Firefly and the General State of Sci-Fi... can Joss save our genre?

POSTED BY: MutantFriend
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 02:58
VIEWED: 6561
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ARCBEATLE

Sunday, June 13, 2004 3:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Blinker:
Quote:
Look, what we really need in Sci-fi today is a Lord of the Rings. Hear me out... I'm NOT talking about an epic trilogy that has an immense backstory and all that... what I mean is a movie that is sooooo goram good it breaks through to everyone.

I remember a few years ago when "Dungeons and Dragons" came out, and genre websites were pleading "go see D&D, repeatedly, EVEN THOUGH we realize it's total crap... because if this movie bombs, fantasy cinema is FINISHED. FOREVER."

Heh...

_________
Sliders: Gate Haven - http://slidersweb.net/blinker

I still dont get how people didnt like that movie. It was better then retern of hte king, I know Im going to get slammed for that, bbut seriously... how many endings did that movie have? The action was badly cut in between CGI and live action (just look at the scene where the roharim charge the Orcs at Pellenor Feilds, look at hte difference between the CGI and Live action, its so much different a five year old can tell how cut it is...) D&D get slandered for adding things like humor and creativity to itself, and thus sometimes (gasp!) varing formt he source material, oh no! the beholder is being controlled, the movie must suck! I had to rant.... I seriously hate it when people bash that movie.

If people only beleive wahts in a movie, their damn well sure beleiving Serenity.

TIGERLILY

Sunday, June 13, 2004 4:10 AM

i also hate the lord of the rings series as movies. as literature, great. i feel it didn't translate to screen at all. and i'm not a crazy fanatic of the books. i read them, liked them, when i was 15. the movies were interminably boring to me. they also, were not movies. the first one was kind of a movie, emphasis on kind of. the second two were not movies.

however, the dungeons and dragons movie was a different kind of bad. it was a horrible, bad, bad naughty, bad bad script. by which i mean, there was nothing original about anything. not dialogue, not character development, no individual scene had any part of it which was new or fresh or remotely creative. it was completely predictable and cliched. it was every fantasy cliche rolled into one too long saturday morning cartoon. i swear to god, there is one point where thora birch looks off camera because she has forgotten her line. i'm not kidding. it was a bad story badly executed.

lord of the rings was a good story poorly executed. but then again that's just me. (i also hated the matrix, so clearly i'm just cantankerous)

and i do think joss can save the sci fi genre. i don't think anyone can save the fantasy genre. but we'll have to wait for the narnia movie to see if i'm right on that one.

ARCBEATLE

Sunday, June 13, 2004 1:54 PM

Im personally waiting for the Last Unicorn Movie, the Naria one looks doomed by standard Disney interference with the directors creativity, but that movie seems to be progressing along well.

The funny thing is D&D was actually wriiten and filmed before movies that made most of the things people say are cliched about it, it simply spent two years in post production and then came out after a slew of movies that had done exactly what it had done, and all of them had actually been filmed after it. odd.

Serenity better Save Sci-Fi, if it doesnt I have a feeling well be doomed to multiple "The Adventures of Pluto Nash: The attack of the domes:" coming into theateres, and I just dont think most Sci-Fi fans will bother bothering.

If people only beleive wahts in a movie, their damn well sure beleiving Serenity.

CHRONICTHEHEDGEHOG

Sunday, June 13, 2004 2:48 PM

Personally I loved the LoTR films, fellowship was amazing, the others dropped the ball a bit but not by much, and while I respect your opinion, I don't think you can say RoTK was bad because of the effects. I think they were great, but you should be watching the films for the story, not judging it by the standard of the effects, especially when comparing it to the D&D movie!
I agree with you about the endings, but to do justice to the book all of them needed to be in there (but without that silly fade-to-black between them all) as they're all in the book. Though I still reckon it would have made more sense to include the Scouring...

