Serenity (Firefly) movie (spoilers!)

MoS

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Well, okay, maybe no spoilers, not this early in the week...

There aren't many movies that I want to see enough to go opening night, but we went to see Serenity - I've been a fan of Firefly since a friend sent me the DVDs and all the trailers I've seen made me really want to see it.

It's a very fun movie with a lot of great dialog - it moves right along, there aren't a lot of slow points. One of the amazing things is how well Joss Whedon handles mundane things. There is a required exposition at the beginning to bring you up to speed on the characters and situations and you barely notice that the Exposition Fairy has entered the building and is sitting on your shoulder. The end of the movie rolls out a ton of cliches that you have seen before in action movies, war movies, westerns, sci-fi movies, horror movies - but you don't notice that either, because it's so well-done.

And on top of that, someone outside the theater gave us free tickets his group couldn't use.

What could be better?
 
Do you know what annoys me? The actual TV series still hasn't aired in NZ yet...
 
:shock: :shock: :shock:

WOW!

This movie blew me away. It was so good. It was even better than I would of ever thought. Whedon is a genius. Between this, Astonishing X-men, Buffy and Angel. I think I'm falling in love. This movie had me on the edge of my seat. I've see the entire Firefly show and loved it. But this movie made the show look like nothing. I need to find out someone's thought on it that hasn't seen the show.
Big Spoilers Ahead.












Okay where to begin. The movie starts out really well. Showing how Simon broke River out. This mean *** Bounty Hunter that as been sent after them. The crew go on a heist only to have the town attacked by reavers. They get away barely. Arama has left the ship, so has Spherd Book. He nows runs a little hideout on a planet. Their are some great moments between Simon and Mal about the fate of River. After Mal reunites with Arama, fights the assassin and gets his *** handed to him. The crew escape back to Book's village to find it slaughtered by Alliance. Book dies in Mal's hands. It was sad. They find out that the assassin wiped out every place they have ever laid low at. Meanwhile River freaked out after seeing this commerical that triggered somthing. She started kicking everyone's *** in range. Until Simon said some word that put her to sleep. But right before she freaked out. She muttered a name. Later she hijacks the ships computer and finds out it was a planet that she said not a person. It says the planets empty that it was inhabitable. But before the planet is Reaver terrority. That they can't go there. So Mal has everyone make thier ship look like a Reaver ship complete with body's on the front. They make it though to the planet. Where they find entire planet dead. No signs of a struggle or pain. Everybody looked peaceful but dead. They follow a homing becon to a ship. Read the last recording of a chick talking about how they just tried to improve people. The alliance put a new chemical in their air to make people calmer and to destory anger. But soon nobody did anything. Didn't eat, sleep, move, nothing. But then she goes on about how some had a opposite effect. They became very violent. Eating people alive. Rapping, killing. They created The Reavers. They decided that the universe must know about this. So they call this guy Mr.Universe. A major hacker and tell him they are coming. But the assassin and a army of Alliance are there waiting to ambush them. On the way out of the reaver terroity they shoot a ship down. Causing all the reaver ships to chase them. They lead them straight to the alliance army waiting for them. A sky battle that was incredible. Wash keeps talking about how he's the leave in the wind. He crash lands the plane and says it again. Then BOOM a giant spike shoots though the ship into his chest. A reaver ship followed them and Wash dies. That was sadder than Book's death. The rest of the crew have to hold off the reavers while Mal has to send the message. This was to most intense and emotional part of the movie. Simon reveales his feelings for Kalli. She gets shoot with poison darts. They fall back into blast doors. But they wouldn't close all the way. Simon gets shoot. He left his medicine bag back outside the door. River tells him that he can't die that he takes care of her. She said it's time to return the favor. Runs outside, throws the medicine bag back in a shuts the doors. Meanwhile Mal gets ambushed by the assassin. They fight and Mal gets his *** handled to him again. The assassin tries to palayze him with a pressure point. But Mal turns on him and traps him against a beam. He said he lost that nerve in the war. He then played the message and showed what the assassin was fighting for. Meanwhile River's kicking Reaver ***. She slicing and dicing. Mal soon joins everybody else and they all think River is dead. Then the door opens and River is standing there with a axe and sword in her hand and a bunch of dead Reavers around her. Then the alliance shows up and almost kills everybody but is told to stand down by the assassin. Then they move on and that was the end. 15/10
 
I watched Firefly in its original run on Fox and loved it. It was one of the few shows that I made sure I saw each week. Today I went to see the film adaptation, and the fear gripped me as the film opened. The actors were stiff, the dialogue hokey, but the longer the movie went on the more the leads seemed to slide back into thier roles, the more the awful particular way of speech became part of the charm, and except for a moment of fear, yes fear, that it would end on an EVERYONE DIES note I was gripped by the excellent storyline. Yes, I await with baited breath the next installment of the firefly series, be it movie, TV, or some strange direct to video mutant. Well done Joss. You're finaly hooked me.
 
