'Serenity' Listed as One of the Most Unfortunate Movies Titles Ever
POSTED BY: cbsteve
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 5, 2008 20:16
VIEWED: 32125
PAGE 4 of 7
hey folks, we mighten like wat hes sayin but he makes a valid point, serenity for me does make me think of peace an sleep, blade runner, sounds like a skating movie instead of a brilliant sci-fi movie and as for his numba 1 the shawshank redemption, dull title or wat, but in oppinion the greastest movie ever made,jmho
irishwash
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Strange but true. Dog Bollocks is actually a good thing.
Bollocks - Bad
The Dog's Bollocks - Good
Saw that on an Eddie Izzard bit.
The wife and I just got done watching Firefly on DVD. Yet another great show that cut us off in the end.
Bollocks.
Serenity is next.
Firefly Fan
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Some possible alternate titles to Serenity that may have appealed to a wider audience:
Bad Boys In Space
Reaver Madness
A Little Girl and Her Spaceship
Star Whores
Black Hole Banditos
No Tickee, No Spaceshipee
Dirty Dancing Girl
Freedom Fighters of The Future
Journey T'wixt The Netherlands
I have an alternative title for Serenity. Call it "Killer Angels." Why that title? Firefly was developed after Joss Whedon read The Killer Angels according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killer_Angels . Renaming Serenity to Killer Angels would have appealed to those who never heard of Firefly and want a violent movie.
I purchased the novel Killer Angels BECAUSE OF THE TITLE. I knew nothing about prizes it won. I saw no trailers for it and no TV commercials. If the novel had a different title (the title given the movie version was "Gettysburg") I would never have looked at the first page. Joss had two perfect reasons to recycle that novel's title on his movie - it is the original inspiration for Firefly; and River, Zoe, Inara, and Kaylee are the killer angels.
There is another Killer Angels, a 1989 Hong Kong movie with three female cops fighting a gang. The trailer is at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098298/trailers It has Moon Lee as a weak version of River Tam. Joss Whedon could have claimed, "Summer Glau's kung fu is stronger than Moon Lee's, therefore my movie is better!"
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Quote:Well, if you are a male between the ages of 16-35 (which is the average movie-goer), saw that there was a movie titled "Serenity", and knew nothing about the story, would you not think that it was a chick-flick?
Originally posted by cbsteve:
This one took me by surprise. The writer of this article basically blames the title of the movie "Serenity" for it's failure at the box office.
Quote:The SW prequels earned a lot of box office gold because the main title had the words "Star Wars" in it. Would you really want to see a movie that was only titled "The Phantom Menace" or "Attack of the Clones"? (Heck, even Mark Hamill laughed at the title of the second movie when he first heard it.)
Well, guess that's why crap like the Star Wars prequels are such big money makers, but don't hold a candle to great movies like Serenity.
Entertainment Weekly does agree that a title can effect the box office income. They even did a poll and article on it. Would you really want to see a movie simply called "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"? (Which is the subtitle of an anticipated film to be released next year.) The EW article is at this site if you're curious about that film: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20057927,00.html.
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Quote:
Originally posted by perkusrex:
Strange but true. Dog Bollocks is actually a good thing.
Bollocks - Bad
The Dog's Bollocks - Good
It gets worse:
(Make a) Dog's Breakfast (of it): a complete mess
(Done up like a) Dog's Dinner: Smart/fancy/glamourous
Those dogs are mixed up cats.
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I agree that some movies have unfortunate titles, but I don't agree that it's the case with Serenity (or Blade Runner or Brazil for that matter). More often, I think, people don't go to see movies, because they don't think it's going to be anything special.
A couple things hurt Serenity's chances. The first: no hype. I remember during the summer of 2005, I was looking up major magazines to read some hype about Serenity, but it never came. The second: some fans may disagree with me, but I did not like the trailers for the BDM. They really should have shown scenes like Inara's incense at the house, or Kaylee and Jayne in the cargo bay, or when they visit Book in Haven, or even Simon and River in the locker. Instead, the trailers made the movie look like a Matrix wannabe. I was excited to see the first trailer, but then I thought of all the people I know who would be turned off by this trailer. Where was anything that made it look unique -- made it look like Firefly?
The Soup -- always a hoot and we don't all die from it.
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The way i see it (and i'll go as far as to Wager Joss say it too).
Is that Serenity existed due to the Fans so the title works for them.
As for anyone that see's a movie because of the title well what is there to say. Mind you 'Unleashed' with Jet Li was originally entitled 'Danny the Dog' but marketing said it wouldn't work.
Also yeah there wasn't much hype at all here in Australia the first i heard about it when it was a movie review in the local paper that gave it a rave review and i was really cut up because there had been no previous advertisement.
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Quote:
Originally posted by GThing:
A couple things hurt Serenity's chances. The first: no hype. I remember during the summer of 2005, I was looking up major magazines to read some hype about Serenity, but it never came.
I get the impression that Serenity was treated as an experiment in viral marketing in the US: Q: Can a film with no big-name stars based on a cancelled TV show succeed on word-of-blog alone? A: No. QED. Don't worry, we'll get our money back on DVD sales.
There was reasonable publicity in the UK - TV ads, an appearance on breakfast TV, and a rave review on the BBCs "Film 2005". Sadly, the ads and posters made it look too much like "Buffy in Space" (and Buffy was marketed as a kids programme over here). ISTR it actually opened at No 1 in the UK, but then "Wallace and Gromit" came out the next week and wiped it out (so at least it lost to a good film).
Also remember that 2005 was a bad year for box office generally - other, better-hyped movies failed that year. The "boom or bust" strategy would have been if they kept their nerve and put it up against "Revenge of the Sith" and then milked the "David vs. Golliath" publicity angle for all it was worth. The media so like a story!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Darkfly:
What a load of Dog Bollocks, most of these films in my opinion didn't do very well at the Box Office because the Distributors (Fox,Universal,Sony,WB, etc) didn't back the films, didn't give them the publicity they needed. Take Serenity for instance, Universal decided screw expensive advertising lets try this new virtually untested technique called Viral Marketing by uploading these weird videos on the internet of the River sessions which nobody understands apart from Browncoats and hope people start talking about the film a lot which backfired big time.
I agree it was the studio advertising or lack of that messed things up
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I have to say that 'serenity' as a name of a scifi film dosn't do it for me, it was my dad who dragged me along with my family to watch it, he didn't really know what it was about it was the part were Mal turns to Jayne and says "do you want to run this ship?" jayne says yes and mal replys "well...you can't!" Aswell as some other good one liners from Wash and Zoe.
When I went the name serenity and the humor I'd seen in the Advert made me think I was gonna be bored, then the reavers and Rivers crazy person scared me so much I refused to see it again, it wasn't untill my Dad rented it and the Name Serenity made me forget which film it was that I watched it again and Loved it!!
How come things never go smooth
"my feet are warm, two pairs of soacks warm." Claire Bennet
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