10-08-2005
I have found Serenity
So I haven’t posted in a while, sorry. It’s not so much that I’ve been too busy to post as I’ve been busy enough that I didn’t feel like using my feel time to post.
Among the things that have elapsed in the interverning time are the Stones show(which will get its own post at some point) and my going to see Serenity . with TC last weekend. For those of you who are not into SF (or those of you who are and have been living in some sort of serve sensority deprevation for the last 3 months, the movie is based on an amazing, but short lived (damn Fox to fucking hell) tv series called Firefly which makes the unlikily blend of SF and western elements. Yes the premise sounds incredibly stupid and it comes off that way if you watch only a tiny snatch of an episode, but in reality it is so much more than “cowboys in space” Rather it uses those Western elements to bloster what are traditionally weakness of SF. The characters are imperfect, the technology breaks, the settings are on the fringe of civilization. The society is certainly not a utopia(ala Star Trek, but neither is it entirely dytopic, it simply is. The result is the richest, more diverse and interesting take on a culture in SF I’ve seen.
Before I give my impressions of the movie, I should confess that I’ve become a TOTAL Joss Wheadon fanboy and this review is in no sense objective. In my defense I came to realize Wheaton’s brilliance through Firefly, rather than already knowing his work from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (I have however been devouring Buffy DVDs as quickly as humanly possible but that’s a subject for another post). Serenity was, quite simply, the best movie I’ve seen, ever. Now granted that those who know me know I have no end of distain for the cinematic format , so that’s not as high praise as it would coming from someone who actually likes movies, but what makes it so wonderful IMHO is that it avoided all the things I generally hate about movies, particularly “action” movies.
- My biggest concern about the film by far was how much time they would spend trying to aquaint the audience with the world and its characters. I thought this was handled exceptionally well but indirectly developing the relationships using dialog apporiate to what happens to be going on without forcing the exposition. The explanations of the central plot element was handled very well byshowing events fans had previously only heard about. So it’s definately possible to watch this without having seen Firefly and fans of the series won’t be bored to tears just so you can.
- As a drama, this movie benefits from an incredibly deep set of characters. This is the one area where having seen the series would definately helped, as I think the characters would come off flatter otherwise. However, notice I said flatter and not flat, even with the limited screen time every character gets used well.
- As a comedy, the movie is absolutely halirious , the audience was in open laughter dozens of times and I found it immense funnier than most of the idiotic drivel that passes for comedy these days
- As an action movie shit blows up repeatedly in a satisfying fashion. The effects are probably not the most stunning ever by ultrablockbuster standards, but they’re certainly good enough and most importantly the movie has action without the action being its sole purpose (as seems to be the case with so many movies today). There are number of action movie cliches, but I think they are tastfully done.
- As an SF film, there’s certainly no shortage of technological speculation, but more importantly there’s lots of questions raised wrt technology and ethics as well as a number of interesting shades of moral grey
A number of people have asked me whether its necessary to see Firefly before seeing the movie. I think it would certainly add to the experience, but I also think the movie will be enjoyable anyway. I highly recommend seeing it in theaters both in order to get the full theater experience and to give immediate fincial support to this great project. If you have a chance though I would at least try to catch the series pilot.
I think every movie studio and tv network in the country show get down on their fucking knees and throw large sums of money at Joss Wheaton and BEG him to do another project as brilliant as this.
-CI
postscriptum: If you don’t believe me about the movie, ask Orson Scott Card (author Ender’s Game)