check out my WIP firefly roleplay system at www.estador.co.uk/firefly

EST120

Sunday, June 13, 2004 3:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by MutantFriend:
OK, so I went to go see The Chronicals of Riddick. Ummmm, how you say? La poo poo? I mean it was ok in parts, but the action was a mess. The editing and cinematography were total crapola. Combine that with overbaked fx and it was just plain "hard to watch". The movie itself was Flash Gordon meets Dune - which taken in the correct context, isn't all THAT bad (well, ok maybe it is - but I like Dune and FG).

i would kind of agree. the movie was not TERRIBLE, it was watchable and worth the $5 i spent on a ticket, but they completely lost the characteristics that made pitch black so interesting and unique. i liked pitch black and the riddick character because he is such a self serving guy. he oozes confidence and for the most part can completely back it up. i felt this was very lost in the sequel where riddick gets too overshadowed by special effects and a bizzare story. i feel that you cannot make riddick into a hero.

my 2 cents.

ZOID

Sunday, June 13, 2004 6:37 PM

Hello, MutantFriend, longtime lurker, firsttime(?) poster:

While I can appreciate your appeal for Oscar-worthy sci-fi, I'm going to have to disagree with your "go for Oscar" suggestion for Joss' first feature film as a director/producer. While this seems to be a self-contradiction, please bear with me...

If anything, I think Joss and Crew should focus on keeping things as they were on the TV series. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Firefly was the best sci-fi on television, ever. Star Trek? I watched it from behind my father's recliner because it was after my bedtime; I still know it so well that I can watch the first few seconds of an episode and give a complete synopsis, and I haven't watched a full episode of TOS in fifteen years. I know Star Trek. It wasn't good sci-fi; it was great space opera.

What separates Firefly from every other attempt to bring sci-fi (as opposed to space opera) to the screen (movies or television) are the characters and dialogue. Every time I watch an episode of Firefly -- even those eps I didn't think were particularly good -- I ask myself, "Would you have paid money to see that in a theater, especially compared to what you have been hoodwinked into paying for in the past?" For me the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

Even the worst Fifefly episode is better than 99% of anything that has ever been on TV, better than 80% of all movies in the history of filmmaking, better than more than 90% of the dreck studios are currently spewing. Taken as a whole, Firefly is the greatest story serially told, by the greatest original storyteller to date. Where is the 'big picture' story arc and character evolution in Star Trek? There is none. Oh, sure, Sulu comes to grips with his homosexuality, Scotty with his alcoholism, and Chekov with his disjointed obsessions with his Uncle Vanya and cherry orchards; but the main characters, Kirk and Spock? Never. They are iconic and one-dimensional.

I don't want to start a 'zoid hates ST TOS' rumor, so I'll reiterate: ST TOS was revolutionary and made possible all the other sci-fi on TV, and is the template from which most movie sci-fi springs today. But it's dated, now, and never really good from the standpoint of characters. As a morality play it was great. We learned that differing races and religions could live and work (and even love) together. We learned that cooperation was a better recipe for success than blind, winner-take-all competition. We learned that a Real He-Man will sleep with any woman, regardless that she is green and has antennae (and probably without a condom, too). We learned -- most importantly -- to respect other cultures, and why it was important to do so (Prime Directive); this was in direct conflict with America's "Manifest Destiny" politics, and a courageous statement on behalf of the show's creators. There, zoid is not dissing Star Trek, m'kay?

But Firefly is true sci-fi, in a way that few if any other filmic depictions have ever been. It is character-driven. It is drama and comedy and action, just coincidentally set in the future. From a strictly 'characters' standpoint, it would work equally as well in a modern or Old West setting, although elements of dialogue would appear unrealistic and anachronistic, and cultural elements like legalized/religiously-sanctioned prostitution would seem likewise fantastic. Set in the 'anything's possible' future, Joss is able to take us places in the human heart that those other settings would not allow us to go. By freeing his characters from the strictures of a historical timeframe, JW takes his audience places we've never been, to see sides of our humanity we've never seen. But it's not just about morality, it's about every one of the characters' maturation and evolution, on a personal level. Nobody's done that in cinematic sci-fi.

