May 11, 2005

• I'm also SOOOOO excited about Serenity. I'm also anti-spoiler. I want to jump up and down and say "eeeee!" like a leetle girl. Did you hear that Whedon's doing the Wonder Woman movie? That also sounds good, if it's seen through.
• Firefly rulz!
• I'm looking forward to it, but I think these early impressions are pretty much worthless. The people who get tickets to the advance screenings are already hardcore fans, and a lot of hardcore Whedon fans worship anything and everything the man puts out. Like the final season of Buffy. I'm sure it'll rock, but I'm not sure any of this is the most reliable information (good marketing, however!).
• Talking about spoilers, I hear that Darth Vader is Mal's father.
• I thought Darth Maul was Mal's father. Posthumously.
• Heh.
• It's not going to hit the theaters until September 30th? (Which, coincidentally, is my fiftieth birthday.) I may not live that long, so let's all raise our voices in unison in our best Jerry Stiller impersonations: Serenity Now! Serenity Now! Serenity Now! Serenity Now!
• Actually Arthur Dent is Mal's father, but you didn't hear it from me.
• YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YEEEEEEES! (proud purchaser of a half-dozen box sets for handing out to friends) Best sci-fi on tv. Period. Direct link to the trailer.
• Speaking of Serenity - news just out (via Slashdot) - there is going to be a 3 comic series of Firefly to "bridge the gap" between the series and the movie. Press release (with minor details of comic series plot) here.
• Oh, and before you click the press release, it has a paragraph at the bottom explaining the basic plot of the movie, Serenity. If you've seen the trailer, it basically doesn't provide anything extra in terms of spoilers... But just letting you know in case you want to stay clear of all fore-knowledge :)
• I don't mean to be a naysayer (yes I do), but this looks kinda weak to me. Like Stargate or the Burton Apes. My SF bar has been raised very very high by Primer. Maybe this just isn't my cup of tea.
• Get the HD serenity trailer. 140megs of 1920x816 goodness! Playable with QT7 or latest mplayer
• Primer? Good lord. Im not to be snarky, but that was literally the worst film I have ever seen in my life. Utterly amateurish. What a joke Sundance is.
• Aw shucks! I wanted to do the pepsi blue post of Serenity! I was going to pimp it far and wide. But thanks, Engineer's Monkey. I hope a lot of non-Firefly fans get out to see it too - Joss Whedon's stuff is so good it shouldn't be kept just in the SF community. Also, I think it's going to need all the help in promotion that it can get, because it doesn't have the cult status of Star Wars, sheer blockbuster power of Harry Potter, and most of the cast and crew (except Whedon) are relative unknowns (excellent actors, but unfortunately not name draws, except maybe Alan Tudyk, who is better known as a robot). I actually tried to model Serenity on a website that would tell you how your film would do, and it wasn't a bright picture. So tell everyone you know, and yes, if you have DVDs of the series, lend them around. I've converted 4 people personally here - and sent copies back to Britain where it is spreading around my fiance's college like a virus. That said, if you like Firefly, you should check out Battlestar Galactica - same gritty realism meets epic destiny. Much darker though, even darker than Firefly (which wasn't exactly teletubbies to start). The only thing that is really pissing me off about the series is that the creator keeps talking about how original it is for being so gritty - he even claims the first appearance of a toilet on a spaceship (which, of course, he is wrong about - you see one clearly in one of the first episodes of Firefly, a cute little foldaway in Mal's room). But altogether, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who are making me feel better for not having more episodes of Firefly or Farscape.
• I have never seen so much as a second of Firefly. It's really interesting watching people flip out over something that you know absolutely zippo about. On the one hand, it makes me want to go looking for episodes so I can find out what the fuss is all about. On the other, I'm kind of enjoying standing back and trying to follow some of the conversations about it that I come across.
