I just saw Serenity last night for the first time. It was decent. I liked the humor it had.I thought they could have done more in the way of action though.
I have never seen Firefly, the TV show it was based off of. How do the two compare? Does the TV show have the same type of humor?
[quote]PGA200X wrote:
I just saw Serenity last night for the first time. It was decent. I liked the humor it had.I thought they could have done more in the way of action though.
I have never seen Firefly, the TV show it was based off of. How do the two compare? Does the TV show have the same type of humor?[/quote]
Oh, yeah. Same humor. Same characters, etc. I thought the movie was not quite up to par with the series, to be honest. It’s too bad that there really is no niche for Sci-Fi type shows to flourish these days. Battlestar Galactica is good on Sci-Fi. But it would be dead on network TV. IMO - Firefly was one of the best. Very well done. Excellent writing. I Tivo’d all the episodes from Sci-Fi and reallly liked them. Give it a shot.
FWIW, I missed the series on TV, but the DVDs came my way when a friend’s set started making the rounds. A large chunk of my sicla circle was repeating lines and laughing constantly whenever we got together, and told me I HAD to see this series!
So my wife and I finally got our turn, and started watching the episodes in order. Man! We crammed in 2-3/night for a week. We found ourselves alluding to it, using one-liners, using Chinese, laughing our asses off throughout the day. Two years later it’s still one of our favorite series for Quotations. Wife said one morning “It’s been a long time since any TV show got my attention so intensely.”
The movie’s characterization is true to the series. The humor is there in about a dozen amazing episodes. Lots of good seriousness in some episodes, but the people never lose their quirky personalities and ability to make a comment that is perfect for their character and yet for the audience is eminently quotable.
We could fill a thread with one-liners from Jayne Cobb alone!
“I’ll be in my bunk.”
“Hi-larious.”
“Is anybody else out there?”
“Glad to have you back…on the ship.”
“I call her Vera.”
Few things prompt me to slap on the “fanboy” label, but I can’t help it about “Firefly.”
Looks like I’ll have to get the DVD’s now!
Here are some Firefly outtakes and bloopers. If you’re at work, there are swearwords.
Firefly rocks. Watch the whole series (and then watch it again, and again, it’s lots of fun), and then rewatch Serenity. You’ll enjoy it a lot more when you’ve seen Firefly. It’s such a tragedy that that show was cancelled so quickly.
Very good series. I refused to watch the last episode just so I could say “there is still a firefly I have yet to see!”
Corny I know, but it pisses me off that they canceled that series.
Agreed, Firefly is far superior to the movie Serenity. In fact, in the past 5 years, so far as non educational TV goes I’d have to rank
1.Firefly
2.The Shield
3.Joe Schmoe (1st Season)
Everything else is crap.
Mike
[quote]PGA200X wrote:
Here are some Firefly outtakes and bloopers. If you’re at work, there are swearwords.
Thanks. Many of the outtakes were familiar from DVD extras, but there was a lot of extra stuff there we hadn’t seen before. The wife and I are grateful.
I liked the movie, except for the pilot guy dying.
You have to understand and appreciate the task Whedon and Co. had on their hands. He had to take story elements that he would have developed over several episodes and cram them into a 2-hr movie.
I guarantee you, that the girl’s special powers (I’m sorry, but I’m horrible with names) would have been revealed slowly over time, if the TV show had been allowed to continue.
River’s her name. Her powers were somewhat revealed - she was basically a mind reader and held a secret about a political fuck-up related to the reavers.
Wash dying was so sad. And so sudden! I liked how they did it that way, even though it sucked.
The series hinted a lot at Shepherd’s past, as well as Inara’s past, and I think those two characters were awaiting further development, but now we’ll never really know…
[quote]simon-hecubus wrote:
I liked the movie, except for the pilot guy dying.
You have to understand and appreciate the task Whedon and Co. had on their hands. He had to take story elements that he would have developed over several episodes and cram them into a 2-hr movie.
I guarantee you, that the girl’s special powers (I’m sorry, but I’m horrible with names) would have been revealed slowly over time, if the TV show had been allowed to continue.[/quote]
Whedon helped write a three part comic book miniseries that tied Firefly and Serenity together; you find out what happened to the blue-handed men, and why Shepard left the crew (but not his mysterious backstory)- but all in all it wasn’t a great read. I figured since Whedon had a hand in it it would be alright but without the actors delviering the lines it was nowhere near the same.
