Why is it that Firefly/Serenity is so appealing and just so ruttin' beautiful to YOU???
POSTED BY: 20thCentFoxHater
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 21:13
VIEWED: 13032
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I restated my original question, to what makes it beautiful to everyone of YOU out there. I now believe my question is much clearer. Remember, what about Firefly appeals to you?
"I aim to misbehave."
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I would say for me it's the fact that the show seems so solid. The settings and characters are lived-in and worn. There is an interaction between them (both between the different characters, and between the characters and their surroundings) that I've never really seen in a show before. It's not as though they are interacting with sets, it's as though they are interacting with a world (or a 'verse as the case may be).
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Are these our lives? NNNOOOOOO!!!
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i love the writing. i never really watched buffy or angel, so i wasn't that familiar with joss, but when i watched firefly, i was just so blown away. the writing is so damn good! i also like how's it's the flip side of star trek in a way. the characters are adults,which is nice as well. i get so tired of how everything's aimed for the "fourteen year old girl demographic." i'm not old, i'm barely 29, but i am definitely out of high school.
firefly was something special, really unique. the characters are fleshed out well, very multi-dimensional. mal is... i don't know. it's so rare that you get to see a male lead character who's strong and (relatively) principled, but not cold. And yet, he's conflicted but not whiny. he's an actual man. i guess it's just nice to not have a ship full of stereotypes and cardboard cutouts.
and then there's jayne. i liked to look at jayne. i like to watch adam baldwin in just about anything, so i was pleased on a very basic level by this show.
the end. (i think that's what you were asking for. sorry if it wasn't.)
http://violetrix.blogspot.com
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It's because Joss and Co. created a T.V. show with 9 major characters and made them all distinctive and interesting. And they put them in a unique setting. And they wrote great stories for them. With great dialogue. And great acting.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 20thCentFoxHater:
I restated my original question, to what makes it beautiful to everyone of YOU out there. I now believe my question is much clearer. Remember, what about Firefly appeals to you?
I'd like to add something to what I posted earlier...
Another appeal to me...a rather HUGE appeal, is the subtle (yet obvious if you look for it) sympathizing with the American South as far as the Civil War is concerned. A lot of people have knee-jerk reactions to a subject like this, demonizing the Confederacy, and yet Joss Whedon was brave enough to go at it and get his point across. So many people want to walk a politically correct party line that they wouldn't dare do what Joss did. This aspect makes an already excellent show even greater, and makes me admire an already talented man all the more.
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Quote:
Originally posted by LouGojira:
Another appeal to me...a rather HUGE appeal, is the subtle (yet obvious if you look for it) sympathizing with the American South as far as the Civil War is concerned.
I watched Firefly from the git-go, and went to see "Serenity", but it wasn't until after seeing the BDM that I came here.
I didn't get the Civil War thing at all. What it reminded me of (and I compared it to, when describing it to others) was what the settlement of the Old Northwest Territory (now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, parts of Michigan, etc.) would have been like if the U.S. had lost the Revolutionary War. Maybe its because I grew up and live in Indiana and have had that part of history beaten into me all my life, but I definitely saw it as more what our country could have become had history turned out a little differently.
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The writing is the key. Everything else, sets, costumes, photography, acting, special effects are all good and they make it good. The writing makes it great. The writing is such that it does not insult my intelligence like most of TV usually does. The on tv the sci fi genre is mostly a dog pound. There are some exceptions and things are getting better every year, but on a whole the thing that makes or breaks a series is whether or not the writing is any good, and more often than not, the standards of writing have been mediocre at best.
I dare to say it's not just about the fall of the south, it's about the fall of Scotland, the defeat of Japan, the subjugation of Ireland, the genocide of the American Indians. There are too many conflicts to list. It's about good people that happened to be on the losing side of a conflict. Whether the cause was just or not, the people are not bad. The side lost that does not make the people losers. It is so easy to vilify ones enemy, when in fact all of us are just human. What was it Maximus wanted in the begining of Gladiator? He simply wanted to go home and be with his family. In the end we all want that or something close to it.
Scorpion Regent
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Quote:
Another appeal to me...a rather HUGE appeal, is the subtle (yet obvious if you look for it) sympathizing with the American South as far as the Civil War is concerned.
i could not agree more. i caught that too. it is definitely something you don't see very often in media of any form. it was another aspect of the show that was intriguing to me, since i have my own preconceptions of the american south, (being, of course, from the southwest and knowing nothing about the south but what was in my history classes in high school and college.)
fascinating show. fascinating.
http://violetrix.blogspot.com
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Part of it is the humor interjected here and there even though the heroes are facing a crisis of one sort or the other. Part of it is the depth of the characters, none of whom could be described as one dimensional and yet you only get glimpses of their inner selves and it makes you want to know more. I also find the whole concept of the 'verse without stupid looking aliens like Jar Jar Binks and without sound effects of ships exploding in a vacuum alot more convincing and less of an insult to my intelligence than George Lucas manages to inflict. I especially find Mal's character appealing as he is deeply conflicted. He has felt betrayed by the leaders of the Independents and by God as well because only he and Zoe survived the Battle of Serenity Valley. Someone said in another thread that the Alliance also bombarded his homeworld moon, Shadow from orbit leaving it devoid of any life and uninhabitable. I don't remember this detail being exposed in the DVD collection and I've watched every episode but it would help explain and reinforce his anger toward the Alliance and his hollowed out psyche. In spite of all that plagues him inside, he still struggles to do "the right thing" and act with a sense of honor and nobility that the others rally around. When I first saw the BDM at the theater and reached the part at the beginning where you see Serenity for the first time just before she starts a burn through in atmosphere and that music starts building I had a lump in my throat and my eyes started blurring from the moisture. She was flying again.......she was finally flying again and nothing else mattered.
Jaytee
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Well, about the Civil War aspects, I believe the first thing that tipped me off was the reference to the battle in Serenity Valley being a crucial point in the Planetary Civil War in the first episodes (they could've easily used a slogan like "war among the planets" or something more generic instead). Later, the point was driven further in the "Train Job" episode when Mal refers to his thinking of the Independance as "rising again" (and being Southern, I have heard the saying "The South's gonna rise again" my whole life) as his reason for getting into the bar fight. Something clicked when I heard that line (not to mention how the patrons at the bar talked about the Independance, which eerily reminded me of some smack I've heard talked about the South), so I began talking with a Bro at another forum who is a fan of the show, and I asked him if I was possibly reading too much into it. He said no, and told me about Joss Whedon being influenced by the book "The Killer Angels", which is a book about the American Civil War.
I finally got my suspicions confirmed when reading an interview with Joss in the official visual companion for Serenity. When Whedon is asked how the idea for Firefly evolved, here is a line from his response:
"The basic tenet was that it was [analogous to the post-United States Civil War] Reconstruction era. Mal had fought for the South -not for slavery, I can't stress that enough [laughs], but for [the losing side]."
Either way though, whether you spot the references or not, I guess Mal's plight can basically be interpreted into any losing side that you may sympathize with. 
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