Matrix vs. Firefly
POSTED BY: reginaroadie
UPDATED: Thursday, July 14, 2016 06:09
VIEWED: 10950
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Love your insightful posts Zoid. very thought provoking. I feel i understand the show and the characters even better now
"Gorramit Mal... I've forgotten my line."
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The dreaded, two-headed post...
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Corncobb:
Thank you.
An added thought, just for you: The reason Firefly had a special chemistry between its actors may be related to Joss' insistence that the set be constructed as a continuous space, rather than a bunch of one-room sets. Serenity becomes a confinement and a focus for the actors playing those characters; she becomes 'the ninth character', as she has been described, because she is physically whole. The physical act of running from one end of Serenity to the other creates a greater sense of realism for the actors than, say, exiting the infirmary like you're going somewhere, and then standing amid the cables and properties for the call to 'cut'.
It may or may not be the first time such a set has been built and used, but it is certainly not the standard order of business in Hollywood. Joss has gotten some wonderful performances from his actors on that set though, and I believe Serenity was his accomplice.
Those who fear Joss' inexperience as a movie director would do well to remember this: He's no run-of-the-mill storyteller. I expect a different kind of movie than standard Hollywood fare, every bit as emotionally gripping as the series. Serenity was made whole again, for the movie. With the extra money, some of the rough, search-the-props-department look should be gone, too.
Thanks again for your kind words.
Respectfully,
zoid
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"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity
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Ok, point well taken. But perhaps WE see Wash for what he really is, that don't mean HE is clued in his own self. I'm sure there are levels of prickness between pilots. F-15 pilots don't breath the same air as say, those who 'drive' C-130s. I'm sure there are similar distinctions in the future, even in space.
And who knows ? In 500 yrs, perhaps only the really hip cats who know what's what are cool enough to even HAVE a collection of plastic dinosaurs....hey, it's possible!
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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AURaptor:
As a military controller, I preferred fighter jocks to gas-passers. They were at the top of the food chain in the USAF, and as a consequence, just seemed to be more fun-loving. They'd usually do what you told 'em without question, as opposed to trying to run your pattern with their obviously superior grasp of ATC principles and rules. Mixing a pattern of H/KR35's with T-1's (BE40's) and C-12's (BE20's) was more like a game of twenty questions.
When I worked at Holloman, the F-15 SOF's (Supervisor of Flying) would come up to the tower every morning armed with a dozen donuts for the controllers, and then sit on their 'throne' reading comic books, trying not to disturb the trolls, and hoping no one asked them anything during their shift...
I loved those guys. I also never failed to tell the new ones the 'porcupine vs. F-15' (or A-10 or F-16) joke, as an ice-breaker. They always honestly laughed at it, and won my unflagging respect for that sense of self-deprecation. At least part of what's funny about the joke is that none of them are pricks (that I ever met). They were, and still are, my heroes.
Respectfully,
zoid
P.S.
I truly pity the poor bastard in the MiG, Mirage or whatever, who goes up against one of our boys... In controller-speak, "Say next of kin."
_________________________________________________
"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity
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zoid:
All I know of flying I learned from watchin Top Gun . Hee hee. Ok, not true, but near enough.
I'll defer to your knowledge of pilots though, when it come to gettin a read on Wash.
I still say that playing w/ plastic dinos is more a sign of coolness, though.
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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AURaptor:
I always thought Serenity looked like a C-130, on her inside. And I've said it before, but it's still true: Wash's "This Land" scene wasted me! It reminded me so much of pulling the mid (overnight) shift in the tower, it was like deja vu. All alone for 8 hours, basically monitoring a NAVAID monitor. (No, that wasn't redundant; making sure an alarm didn't go off on a little panel with three lights on it, resetting it, if it did.) No air traffic. Everyone else in the world sanely asleep, unless they were in other towers, monitoring monitors.
Mostly, I read or did crosswords; but if I'd had plastic dinosaurs...
Sentimentally,
zoid
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Quote:
Originally posted by BadgersHat:
The Matrix flicks were basically knock offs of Dark City and Tron, with a whole lot of philosophic psychobabble thrown in
That's quite a trick, since _Dark City_ was released in 1998 and _The Matrix_ was released thirteen months later.
I think the reason the first Matrix worked was the novelty of "cool stuff"; the CGI, the wire-fu, the "psychobabble", the rebel factor, alternate realities, ect, all put into a single film that worked enough for the viewer to go home satisfied. The two films after were unable to pay off the ideas brought up from the first film, and so they just covered the flaws with more CGI. It's the old Hollywood law of diminishing returns.
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I see The Matrix as very different from Firefly. Take the two main characters. If I was on a double date with Mal and Neo, I'd be making out with Mal while Neo waxed philosophical in the corner. Don't get me wrong. I love Neo. I do. I just don't have an obsessive devotion to his life. This is the way I feel about everyone aboard Serenity. I think the movie may start out slow, because there are still a lot of people who haven't even heard of Firefly. I also think it will start to pick up speed once the word gets out about how brilliant it is. I don't know. I guess a lot of it just has to do with marketing, doesn't it?
I'm missing you already
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Quote:
That's quite a trick, since _Dark City_ was released in 1998 and _The Matrix_ was released thirteen months later.
Can't deny that the 2 story lines were essentially the same, though. Almost same could be said for The Truman Show. I'm sure there are other examples too, but those are the ones which come to mind first. Who knows how long the concept for Dark City was sitting on the shelf and who might have gotten wind of it.
As for Dark City, another thing that made it superior in MY book was Jennifer Connelly. 'Nuff said.
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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