• To be fair, the last paragraph of the press release doesn't even spoil the movie—arguably that's the overall concept for the series as well, and is basically made plain in the two-hour pilot. Funny someone should mention BSG; the same visual effects studio does both shows (and will be doing Serenity), and the good ship Serenity can be seen briefly in one of the first scenes of the BSG miniseries.
• OK folks, what is so great about Joss Whedon? I've watched a few episodes of Buffy, watched 2 or 3 episodes of Firefly and flipped through some of his comic books and I just don't understand why people get so excited by him. His stuff seems remarkably unremarkable to me. There's nothing wrong with it, but I just don't know why people are so attached to it. Battlestar Galactica is awesome. Farscape blows Firefly out of the water, as far as I'm concerned. And Xena was so much better than Buffy in my eyes. I mean Xena had TWO musical episodes before the much bragged about musical Buffy episode even aired. As far as his X-Men is concerned, well, Grant Morrison was the only person that could make me buy the X-Men regularly. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with liking the stuff, I just don't understand why people are so fanatical about his material.
• jccalhoun, it's a number of things. It's the way he uses metaphor and allegory to play real stories in a fantastical way. You kind of have to watch a whole season to see the best examples of this, but the first three seasons were largely based on a "High School as Hell" metaphor, which worked really well, IMO. Angel's fourth season was largely about how people will sometimes readily accept a lie (in this case, a seemingly benevolent god who wasn't), if the incentive is high enough, and how powerful cognative dissonance can be (Joss is an ardent atheist; also, this was written as the US went to war with Iraq). It's the characters, who are very sympathetic, but who sometimes make very bad mistakes -- and the story punishes them for it. It's his willingness to hurt or even kill his most beloved characters, if it means it'll produce a good story. It's the dialogue, which makes pop culture references right alongside academic ones. This is what makes the show fun for geeks. It's the way his series juggle comedy and drama so effortlessly. I like Firefly in particular because the characters are flawed human beings, subject to the laws of a very flawed universe. It's not idealistic, like Star Trek; the government is pretty much as good and as bad as our current ones. They are forced to make some tough choices, and it's not always obvious that they make the right ones. But they're still sympathetic.
• Blargh. Try to not judge (yes, infinitive, I thee split) Firefly based on the trailer. The trailer IS weak. And this isn't about Whedon. I could care less about his vampiric teen-angst whinefest.
• In my opinion - Buffy is, was and always will be a huge pile of unwatchable crap. I've never managed a whole episode, and quite frankly don't want to. Firefly was ok. I can't pretend to be excited about this film though...
• YOU ARE THE WORLD'S BIGGEST EEDJET!!!
• You've got the gay.
• Could someone please tell kitfisto that he is a big EEDJET? I'm not talking to him anymore because he doesn't like Buffy, thereby proving that he has POO for brains. Thanks.
• Buffy is teh gay.
• Could someone please tell kitfisto I'm not reading his comments anymore? They're all really stoopid anyway.
• Buffy makes Star Trek: Voyager look good.
• OK, now you've gone too far. NOTHING makes Voyager look good. That's crossing a line.
• Hhm. Based on trailers, alone, I'd like to see 'Primer', it looks pretty good. I'm very much unimpressed with the 'Serenity' trailer. Looks like anything else.
• So that's where all the coolness that was supposed to be in the Hitchhiker's movie went. Hey, Joss, couldn't you have left some for Hammer & Tongs?
• he even claims the first appearance of a toilet on a spaceship (which, of course, he is wrong about - you see one clearly in one of the first episodes of Firefly, a cute little foldaway in Mal's room). Both were of course beaten out by Babylon 5 by a number of years. Although admittedly we didn't get to see the toilet itself, we did see Sinclair and Garibaldi chatting as they used a space urinal. Plus there was that whole "fasten/zip" conversation...
