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I have now watched the first two DVDs of the four DVD set.
I actually agree, not with the overall order in which they ran, but in starting with "Train Job." I thought it did a better job of showing us the characters of the characters than the pilot did.
I also thought Saffron looked better as a bumpkin than she did "cleaned up".
Like most, however, I can't believe this show was cancelled... it's seriously good.
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I'm still waiting for mine to arrive. It should have been here last Thursday, and still hasn't arrived. If I had actually paid for "two-day shipping" I would be pretty upset right now.
Maybe it will come today (I say for the third time).
posted
I liked Train Job, and I agree with you about Saffron. But I'm not sure about opening with it. I don't think the pilot did a great job of showing us everything we needed to know, either. I'd have liked for a one hour pilot with some elements from Train Job and some from the pilot.
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That's pretty much where I am, too. The pilot, entertaining and informative as it is, drags in places. The strawberry-eating scene could be trimmed down, and I'd rather have eliminated the entire bit with Jayne and Mal and Zoe discussing where to set up on Patience's moon. A good 10 minutes we didn't need, especially since it would have been as or more effective to have Jayne start shooting without showing us first he was up there. he could still have wavered on shooting Mal during the gun fight.
But you gotta have Mal opening the case to see a frozen naked River: "Huh."
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Firefly has serious flaws. Having all the planets be in one solar system is stupid, forced, and doesn't work. The use of archaic American cowboy speak quite often doesn't work. The use of Chinese occasionally sounds awkward and doesn't work. The first episode drags rather seriously, and is impossible to hear! Firefly is not spectacularly good science fiction, and Serenity is most assuredly not the greatest science fiction movie ever.
But . . .
I don't know that I have ever seen a television series where the characterization is so good. Certainly not after only fourteen episodes. I don't think I have ever felt like I know the characters as well as I did after those 14 episodes. I have never come to love each and every character in an entire ensemble that way, where each one stands apart for distinct reasons. I have never felt as connected to a place in any television series or movie as I did to the ship Serenity. My reaction when I thought it was being destroyed was visceral. I know the destruction of the Enterprises did not affect me as much. I felt as if I had lived on that ship with those people, and I loved both the ship and the people. I was grateful for the time I spent there, and only wish I could have had more.
I think Firefly may just surpass everything else out there in making the people real and making me care.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Are you sure all the planets are suppose to be in the same solar system? I never got that impression. I also love the western and chinese speak! But yeah, the music is really loud when people are talking sometimes.
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Yep, same solar system. But, as faster-than-light travel wasn't mentioned, they'd have to be close enough to navigate.
I definitely agree about the sound, in the pilot episode especially the boots clomp louder than the dialogue. Argh!
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Icarus- I think Joss Whedon was more going for characterization than he was for sci fi.
In a lot of ways, it's like Buffy, as a fantasy show, Buffy stinks. But as a show about real characters dealing with fantastic situations, it's amazing.
I also think the pilot is the weakest episode. I always start people with The Train Job.
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I just want everyone to realize that by saying the series should start with the Train Job, you are saying FOX was right about something. Not that that means FOX was right about anything else regarding the show, but as the, occasional, lone defender of FOX, I just wanted to point that out.
My thoughts: Train Job is the brisker, better paced story. More excitement, gun fire, and humor. But in terms of an introduction to the characters, it tends to be a mite confusing. Dropping the viewer into the story of ten characters (counting the ship) was incredibly tricky, which is why the pilot was slow (took time to introduce) and why Train Job was a little befuddling at first (didn't take much time to introduce). Its easy to watch Train Job and think it is easy to follow after you have watched the series, but the first time one watches, it can be a little difficult to figure out who the heck everyone is and what they are doing.
Forget naming the worst episode (probably would be Heart of Gold IMHO), the best episode is also the best hour of television I've personally every seen: Out of Gas.
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Actually, I don't think the series should start with "The Train Job." I think it should start with the pilot. I just think the pilot could have been better.
I saw the episodes the first time in order, because I watched them for the first time on DVD (which is pretty much how I watch all TV shows). For all its flaws, the pilot was enough to hook me. It lays all the foundation for how the characters ended up there and who they were. And, like I said, the show's strength was it's characterization. "The Train Job" gives some good characterization for Mal and Zoe, but doesn't give the whole background like the pilot does.
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Aerto- ever since I started watching Joss Whedon's work I've always maintained that he's brilliant, but boy does that man need a keeper! A lot of the things I loved about Firefly are things that Fox made him change from his original idea. I love the lighter Mal from Firefly, he's one of my favorite characters, while the darker Mal from Serenity creeps me out.
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Actually, I thought that The Train Job was the weakest of the bunch. If someone had started me on that one instead of the pilot, they might not have had an easy time getting past my first impressions.
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I absolutely fell in love with it when I saw The Train Job on TV. The unexpected method of dealing with the thug sold me.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Oh, that reminds me, I thought Mal in the Series was much meaner than Mal in the movie.
In the movie, everything he does and says has a reason... in the series, he's been just plain sadistic on more than one occasion.