Joss should go into filming with a 'steady as she goes, Mr. Whedon' mentality. His art is good enough. Arguably, the downfall of Star Wars was

PEACE

Sunday, June 13, 2004 6:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
The only hope for SF being as good in films as it is in print is if the Hollywood money boys will let the writers tell the story and keep their f***ing hands off! And I'm talking about writers like Joss, who with Serenity has a very good chance of creating a classic. And lets not forget, Tim Minear is adapting Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which has enough plot elements to appeal to a wide range of movie-goers.

TIM MINEAR!!!! THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS!!!!! OMG! OMG! OMG!

This made my day! Now if we can just keep a studio hack from ruining the production....

Oh, bugger! Now I have to wait for someone to wake up!

PEACE

Sunday, June 13, 2004 7:57 PM

Mutantfriend, I must respectfully disagree with part of your original premise-- that a really great, Oscar-worthy sci-fi movie will make studio heads see the light and start making quality sci-fi movies. You give far too much credit to the non-creative pinheads who populate most of the executive positions in most movie and TV studios. When these jokers see a great film, by and large their reaction is not, “gee, let’s make something just like this”, it’s “how can we cash in on this in the cheapest and fast way possible?” This is historically verifiable: when Star Wars came out (a film which fundamentally redrew the landscape in Hollywood), there were a few creative geniuses like Spielberg and Ridley Scott who produced work like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien. The vast majority of productions, however, were quickie dreck, like Battle Beyond the Stars, Ice Pirates, and Battlestar Galactica. This is because the people who by and large run Hollywood are money men and lawyers who haven’t a creative bone in their bodies. This fact affects every movie Hollywood produces, but it is especially acute with sci-fi, because the studio suits also just don’t understand science fiction. And except for individual mavericks like Joss, there is very little prospect of this changing.

We should also remember that LOTR itself was a pure anomaly. Even Peter Jackson himself has said that it made no rational sense for New Line to hand this project, with a $300 million budget and an unprecedented shooting schedule, to a comparatively unknown director. LOTR was one of those projects where all the factors lined up in a way that was once-in-a-century and produced something never seen before. But don’t think for a moment that there aren’t any number of execs sitting in their offices right now, saying, “How can we cash in on this?” That’s just the way Hollywood works these days.

We can all hope for something on the scale of LOTR to hit sci-fi moviedom, but, frankly, folks, I don’t recommend holding your breath. As much as I expect and hope Serenity will do well and kick butt as a movie and as a money-maker, I don’t expect it will have that level of impact.

Oh, bugger! Now I have to wait for someone to wake up!

MUTANTFRIEND

Tuesday, June 15, 2004 12:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Peace:
Mutantfriend, I must respectfully disagree with part of your original premise-- that a really great, Oscar-worthy sci-fi movie will make studio heads see the light and start making quality sci-fi movies. You give far too much credit to the non-creative pinheads who populate most of the executive positions in most movie and TV studios. When these jokers see a great film, by and large their reaction is not, “gee, let’s make something just like this”, it’s “how can we cash in on this in the cheapest and fast way possible?” This is historically verifiable: when Star Wars came out (a film which fundamentally redrew the landscape in Hollywood), there were a few creative geniuses like Spielberg and Ridley Scott who produced work like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien. The vast majority of productions, however, were quickie dreck, like Battle Beyond the Stars, Ice Pirates, and Battlestar Galactica. This is because the people who by and large run Hollywood are money men and lawyers who haven’t a creative bone in their bodies. This fact affects every movie Hollywood produces, but it is especially acute with sci-fi, because the studio suits also just don’t understand science fiction. And except for individual mavericks like Joss, there is very little prospect of this changing.

We should also remember that LOTR itself was a pure anomaly. Even Peter Jackson himself has said that it made no rational sense for New Line to hand this project, with a $300 million budget and an unprecedented shooting schedule, to a comparatively unknown director. LOTR was one of those projects where all the factors lined up in a way that was once-in-a-century and produced something never seen before. But don’t think for a moment that there aren’t any number of execs sitting in their offices right now, saying, “How can we cash in on this?” That’s just the way Hollywood works these days.

