Over four years since Serenity came out, has time changed your opinion of it at all?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
The Operative is now on a new path, a path which I feel is likely to find him behaving more like Shepherd Book

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Zactly. Like Batty letting Deckard live, and like Vader saving his son, the ability for one to change their ways from self-serving ideology to altruistic exploration is truly profound, and meaningful to those of us who think WE have it all figgered out.
I kinda like a movie to humble me... it's the Buddhist in me, I conjure.


The laughing Chrisisall

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Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
I, too, still prefer the series.

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This wasn't started as a comparison thread; I don't understand the need to state preferences here. OF COURSE some peeps prefer the series to the movie, but I'm just talkin' MOVIES.


The laughing Chrisisall

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by two:
The ending of Serenity came down to a choice between River being shot in the back by soldiers or the Operative granting her clemency. I feel that was a weakness in the movie.

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I feel it was a strength. It was a moment when our BDH's, for all their good intentions & skills, were completely vulnerable. No super-hero crap, just people, depending on fate. A toss of a coin. Or a whim by a changed man. It was beautiful. IMO.

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Yes, the Operative had his beautiful and profound moment when says, “Stand down. It's finished. We're finished.” But those words were not in the shooting script.

The Operative's beautiful words were added months after final photography. The words were added after preview audiences had seen the movie. At that point it is too late to do much to a film on a tight budget. You can verify the shooting script on p.155-156 of Serenity - The Official Visual Companion by Joss Whedon.

I'll actually come to a point but first I've got more detail: Joss Whedon said in the commentary to the DVD where the Operative says, “Stand down. It's finished. We're finished.” --
“That whole sequence did not exist. Originally it went off on somebody about to pull the trigger and you found out after the funeral what had happened. But audiences weren't really keying into that. So it was the advice of the, again, invaluable Mary Parent, the executive on the thing, to actually hear him say “Stand down,” and understand that they had won because people were confused. Some people thought the movie was over. Some people thought that there had been a big fight and she had killed everybody. But we didn't actually have footage of everybody reacting to him saying, “Stand down.” So her look back to Mal is, I think, either reversed or taken after the fact. And those men putting their guns down, they're actually putting their guns down because I said, “Cut.” And we slowed it down and they have a new process whereby they can smooth it out. And if you look carefully, by the way, in the left hand frame somebody is putting down, not a gun, but a camera. But luckily it blows through pretty fast.”

If Joss Whedon had more money, he could have done more to fix the scene. I expanded the scene as if Joss had all the money in the world at http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=12835

I want to imagine that Joss would approve. I kept the beginning and ending of his original scene but I made everybody, including Jayne and Inara, more committed to each other than ever before. Because the crew of Serenity could not have known that the Operative was going to save their lives.

I know what went wrong!!! Joss cut too much from the original script. To see what he cut, go to page 183 of the Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives. It is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Originally posted by two:
Yes, the Operative had his beautiful and profound moment when says, “Stand down. It's finished. We're finished.” But those words were not in the shooting script.

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It's the final product that counts.


The laughing Chrisisall

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
It's the final product that counts

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That is a Major Problem. The final product didn't earn enough money to justify immediately starting work on Serenity 2. A screenwriter, Alex Epstein, wrote about Serenity's failure to attract a big enough audience. http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2006/07/second-guessing-continu
ed.html Epstein convinced me that neither bad marketing nor stupid audiences were to blame for Serenity's weak box-office receipts.

Since we haven't got our Serenity 2, there has to be another reason why Serenity didn't make enough money. I place all the blame on one scene -- where Alliance soldiers knock down a wall behind River -- the same scene that Joss had already reworked once, after preview audiences saw it and were profoundly confused. Read Joss's commentary to the DVD, 12 inches above here. Since it was the final action scene in Serenity, it needed to be as powerful a scene as the last action scene in Avatar. If you've seen that very predictable movie, you know it's the one where Jake and Neytiri are alone and he is dying and she is crying. In the last action scene in Serenity, it's the Operative who is crying, for crying out loud.

That scene should NOT have been mainly about the Operative developing a semi-working conscience after years of being an assassin. ("asshole" I won't call him because that's so crude.) The final action scene should have been Serenity's crew getting ready to fight one last time. Then they almost die. We are so relieved when they live! We shout in victory!

The final action scene in Serenity with the Operative saving Mal's life was as if Col. Quaritch in Avatar suddenly decided that he won't murder Jake. Who the hell wants to see Quaritch's spiritual awakening? He's the damn villain. We want him to suffer and die. Predictably, he did and that was good for Avatar's box-office receipts. Unfortunately, Joss focused on the Operative's change of heart, which took away from the emotions that could have been raised in the audience. The audience should have been on the edge of their seats, anxious for several more minutes, hoping that the Alliance would, somehow, be defeated -- that the heroes would, somehow, live.

I know Joss could have done better than me, but my best effort to keep the audience on the edge of their seats is http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=12835 The Operative still gets his tearful moment and saves Mal's life, it's just that the Operative is not the main focus. The crew is the center. They have several tasks to complete before the soldiers arrive to kill them. The crew isn't lollygagging around, stoically waiting to be shot dead, like the actual movie Joss made, where River turned her head ever-so-slowly, Mal's nostrils flared, and Jayne raised his hands in surrender.

P.S. -- When Serenity 2 is filmed, I want the Operative to be in it because famous Chiwetel Ejiofor can sell tickets, which Universal needs to justify making Serenity 3 & 4. I want him to be a complicated mix of evil and good. I don't want him to be Shepherd Book, reincarnated, because an old preacher-man doesn't attract a movie audience.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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A friend at work loaned me Serenity one day to watch, and I had never heard of Firefly. I thought Serenity was pretty good, and definitely different than other sci-fi movies. Curiosity led me to buying the Firefly series. Once I went through that, the BDM made a lot more sense to me. My opinion of it has not changed in four years. I find it quite enjoyable every time I watch it.

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In 2005, I really liked the movie, although I didn't love it as much as the series. As a movie, SERENITY is very s good. As a TV series, FIREFLY is gorram AMAZING.

(Although I will admit that 2006 made it very hard for me to pick the coolest sci fi moment of the year. It was a toss-up between Anakin and Kenobi drawing lightsabers on one another--a confrontation decades in the making--and the moment our beloved Serenity glided across the big screen.)

Four years later, my opinion is largely the same, but I have a little more respect for FIREFLY and a little less respect for SERENITY. I recently re-did all of Firefly canon (the series, the movie, and the two comic mini-series), and while the movie is still definitely very good, every time I see it, I am reminded of how the depth of it pales compared to the series.

FIREFLY, on the other hand, has only gotten better with time. In 2005, it had to contend with LOST in it's prime and THE SHIELD (two of the only shows that come close to matching the caliber of FIREFLY in my estimation). Now, LOST is a convoluted mess, and THE SHIELD is a bit of a memory. When we see DOLLHOUSE, even as it has gotten beter this season, we see how truly brilliant FIREFLY was.

So, four years later, I love FIREFLY all the more, and in doing so, love SERENITY a little less. :(

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

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Originally posted by two:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=12835

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Well written! Very interesting. But y'know, I kinda like that they were so close to gone, had spent everything they had. Makes 'em more human that way IMO.


The laughing Chrisisall

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