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calimacI liked it, OK? Don't be hittin' on me for the criticisms I'm about to make. That was one powerfully impacting film, and not just if you were sitting in Serenity's pilot seat during a rough landing. B and I wandered out of the theatre in a daze, wondering where on earth we had put our car. A lot had happened in the two-plus hours since we'd last seen it, and I felt much older. Joss packed a tv season's worth of power into this film, and he packed it well. But ...
The thing is, we were fortunate enough to see all the broadcast episodes of Firefly when they first appeared, but it still took me a while to get the feel of the show, to internalize all the characters and get used to the style of the storytelling. Since the DVD came out, though, I've watched all of them several times - they hold up amazingly well, and even reveal new depths. So now they all have for me a sheen of familiarity that anything new is going to lack. It's going to feel different, and unless absolutely overwhelming in a way that this was not for me, those differences will create a feeling of inferiority - until I get used to the film. And this film was so powerful I'm not sure I want to see it again any time soon. You don't turn around and run right back to go through the wringer again.
It wasn't the deaths. They made sense enough in context, I guess, shocking and surprising as they were. We already know Joss kills his most sympathetic characters: Tara ... Doyle ... Darla, just after I finally got to be able to stand her ... Anya ... now Book and Wash ... what else is new? Everybody's in constant danger in this show, we already know that, I can feel hurt but I can't feel betrayed by the creator.
I know some of you feel differently, but I can't help thinking of the people who screamed (sometimes literally) after The Empire Strikes Back that Lucas had ruined the Star Wars universe: I'm not sure how, maybe by having Luke get hurt.
What most disturbed me about this Serenity film was something quite different: that there were some places where I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. I don't recall feeling that way during any of the TV episodes. It wasn't a matter of complete bafflement, just an at-sea-ness that I don't think was entirely intentional.
One example: where did the spear, or whatever it was, come from that skewered Wash? From the Reavers, I guess, but I didn't see any Reavers or Reaver ships around when Serenity skidded to a halt (and suffered so much damage that the fix-up job at the end seemed implausible, saved only by the film's very last shot). It wasn't just a shock, it was slightly confusing. I didn't even realize at first that they were on Mr. Universe's space station, though that had been their original destination. From the wide shots of the ship ducking the battle, I thought they were now heading down to the planet.
There were other apparent holes and inconsistencies, especially relating to Miranda, but I won't detail them now.
There were a lot of things different from the TV series, enough to be distracting. The ship was physically different in a lot of ways. In the series, Jayne and Zoe are more frightened of the Reavers than anybody else is, and wouldn't think of fighting them. In the film they do, almost nonchalantly. Everybody has toughened up a lot, even Simon (who not only slugs Mal, which would have been impossible earlier, but acts more heroic after a worse bullet wound than he did in "Objects in Space") and Kaylee (who handles a gun with an assurance underivable from her abject panic with one in "War Stories").
There was a lot of humor in this film, even in unexpected places, like Mal pulling a pocketknife on the Operative in the midst of their final battle. But it didn't have the pacing and flavor of the tv show. The scene in which Serenity stirs up the Reavers and lures them on to the waiting Alliance - man that was clever, but if it had happened in one of the tv episodes I think it would have been directed with much more wit and style.
The Operative was a re-run of Jubal Early - nastier, but not anywhere near as creepy. Mr. Universe's space station, and Mal and the Operative's fight in it, reminded me awfully of Luke and Vader having it out in the bowels of Cloud City. Speaking of Mr. Universe (and where did he come from, anyway? I don't remember him being mentioned before: Wash pulls him out of a hat), he has a Buffybot! Nobody else in the 'verse has had a robot like that; does he know Warren Meers? What a resourceful guy. And River ... fair enough that it's foreshadowed, but by the end of the film she's actually turned into Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself. Check out that shadowed shot of her holding the two axes. Been there, seen that. What's more, she can fly the ship better than Mal can. Maybe she's inherited Wash's brain. What an all-purpose supergal, yadda yadda yadda.
I look forward to being argued out of some of these grumbles. I've got the script book, and had better read it. And I may steel myself to going back and seeing the film in the theatre again. I liked it, remember: I was powerfully impressed. But nothing will replace those 14 precious episodes of Firefly in my affection.
The thing is, we were fortunate enough to see all the broadcast episodes of Firefly when they first appeared, but it still took me a while to get the feel of the show, to internalize all the characters and get used to the style of the storytelling. Since the DVD came out, though, I've watched all of them several times - they hold up amazingly well, and even reveal new depths. So now they all have for me a sheen of familiarity that anything new is going to lack. It's going to feel different, and unless absolutely overwhelming in a way that this was not for me, those differences will create a feeling of inferiority - until I get used to the film. And this film was so powerful I'm not sure I want to see it again any time soon. You don't turn around and run right back to go through the wringer again.
It wasn't the deaths. They made sense enough in context, I guess, shocking and surprising as they were. We already know Joss kills his most sympathetic characters: Tara ... Doyle ... Darla, just after I finally got to be able to stand her ... Anya ... now Book and Wash ... what else is new? Everybody's in constant danger in this show, we already know that, I can feel hurt but I can't feel betrayed by the creator.
I know some of you feel differently, but I can't help thinking of the people who screamed (sometimes literally) after The Empire Strikes Back that Lucas had ruined the Star Wars universe: I'm not sure how, maybe by having Luke get hurt.
What most disturbed me about this Serenity film was something quite different: that there were some places where I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. I don't recall feeling that way during any of the TV episodes. It wasn't a matter of complete bafflement, just an at-sea-ness that I don't think was entirely intentional.