• kitfisto - See, you haven't watched an entire episode, that's why you don't like Buffy. I never got into Survivor either, despite it being a big hit, because I never watched it. People do have different tastes - I don't care at all for Seinfeld or Friends, though I recognise that they are well made for their genres, and are widely respected and liked. Buffy is extremely well written, and very well acted - the slight premise is given substantial flesh by these things. When I started watching, I thought it was a fun show - it didn't hook me right away the way Farscape did. But then I watched a little more, then a little more - next thing I knew, I couldn't stop. I had to know what happened next. Partly this was the arc plotlines, but it was also that the characters had grown so real for me, I needed to know where their lives went. Also, the musical episode of Buffy is way better than either of Xena's. Joss Whedon isn't a flashy writer - it creeps up on you. Until you are totally hooked. I was hooked faster by Firefly, but that was because of the strength of the pilot, which of course was not aired as the premiere when the series was on television - Fox aired the arc-based show out of order, and then wondered why it didn't catch on. It's such an extremely well-made show - again acting and writing are so solid, but I also like the cinematography better than Buffy (I was won over totally by the 2001-esque silent space shots in the pilot. That, and the dinosaurs). As many of you know, I worship Farscape, but I can't think of any episode other than maybe "Scatch N Sniff" (British heist film take off) that I would put up against Firefly's "Out of Gas" for sheer film-making quality. Sight and sound and word all coming together so well. Smo - I agree, about the real people. That personal drama (supported by the acting and writing) is the strength of all these shows, Buffy, Firefly, Farscape, BSG. I actually don't want to ever debate which of the first three are better - they all have different strengths (ie Buffy might be objectively a better show, but Farscape's characters grabbed me personally more; Firefly maybe could have been even better, but was too shortlived to compete). BSG is definitely growing on me, though I'm not quite as attached to it yet - and, of course, new Doctor Who rocks the casbah. (Isn't the world so great right now that we actually have this many really good epic series that we can debate about them? If I could make it all perfect, it would be for Farscape to have had its full fifth season (the mini-series was way too rushed, and all teh drama was dropped for action, which I don't like), but then it could have ended on that high note (having nearly destroyed the universe, and prevented galactic war), before John Crighton died of ongoing PTSD (is it me, or should he at least have been limping at the end? That poor, poor man.) Rorschach: Yes, I was actually disapointed with the trailer too - it didn't quite have the right hook (made the whole thing seem much thinner than it really was). I wonder if they will have a re-edit later? chrominance: That's so cool about Serenity appearing in BSG - I'm totally looking for it in the miniseries now. Too bad it didn't become part of the fleet :) gerund: I'd forgotten that, but it was still a nice moment that the toilet was explicitly shown. Is that a first for tv? (BSG is also very shy about toilets, and tends to show just stalls, not actual bogholes.
• I specifically remember sitting in the theater when I saw X2, and I heard that line -- "Have you tried not being a mutant?" Everyone laughed -- or everyone except me because I had already heard it, only delivered better, in Buffy's second season (Joyce: "Have you tried not being a Slayer?"). If the reception that line got is any indication, I think Joss Whedon's writing can appeal to the masses; he just needs the marketing.
• I will never watch Buffy
• I don't like firefly, yet am a scifi nerd. Also I hated buffy.
• You both fuck goats, you goatfuckers.
• Yeah. And the goats fucking love it.
• Hang on a second, I deliberately avoided trolling this thread, but then realised the title "sci fi as it should be" is itself a gigantic troll. So I will: Firefly sucks. It's dull, the premise is ridiculous, and the writing atrocious. This is not sci fi as it should be, it is sci fi that is not actually sci fi. Are all the planets in one system or several? If it's several, doesn't it contradict the premise of the show? If it's one system, it's impossible.
• [he's pissed cos I get the better looking goats.]
• Chyren: Hang on a second, I deliberately avoided trolling this thread. MoFi taglines are so YESTERDAY.