ProjectX2 said:
Do you know what annoys me? The actual TV series still hasn't aired in NZ yet...
No, and probably wont considering they killed it in the States because of the ratings.
 
Caduceus said:
No, and probably wont considering they killed it in the States because of the ratings.
Yup. I think it was just one season. And with it being at FOX, its no shocker there.
 
icemastertron said:
Yup. I think it was just one season. And with it being at FOX, its no shocker there.
8 episodes. :(

I still don't know what they were thinking, outting it on Friday nights at 8, against Stargate SG-1 of all shows. Might as well just shoot it in the head beforehand, put it out of it's misery.
 
Baxter said:
8 episodes. :(

I still don't know what they were thinking, outting it on Friday nights at 8, against Stargate SG-1 of all shows. Might as well just shoot it in the head beforehand, put it out of it's misery.

Lol, I wish they'd shoot the entire Stargate franchise in the head, if they were going to shoot something...

And, sorry to say, on Serenity, I wish they'd kept the Reavers unseen, that faceless yet terrifying evil, the way they were in the TV series. Giving them a history and a face made me actually *think* about the concept, which is unfortunate, because it doesn't make any sense. If the Reavers are that brutish and unthinking, how do they survive, how do they breed? How do they operate starships?

Also, wasn't it more than just a tad useful that the planet the information specialist guy lived on was that close to Reaver territory? Kinda stupid on his part, don't you think?

As for not having seen the TV series - all-region DVD players and DVDs. That way you can watch the TV series in the right order, not the stupid order Fox made them show the series in. Plus you get at least one episode that never aired on TV on the DVD.
 
thee great one said:
They played 11 episodes on TV and either two or three didn't air that's on the DVD.

TGO is right, 11 episodes actually aired on FOX, and 3 were shot, edited, etc but never aired. Hence, the DVD set of Firefly features these 14 episodes.

As for the movie, I liked it. I was worried it was going to be terrible, but it surprised me. I think it lived up to the TV series quite well, and continued and wrapped up a lot of things from that series which were left hanging due to its early cancellation. It also was a strong enough entity in its own right without the series being required viewing for it to make sense. I'm hoping very much this movie garners enough money to warrant a sequel being made. I'm actually quite impressed this movie only cost $30 million to make.
 
SPOILERS AHEAD, so don't read if you ain't seen it.

I know I'm late to the party, but I have to say, I enjoyed it. A really good, fun sci-fi western.

I felt it had four real problems - and only four.

1 - The Reavers, while EVERYTHING was scary about them; people reacting in sheer terror, the stories, the idea they're a myth, the craziness, the lack of knowning why they're crazy - they... they just looked like Uruk-hai. I'm sorry, I think Whedon should've really shot the scenes with the Reavers with less light to keep 'em scary. Their ships were great. Their weapons, their tactics, everything apart from how they looked was great.

2 - The 'packs' that were designed to pacify the civilisation but instead turned 10% of them into Reavers - where did that come from? It wasn't set up at all. Part of me thinks it would've been cool if in that bank, there was a crate marked "Alliance" and was top secret. You know Mal would've taken it for his ownself, just to stick it to the Alliance. The Alliance discovers that the packs were taken - not by the Reavers, but by some bank robbers; Who they manage to work out is Mal. After being pursued by the Alliance, the crew reckon may be it has something to do with the stolen crate (River too, I suppose). Then imagine inside the crate, they discover these packs, which makes the Alliance really nervous and thus step up their desire to find Serenity, get the packs back, and River who may or may not know about it. As it is... the Alliance wants River incapacitated or returned, so they do this by sending out an operative to trigger her memories of Miranda... huh? You don't want her to reveal the secrets of Miranda she may or may not know about, so you broadcast a subliminal message throught the known 'verse to trigger the repressed memories you don't want her to remember? I... don't get it.

3 - The villain of the film has this super duper back attack that paralyses someone so he can make them fall on his sword. It's super sweet. He pulls it off once at the beginning, and not only does it rock, but we know it's gonna get done to Mal at some point. We all were biting our nails during both hand fights, and when he did it - well, we all were stumped. It seems Whedon was too because he had Mal be 'immune' to it - out of the blue. Just, "Oh, I have shrapnel there so I'm not hurt by it." It's cheap and its a deus ex machina. Would it have been so hard to set up that shrapnel earlier in the film? Couldn't it have been in his war record? When the villain is telling Mal he was in the war, he could'nt have said, "You fought in the war. All it got you was shrapnel in your back." Mal then repsonds by somehow turning the conversation on the villain, as he did. Just one or two mentions. There's no way any one would've gone "Shrapnel = He's immune" but it would've made us go at the end "Oh! Of course he's immune! Sweet! AND the villain was berating him about it earlier! How's that for comeuppance you arrogant, intelligent, Shepard killing bastard?!" Instead we got, "Shrapnel? Huh. That was lucky."

