anyone honestly say Serenity in its own right was groundbreaking? Aside from being the capper to the best t.v. show ever, at best it's a quirky high-energy B-movie that just enough folks will see to get the sequels greenlit.

The pilot of the t.v. series suffered because it took too long to get down to business. That's a real problem with a t.v. show, 'cause if you don't immediately grab folks, they're liable to turn the channel. Movies can afford to be a little more mysterious, a little more leisurely setting everything up because they have a captive audience who will be remembering the slam-bam ending more than the quiet start. I seriously wonder if simply giving the original Serenity a theatrical release, maybe with a CGI face lift and the like, wouldn't have done as well as Serenity the movie. We all would have gone, and non-fans wouldn't have felt left out.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because,

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