We can all hope for something on the scale of LOTR to hit sci-fi moviedom, but, frankly, folks, I don’t recommend holding your breath. As much as I expect and hope Serenity will do well and kick butt as a movie and as a money-maker, I don’t expect it will have that level of impact.

I hear ya, Peace. You make a good point, but, I've gotta say, I really think that it is this exact thinking that gets us in trouble as Sci-Fi fans. Look, Sci-Fi used to be this little niche genre with teenage boys filling the fan ranks. Dude, I'm 31. Married for 9 years. I have three kids. I make a lot of money compared to the average Joe. Me and every other guy I know my socio-economic bracket - loves Sci-Fi. Sci-Fi is no longer the domain of kids and dorks. It is every blue-blooded male (and a bunch of females) born since 1960. WE are the fans. WE deserve much much better than The Phantom Menace, Riddick, etc etc etc...

As fans , we wait with nervous excitiment every time a new Sci-Fi movie comes out in hopes that it will somehow live up to our expectations AND intellect. Once. Once in the last five years - has anything even remotely come close to that mark. The Matrix.

What I want Joss to do is make a movie that a guy like me can enjoy, but at the same time - make such a good story that everyone (or at least a good portion of the movie-going public) can enjoy with me. A story like LOTR or Braveheart or Gladiator. A guy's movie that chicks dig too. A true oscar contender.

I feel that if this ever happened - we'd be treated to a lot more quality movies wrapped up in a Sci-Fi setting. Character dramas - built around a futuristic setting. Blade Runner, Aliens, Close Encounters... these are what we need. The Matrix Sequels could have saved us - but alas, that was not to be. We're still in the same boat as we were when this whole techo-fx revolution started. Sci-Fi sucks for the most part. The studios throw $200 million dollars at a crappy script and we all flock to have our "minds blown". Barf...

If Joss pulls this off like I think he can - he could change the way

THRAWN

Tuesday, June 15, 2004 2:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Peace:
We should also remember that LOTR itself was a pure anomaly. Even Peter Jackson himself has said that it made no rational sense for New Line to hand this project, with a $300 million budget and an unprecedented shooting schedule, to a comparatively unknown director. LOTR was one of those projects where all the factors lined up in a way that was once-in-a-century and produced something never seen before. But don’t think for a moment that there aren’t any number of execs sitting in their offices right now, saying, “How can we cash in on this?” That’s just the way Hollywood works these days.

Mutantfriend, my post above was kinda rambly, and I think we both missed what each other was trying to say - Peace here just said it much better. All I was trying to point out was that it's an unreasonable goal. Serenity won't be Lord of the Rings - that will never happen again. Period. It was a combination of about 80,000 coincidences and details, including the fact that the source material more or less defined the fantasy genre in the first place. Science fiction already had its LOTR, and that was Star Wars, almost 30 years ago. You'll notice that bad sci-fi was cropping up almost immediately after that...give fantasy 6 or 7 years, and it'll be back to the way it was pre-LOTR.

My other point was that movies, in general, suck, and so even if Serenity is as good as LOTR and as impressive, there's no way it will make all other sci-fi good. Movie studios won't start producing exclusively good sci-fi, they'll just start producing more. There will be more good ones, but also more bad ones. It won't Change The Way The Entire Hollywood Machine Views Sci-Fi except to perhaps move it further into the "more profitable" column (which, as you've pointed out, it's pretty far into anyway.) The effects from LOTR haven't spread enough to truly say that studios aren't making any more bad fantasy...all that seems to be true is that they are making a lot more, and it isn't out yet, so we can't tell.

And I resent you telling me that my mindset is the reason sci-fi sucks - I don't go see the bad movies, I only go see the good ones. I don't support the crap. I don't want them to make crap. I realize how annoying it is that they do. I just don't expect the situation to change - I've been dissappointed enough in the past not to start thinking "this could be it!". It won't be.

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