[quote]simon-hecubus wrote:
I guarantee you, that the girl’s special powers (I’m sorry, but I’m horrible with names) would have been revealed slowly over time, if the TV show had been allowed to continue.[/quote]
Her name is River.
Best show in a while.
Count me in as one who is very sad to see it go away.
[quote]simon-hecubus wrote:
I liked the movie, except for the pilot guy dying.
You have to understand and appreciate the task Whedon and Co. had on their hands. He had to take story elements that he would have developed over several episodes and cram them into a 2-hr movie.
I guarantee you, that the girl’s special powers (I’m sorry, but I’m horrible with names) would have been revealed slowly over time, if the TV show had been allowed to continue.[/quote]
Exactly. The movie was the condensed ‘end’ of that storyline and I walked out wondering how anyone who hadn’t enjoyed the show would get as much from the movie.
The best things about anything written by Whedon (as I’m a fan of all his stuff), is that his dialogue is fantastic and you can never know what will happen. He is always willing to kill off a main character without warning. Thats actually refreshing.
My roommate and I watched Serenity when it came out in theaters. At this point I had never seen an episode of Firefly, or ANYTHING by Joss Whedon. Later, he bought the DVD series and the movie, and one weekend we watched ALL of it STRAIGHT with a break for lunch and dinner. Great 15 hours, right there.
You can bet that had the series continued, there would have been more deaths of the crew, and they would have been replaced by other quirky personalities. In Buffy, characters die or leave in horrible and amazingly sudden ways, but always in a way you can see happening in hind sight. Angel goes the same way, people get hurt, physically and emotionally, and sometimes people die.
Usually when you start to like a character too.
Joss Whedon takes his time developing characters, and his dialogue is great. There are few episodes where there’s not something I’ll laugh at.
So yeah, consider me in the camp of people that are angry the actual series won’t be completed. The movie changed enough from the actual series to let people in, but also made it so that there couldn’t be a particularly smooth segue into it from the series. Still liked it though.
-Gendou
[quote]Plisskin wrote:
simon-hecubus wrote:
I liked the movie, except for the pilot guy dying.
You have to understand and appreciate the task Whedon and Co. had on their hands. He had to take story elements that he would have developed over several episodes and cram them into a 2-hr movie.
I guarantee you, that the girl’s special powers (I’m sorry, but I’m horrible with names) would have been revealed slowly over time, if the TV show had been allowed to continue.
Exactly. The movie was the condensed ‘end’ of that storyline and I walked out wondering how anyone who hadn’t enjoyed the show would get as much from the movie.
The best things about anything written by Whedon (as I’m a fan of all his stuff), is that his dialogue is fantastic and you can never know what will happen. He is always willing to kill off a main character without warning. Thats actually refreshing.[/quote]
I am a big fan of his the only problem I have ever had with some of his story’s has been when he has been rushed.
the movie wasn’ half as good as the series would have been and the ending of Angel just sucked because the WB came in and said “hey your done because we need room for the 50th seson of Charmed”
There was a rumor about three months or so back that Mal, Zoe, Inara, and River were all seen leaving the WB’s corporate office at the same time. Haven’t heard anything since, though. Firefly was a great show, to bad it didn’t continue.
[quote]LNEX wrote:
I am a big fan of his the only problem I have ever had with some of his story’s has been when he has been rushed.
the movie wasn’ half as good as the series would have been and the ending of Angel just sucked because the WB came in and said “hey your done because we need room for the 50th seson of Charmed”[/quote]
Totally agree on when his stuff was rushed. They never allow for a wrap up season or two for good shows, even when they’re making enough money to pay for it. I was fairly dissatisfied with the finale of Angel, though I suppose it was fitting, but they did okay with Buffy.
Same thing happened with an old favorite of mine, Farscape. But they did have a more satisfying wrap-up later with a mini-series.
best series ever.
buy it, download it, do whatever is necessary, dong ma?
Be reasonable…
It had a great writing and story ideas/ narrative.
Great cast/ great acting
Of course they were going to cancel it…
You can’t have consistently good progamming on TV people will come to expect it…
sigh