• Weirdly enough, most of my friends where I live now do not like SF, televised or literary. But the only thing we all agree on in anything (books, music, films, whatever) is that we all like Buffy. And Shaolin Soccer. I don't know if they would like Firefly, though if they would like any sci-fi, it would be that. But Buffy has wider appeal. Chyren - how is the writing atrocious? You may not like the premise or the science in it, but many SF fans (including myself) couldn't care less if the science is realistic, so long as the people and societies are, and Firefly (as well as just about every SF tv show) is more about society than science. (I'm a society, not a science geek - I personally get really annoyed at SF with unrealistic classless societies.) But the writing - the dialogue, the plotting - how are these bad? Just about everyone else I know finds the dialogue very sharp and yet realistic (mostly, though there are a few moments when Mal esp is played for a quip rather than absolutely true to character, because the actor is so good at it), and the plots tense and engaging. But then, if you really like Star Trek, then we probably just have very different taste in writing.
• I loved the dialogue in Firefly, and I liked the trailer. Was it edge-of-your-seat? No, but it didn't have to be. And Summer Glau kicking ass? Ten different kinds of hot.
• MonkeyFilter: MoFi taglines are so YESTERDAY. You KNOW you wanted that real bad, quidnuck
• I loved Buffy (I freely admit it) but I couldn't get into Firefly, no matter how exciting the idea of Whedon doing sci-fi was. It did, admittedly, have some great one-liners but it just...didn't do it for me. I can't even say why. I daresay I'll watch Serenity, though. Maybe it was because Kevin Sorbo was in it...
• Kevin Sorbo? Kevin Sorbo = Andromeda. Which does suck, yes.
• Andromeda had the ever-so-hot but sadly married to Michael Shanks, Lexa Doig. Only reason I ever watched the show.
• Just got back from one of the previews (screened outdoors on the set of the recent Alamo film, which added to the wild westness)... just go see it for yourselves. I didn't even like the show and I liked the movie.
• Omigod this is the biggest geek thread EVER. Hey, babe. Nice pocket protector.
• Sooo. Did anyone else see it yet? I loved every minute. Well, almost.
• No, but the posters are up in the Tube stations. And I stare at them thinking, "OK, how do I get past the plexiglas without anyone noticing..."
• Yep, and I loved it! (I've never seen the show, so I don't know how it compares.)
• I also never saw the show, but I loved the movie. It's not having a very good opening weekend though.
• Really enjoyed the movie, although a bit.. surprised.. and sad.. at a couple of the choices made. *desperately trying to avoid spoilers* *sigh* Oh, what could've been....
• I agree coriolisdave; surprising, and saddening, decisions. *shrug* Hey, I didn't expect to like Buffy, but some of the episodes (as DVD, sans ads) are cute. And Serenity is actually pretty good. At least I think so. And you do end up caring about the characters, and what happens to them. Unlike, say, Harry Potter.
• And, running off at a tangent, I've heard that Global Frequency is one of the best TV shows you are never likely to see. The pilot escaped into the wild, and now there is a push afoot (Whedonesqueish) to get it back into production some other way.
• Gag! Gag!! Gag!!! 'Nuff said.
• I saw the movie and loved it, too. I'm going to go see it again. Though yes, some decisions did make me feel very sad.
• Just saw it again tonight. I liked it even better the second time. Definitely a top 10 for me this year.
• The first nine minutes of the movie are available online.
• Drag.. requires some kinda plug in.
• That was a pretty good nine minutes. Enough to make me want to watch more. Or, at least, to go looking for torrents of the show.
• Finally just got it, and I'm trying really, really hard not to go all fanboy. Really, really hard. I gotta go with Orson Scott Card here and call it the Best Science Fiction Movie, Ever. Think what you will.
• Still haven't seen the movie, but I did download the whole series. Gotten through three episodes, and now I'm hooked. Dammit.
• Card wouldn't know a good story if it was tattooed onto the end of his prick.
• welcome, mct, welcome.