posted
Just saw it myself after a day of watching all of firefly. I have to say...it's a DAMN GOOD MOVIE!
Posts: 27 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
It's my favorite movie of the year, and perhaps my favorite movie... period. I'll be seeing it again in theaters.
The movie really got to me, and I still don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but it was a hell of a ride.
Posts: 50 | Registered: May 2005
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It is very good. I agree with OSC on his assessment of Charlie Kaufman, though.. Eternal Sunshine may be one of the most brilliant movies I have ever seen..
I can't say I put Serenity on that level, but it's darn good.
Posts: 202 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I really really liked it. I don't want to go overboard because I don't want to overinflate anyone's expectations. But I really liked it a lot. And I can't at the moment think of a movie I like better. It is exciting, funny, touching, and tells one of those stories about the big picture. There was one scene where the camera jiggled inexplicably. I don't know if that was a production problem or a projector foul up.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:There was one scene where the camera jiggled inexplicably. I don't know if that was a production problem or a projector foul up.
It was deliberate. That kind of thing actually happened a lot in the TV show.
From a recent interview:
quote: Q. Well the way it's storyboarded and assembled to have a documentary feel is also fascinating -- there's a "shaky-cam" look to the effects that "Firefly" sort of pioneered.
A. Well, it looked like that for a reason. "Buffy" was made because there was a character I wanted to see that I wasn't seeing. And "Firefly" was made because I was missing something in televised science fiction, and also in the movies: a gritty realism that wasn't an "Alien" ripoff. The template I was working from was "NYPD Blue" -- it was "you are there." It was, "We just happened to have a camera, and then this happened." Obviously, these were larger-than-life stories, and obviously [in "Serenity"] there was some arch and manipulative camera work, because much the way Mal realizes he's a hero, the movie realizes, "I'm a movie!" But we always tried to keep that presence: We're there, the cameraman might fall over, everyone might die, and none of us is safe.
posted
Okay, well I didn't get that. It just bothered me. They should have done it more, I guess. Or maybe the other times they did it, it worked. Still, it's the only thing I can think of to complain about.
Porter knows this, but I thought I'd share that I saw the movie without seeing the series and I thought it rocked. Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Serenity is awesome. There are a few things that you have to adjust to (language/slang), but the change occurs so smoothly that it improves the story. The thing about the movie I loved most was how the predictable events occured unpredictably. There were some moments I knew would happen, but the ways they were carried out were amazing and suited the characters perfectly.
Immediately after seeing the movie I resolved that it was easily going to be the favorite for anyone who saw it. Unfortunately, after talking to one of my more "shallow" friends, I realized exactly what OSC said in his review. Many people just can't get past the easy-going humor and lack of "Star Wars" caliber effects.
Anyway, I was very impressed with Whedon. I liked Buffy, but I thought his style wouldn't suit a full length movie. I was wrong.
Go see the movie.
Posts: 60 | Registered: Jun 2005
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The movie wasn't about the effects. I didn't even notice them except on the first landing. People who liked the original trilogy will, I think, like this film. People who prefer Episodes I-III should be rounded up and shot. (Just kidding, before anyone asks whether I'm a Christian.)
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I've never seen any of Firefly- nor do I know what it's even about- but I hear it's good. How accessible is a good thorough understanding of the movie and loving it when someone hasn't seen Firefly nor know what it's about?
Posts: 980 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Shawshank, you won't care about the characters or the ship as much in the movie if you haven't seen the series, and some of the relationships may be a bit fuzzy, but the movie was written to be self-contained. I'll try to round up a review or two from people who hadn't seen the series.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Jul 2004
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This next one was posted by Enigmatic in the Spoiler-loaded Serenity Reviews thread in the other side of the forum. I didn't want to link to the spoilers so here's his comment.
quote: I saw a midnight showing last night and I loved it. I brought a friend who had never seen the show before, and he really liked it too. He said he didn't feel like he was missing out on what was going on in the movie by not knowing the show. I think that's a good sign for overall movie performance, because to do really well non-fans are going to have to go see it.
Niether my wife or I ever watched an episode of Firefly before Serenity, but we both really enjoyed it (We agree it's deffinatley the best movie we've seen this year). An incredible movie, it took a little concentration to follow everything but deffinatley do-able.
Posts: 68 | Registered: Sep 2005
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I thank Whedon for not ruining one of the best TV series with a bad movie. He didn't try and completly improve on it like some people. *cough*Lucas*cough*
Posts: 9 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Well it's always fun to write to a year-old topic, hopefully everybody have seen the movie, and I don't spoil anything. This is what I already wanted to tell, hesitated between writing it to OSC himself or here, but well, people may give useful opinions or even correct me. (And I confess that I sincerely hope OSC comments too, since I really wonder: why the huge difference in our opinions?)