4 - There was a distinct lack of actual Alliance parliamentary figures. These were the big movers and shakers behind all the events in Serenity. Was it too much trouble to actually see them? I mean, they don't need to be mundane people in suits that Mal punches, nor do they have to be shadowy men in a war room. Couldn't they have been seen on TV on the news programmes? Names dropped? Instead we got this "Parliament" who we never saw or fully understood, which was a problem because if we don't understand Parliament, we don't fully get why the record is so important. What's worse is at the end, they broadcast the tape - and we're TOLD that nothing really happened. Wouldn't it have been better to see news footage, or even a payoff to a set up parliament character seen earlier in the film, anything? Wouldn't it have been good to see what the tape did to the Alliance? People all across the 'verse scared and traumatised by the record sent out everywhere. Reavers aren't a myth, and the record is quite graphic in proving how they're not. Lots' of places would never show the record. It's just - I understand why when I came out of the film, some people didn't fully understand what the whole point of airing the packs to the public was all about - because we didn't see what it meant.

That's it though, those are the problems I found in the film.

The rest was absolutely wonderful. Truly, truly was. I enjoyed myself a lot.

The feeling of down-on-their-luck outlaws was wonderful, with the ship falling apart, and the crew hungry. Mal shooting the guy who tried to grab onto the mule was great. The villain was great; "I don't kill children." "I do." The characters were on form, and all wonderful to behold (except Anara who was dull in the tv show and dull in the film - why is it we always have to have a 'pretty' woman on a show, the point of which is to look pretty and for some inexplicable reason create false sexual tension between her and the male lead by the two of them just having arguments and not having sex? Lana in Smallville, Kate in Lost, that woman in House... god, they're everywhere. All these characters seem to do is get in the way.)

Y'know, what I loved? At the beginning, we see Simon watching River be... 'experimented' on. For a second, I was **** scared. I thought Simon was one of the Blue Sun (and where were they? I love the blue hand guys) executives in charge of River and that he implanted a false memory into her head of the family and him as her brother. I mean, what if he'd been playing us all this time? He's not River's brother, she never had one. That said, I then realised we were just seeing how he broke her out of prison - not that it's a bad thing mind you. The prison escape kicked ***. Especially the villain's observations on it - great pay off.

Dammit though. Book dead? What about the identicard? What was going on with him? Walsh dead? I loved him. Dammit. I loved those characters. Curse you, Whedon. At least you didn't kill Mal or Jayne. Or Kaylee. Or Simon.

I have to say, the deaths were wonderfully done. Really brought a tear to my eye. I'm gonna miss those guys.

Also, I got cut up when the Serenity crashed. I thought we'd lost the ship. I care more for that ugly little firefly freighter than I do about the Enterprise. Whedon rocks.

Also, the origin behind the Reavers was great, too. (Though not neccessarily the execution.)

Seriously, I felt the film had those 4 problems, and the Anara problem continued from the show, but apart from that - the film was top notch, highly enjoyable fare and it worked. Great showing. Kudos to all involved.

I mean - it was just so... fresh, y'know? Filled with cliches, which got played on. "You wanna take command of this ship." "Yes." "... Well... you can't." Even the last line was funny. Really managed to balance the excitement, fear, sadness, and comedy all together. Impressive feat indeed.

I'm going to say, "I aim to misbehave" for weeks now.
 
Am I the only one thinking there were two scenes missing?

#1 - The Operative comes face to face with River, who's all martial artsy. The Operative says the safe word.

#2 - The Operative, after saying goodbye to Mal, waits till Serenity takes off, then impales himself on his sword.
 
Bass said:
Am I the only one thinking there were two scenes missing?

#1 - The Operative comes face to face with River, who's all martial artsy. The Operative says the safe word.

#2 - The Operative, after saying goodbye to Mal, waits till Serenity takes off, then impales himself on his sword.

yes I agree.
 
I preordered the trade a week back so I can get the AH cover. I'll let you know once I've read it. :D
 
Bass said:
I preordered the trade a week back so I can get the AH cover. I'll let you know once I've read it. :D

Cool. I thought it was a decent mini, nothing huge or grandly moving, but it reveals more about the Blue Hands Men, and sees the return of a familiar face (minus an eye) from the Pilot of the show. Decent script, just nothing hugely exciting. Does a good job of bridging the show and movie though as I said, as it was meant to.
 

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