One example: where did the spear, or whatever it was, come from that skewered Wash? From the Reavers, I guess, but I didn't see any Reavers or Reaver ships around when Serenity skidded to a halt (and suffered so much damage that the fix-up job at the end seemed implausible, saved only by the film's very last shot). It wasn't just a shock, it was slightly confusing. I didn't even realize at first that they were on Mr. Universe's space station, though that had been their original destination. From the wide shots of the ship ducking the battle, I thought they were now heading down to the planet.
There were other apparent holes and inconsistencies, especially relating to Miranda, but I won't detail them now.
There were a lot of things different from the TV series, enough to be distracting. The ship was physically different in a lot of ways. In the series, Jayne and Zoe are more frightened of the Reavers than anybody else is, and wouldn't think of fighting them. In the film they do, almost nonchalantly. Everybody has toughened up a lot, even Simon (who not only slugs Mal, which would have been impossible earlier, but acts more heroic after a worse bullet wound than he did in "Objects in Space") and Kaylee (who handles a gun with an assurance underivable from her abject panic with one in "War Stories").
There was a lot of humor in this film, even in unexpected places, like Mal pulling a pocketknife on the Operative in the midst of their final battle. But it didn't have the pacing and flavor of the tv show. The scene in which Serenity stirs up the Reavers and lures them on to the waiting Alliance - man that was clever, but if it had happened in one of the tv episodes I think it would have been directed with much more wit and style.
The Operative was a re-run of Jubal Early - nastier, but not anywhere near as creepy. Mr. Universe's space station, and Mal and the Operative's fight in it, reminded me awfully of Luke and Vader having it out in the bowels of Cloud City. Speaking of Mr. Universe (and where did he come from, anyway? I don't remember him being mentioned before: Wash pulls him out of a hat), he has a Buffybot! Nobody else in the 'verse has had a robot like that; does he know Warren Meers? What a resourceful guy. And River ... fair enough that it's foreshadowed, but by the end of the film she's actually turned into Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself. Check out that shadowed shot of her holding the two axes. Been there, seen that. What's more, she can fly the ship better than Mal can. Maybe she's inherited Wash's brain. What an all-purpose supergal, yadda yadda yadda.
I look forward to being argued out of some of these grumbles. I've got the script book, and had better read it. And I may steel myself to going back and seeing the film in the theatre again. I liked it, remember: I was powerfully impressed. But nothing will replace those 14 precious episodes of Firefly in my affection.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 12:47 am (UTC)You seem to have had a very similar reaction to mine. It seems that neither of us made the leap to the new medium very well. Part of the problem also, for me, I think, may have been that I'm not really a very big fan of action films in general. I often find filmed action sequences difficult to follow and therefore can get a bit bored during them. This is usually far more crippling to my engagement with films than it is to my engagement with even relatively action-packed TV episodes.
All the same, I think I might follow your lead in going to see the movie a second time, now that it is out in the theaters. It's quite likely that I'd enjoy it more on second viewing.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 06:07 pm (UTC)I actually think I liked it better than the series. It had unbelievable emotional oomph.
Responding to some of your quibbles ...
The thing that killed Wash, I'm pretty sure, was a piece of rubble. They'd just crashed into a structure, and if you've ever seen that happen, things continue to fall at odd moments for a while. Wash's death was (I think intentionally) meaningless: there's a powerful contrast set up between his and Shepherd Book's.
Book has a standard Movie Death: miraculously, the one character we care about is the only one to survive until the Heroes get there, so he can have a Death Scene with Meaningful Last Words. His death has Meaning. Wash has a Realistic Death: it Just Happens; he's There and then he's Gone, without even an "Oh my God."
This works (for me) on a number of symbolic levels: Wash was always the innocent, trying to fit in with a bunch of -- well, criminals. Book was the one who looked like an innocent but appears to have had the most sinister (not the word I want, but -- well, not-innocent) past of the bunch of them. They were ... no pun intended ... bookends.
River and the Reavers: Okay, you've watched a lot more Buffy than I have, but when the hatch opened and she was there, standing on a pile of dead reavers, backlit, with an axe in each hand, I flashed immediately on a classic Frazetta Conan illo. You know the one I mean. The only thing missing was a sexy guy at her feet.
Joss clearly likes female superheroes; I'm chuffed about him doing a Wonder Woman film (and only hope Warner's will let him do it his way). As you say, there was certainly plenty of foreshadowing about River, but I could wish they'd saved the revelations about her till a second movie and built up more foreshadowing in this one.
I agree completely about some of the character inconsistencies. I'd like to know how much time is supposed to have passed between the series and the movie: I know that the three-issue Dark Horse comic is supposed to come in between. (FWIW: if you haven't read it, don't bother. It's like a not especially good episode of the series, in which a Bad Guy you thought was dead comes back, causes trouble, and then gets genuinely dead. Plus, they deal with a pair of 2x2s. I guess it does explain why pieces are falling off the ship at the beginning of the movie.)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 03:03 am (UTC)You're right about the Death Scene. Also, the attack on Book's camp was just part of the Operative killing everybody who'd ever helped Mal, which it seems unlikely to be doable in such a short time.
I've seen more Buffy than you have, I've seen less Frazetta than you have, and in between that being a Frazetta pose and being a River pose, it was a Buffy pose. So that's what I thought of first.
I figure some months passed between the series and the film. I did read the Dark Horse comic and you're right, it's not very good. The number of back-references to the series worried me: this is how cult shows eat themselves alive. But at least it explained for the movie viewer why Book had left the ship (not that an explanation was really needed).
The other Whedonverse comic I've read, Fray, is very good, though. It's about a future Slayer.