So, the story. I am in Hungary, and never heard of Firefly. One day I was reading about the Ender movie and OSC mentioned that he absolutely worship Serenity the movie. He wrote long about it, and like he said, it must have been the best sci-fi movie, ever.
"Heck, what is that?" I said to myself and checked. It was a movie for an unfinished series. So okay, I went and grabbed the Firefly series DVD (after some *ahem* precautions to see whether it worths it), and watched.
I absolutely loved it, the characters were good (see, this is an OSC forum, naturally we all love deep characters ), the stories were okay. It's been a real shame it got cancelled. Tragedy.
But not to worry, now comes the worshipped movie: Serenity. I watched it.
Summarized: I was very disappointed. Was this the movie OSC loved? Is this the example where he would like to have the Ender movie go? Oh.
My main reason of disappointment was the lack of original characters. The actors were the same, but the characters were gone. Everybody was changed, they became empty, faceless. The capt. stopped caring about the people (just the opposite of Firefly), the dialogs were empty and meaningless. It was just a story told (and not a very bright story either, but the media limited the possibilities, I understand), without having real personalities. Even the mighty bully felt empty.
I remember having other problems when I first written this, but the textfile has lost in the past (took me some lurking to get the incentive to actually post this ), so I only remember that the movie felt like stomping on the Firefly and using the world but not the people.
I do not understand how OSC - who seem to love to have complex and deep personalities and meaningful dialogs - liked this movie that much. I just silently hope that the Ender movie gonna be very much unlike Serenity, and will have characters with real personalities and not just the fancy (and required) special effects and fight-after-fight. I just hope that the E. m. gonna have a fair storyline, and not just flashes of interesting parts of the story connecting action-packed scenes where nobody says anything but shoots, kicks or flies in zero-g.
Have anyone felt the same, that Serenity did not contain any of the original characters?
I am sure I will watch Firefly again. Serenity? Hardly. Posts: 6 | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Any team movie that doesn't just center on one or two people is going to lose something in characterization. X-men vs the Star Trek movies I feel are good examples. The Star Trek movies I feel are able to have a lot of characterization because they tend to focus on mostly 2-3 people (kirk, spock, mccoy originally, more recently Picard and Data). The X-men movies it seemed to me tried to bring all the characters to light in less then 2 hours, which you just can't do with that many people.
Everybody loves all the Serenity/Firefly characters so much that I think Joss Whedon did not want to just center on 1 or 2 of them. So for the sake of the story it did lose something.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
There is some basis to saying Simon is very different from the series, but I think your disappointment must be rooted in not having Mal or River as your favorite characters. If your favorite characters were Book or Wash, I imagine you'd really think the movies sucked. Me I was disappointed to watch the series and find Mr. Universe didn't appear in any other episodes.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Well, I am not really disappointed because they kill some of my favourite characters (and Book I really liked), and I tell that I think I liked all the 9 base characters. It happens, especially after they decided that this is definitely the last Firefly material on the screen.
Maybe it's just me (that's one reason I asked it here) but I missed the interaction between the characters, which is just the same as if tey have lost their personalities. Like Mal stopped for caring the crew, Inara and Mal almost completely changed their relation (apart from one VERY weak try to hint it when Mal commented "it must be a trap"), and other people were just... flattened. They simply lack the small wits here and there, the subtle jokes and such. Walking talking dummies.
And I don't think it's because they wanted to put all characters in the spotlight: most of the episodes of the series use all the characters in much shorter timeframe. It's like the adaptation was created by someone who never seen Firefly... but it was written by Joss himself. Posts: 6 | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
I'm someone who saw the movie without seeing the series, and I just think you're being way off base. But I think it would be interesting to discuss if you wanted to go through some more specific examples. To me, most episodes were an exploration of an extreme situation that exposes the boundaries of a character, that they themselves might not have known.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Pooka, fair enough. But then I have to watch the movie again, until then the memory is not enough to bring up specifics.
(But I think there is a big difference which order do you watch 'em: the series after the movie may seem lack of actions and story (since they're way shorter); and the movie after the series may leave the feeling of a longer, more visual story but lack of personalities. We're just in different groups. )
Posts: 6 | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Just out of curiosity, did you feel the movie gave closure to the story? Since, you know, you started another thread about that as a lacking in Card's work.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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