Favorite Episode of the first two DVDs would be "Our Mrs Reynolds" by a narrow margin (despite having a large, noticable plot hole), with Shindig and Jaynestown being close behind.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I rarely even think of it as Sci-Fi in the truest sense of the genre. None of the show focuses on the elements that make the show sci-fi. The fact that much of they time they are flying through space seems more incidental than it does an integral part of the plot. Kaylee isn't exactly Geordi LaForge, and that's okay, I don't think Joss ever intended for it to be that kind of Sci Fi.
That is also, btw, why when people say "Firefly is what Star Trek and Star Wars wish they could have been" I just laugh. Firefly is what Star Wars and Star Trek never tried or wanted to be, despite the fact that a lot of Firefly has some striking similarities to the original Star Wars trilogy.
The show is fantastic because of the characters, and the interaction between them. The writing is top rate, and the acting is fantastic. It's not "good sci-fi" it's good television in general.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I have to agree that the Chinese is more often awkward than entertaining.
But the western speech is amazing. I'm a southern girl so its not bizarre for me and rather, the formality of Mal's western language adds alot of dimension to his character for me.
And "Our Mrs Reynolds" is a favorite episode of my roommate and I. A week doesn't go by that one us isn't randomly saying "this is my very favorite gun...I call her Vera."
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quote:I'm still waiting for mine to arrive. It should have been here last Thursday, and still hasn't arrived. If I had actually paid for "two-day shipping" I would be pretty upset right now.
Maybe it will come today (I say for the third time).
quote:I'm a southern girl so its not bizarre for me . . .
I've lived (arguably) in the south all my life, including in South Carolina and Tennessee. I love southern cadences and southern speech. I don't think Nathan Fillion was up to delivering those lines, for one thing. (He's Canadian.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Oh, I kinda zoned on that part. It thought it was just a "establish the background for the people who din't watch the show" part.
That doesn't jibe with the rest of the series for me. *shrug* I choose to ignore it.
---
*SPOILERS*
I liked the dark Mal better. I was bothered by some of the too goody-good stuff, especially in War Stories, where Mal didn't kill the ganster and steal all his stuff. I mean the "You want to see the real me now?" line was awesome, but what did he do, punch him a couple of times and leave?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
See, I'm from the Texas predominantly which is more western than southern. Between living in Louisiana now and understanding my mother's speech who spent some time in Tennessee, the one thing I've learned is that there's probably dozens of different southern accents and styles. No doubt there is someone in the region who sounds like Nathan's Mal. Also, Mal is certainly more western than southern, and its less Nathan's delivery than Joss' dialogue. I like its casual mannered style. Maybe its Nathan's Canadian-ness that adds a certain amount of intellectual sound, which makes his lines sound both polite and condescending.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Mal isn't supposed to have a southern accent, just vaguely western-sounding slang and diction. He was instructed to speak "like a Southerner, without the accent." So it's not that he wasn't up to faking a good Southern accent, it's that Joss didn't want him to have one in the first place. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:I'm still waiting for mine to arrive. It should have been here last Thursday, and still hasn't arrived. If I had actually paid for "two-day shipping" I would be pretty upset right now.
Maybe it will come today (I say for the third time).
CURSE YOU, OPTIMU--err--AMAZON PRIME!
lol, that's exactly it.
I've now watched the first two episodes. I'm going to be a contrarian and say that I loved the Chinese bits. But then, I've taken the first semester of Mandarin, so I actually understood some of it. It really gives me an incentive to study more.
posted
I really liked the small Chinese bits, like using the word feooo. It makes sense that they would have random Chinese words in their language, just like we have random Spanish words all over our language.
But long Chinese phrases or sentences didn't make as much sense, for the same reasons that we don't break into Spanish except in small phrases of about four words or less.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I'm imagining their culture more like Lusitania in Speaker for the Dead, etc. The humans used Portuguese for their more emotional outbursts, because it was their native language. The piggies followed that pattern, even though neither English nor Portuguese were native languages for them.
It didn't really seem to me that some Chinese had been assimilated into the language, because they spoke it with the proper tones and accent. It seemed more like the characters were fluent in both English and Chinese, and slipped into Chinese at particular moments, mostly when angry or annoyed, so far.
Perhaps that perception will change as I watch the rest of the series, but that's how it looks right now.
posted
I liked all of the Chinese bits, this despite being fluent in Mandarin (at least, fluent at understanding it... my vocabulary is, sadly, not good enough to speak it well). The cast's pronounciation is uniformly horrific, so I should probably find it really awkward, but I just imagine that Chinese has changed in the 500 years between the present and the events of Firefly/Serenity, and it all works out.
quote:It didn't really seem to me that some Chinese had been assimilated into the language, because they spoke it with the proper tones and accent.
Ohhh, no, they didn't. The accent was "Chinglish" at best, and the tones were erratic to the point of nonexistence. Again, this doesn't really bother me, but I *do* have to forcibly suspend my disbelief using the above fanwank for it to work in my mind. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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