OK, it only took about 4 months to get a post but here it is: Chibigodzilla's first official rant (please forgive any spelling/grammar errors)
Serenity:
At the outset, I would like to say that I love Firefly and I saw Serenity at least seven times (I lost count).
I saw it at a midnight showing, and again on the next day. I even paid for it one time when I WAS GOING TO SEE ANOTHER MOVIE.
Yet, every time I left the theater I felt slightly disappointed. Maybe it was the fact that I am a sucker for Shakespearian style tragedies i.e. everybody dies at the end. Maybe I was upset at the killing of two of my favorite characters.
But after a few viewings I figured it out; the movie just isn't epic enough.
Stop and think; Firefly, the TV series, had 10 main characters:
Mal
Zoë
Wash
Jayne
Kaylee
Inara
Shepard Book
Simon
River
And, of course, Serenity itself
Serenity represents one, whole person, while each member of the crew foils Mal in as much as they represent a portion of Mal that was lost long ago.
Kaylee is the soul, Book is wisdom, Inara is sophistication,
So, in the move we separate Inara & Book from the crew; this causes Serenity to seem incomplete. Which makes the move seem, even more so, that it is punishing our characters, which it does.
At this pint we have established enough background to explore the issues (as I see them) with the movie.
And these are in order, with 1 being the most detrimental
1) a movie is not enough to focus on each character so we just had the focus on Mal & River
2) the ending seems tacked on and contrary to the tone that the rest of the movie sets.
3) Removing Book & Inara heightens the effect problem #1
SPOILER!!
4) The death of Book is no only devoid of impact, it also destroys mush of the mystique of the character (as it takes away much of the possibility of learning about his past)
And finally,
5) by actually showing reavers it takes away much of the fear, it does mitigate this by only showing them briefly.
The final conclusion that I come to is that, the movie is too 'small' to continue the story properly and that a second TV series or perhaps a direct to DVD, effort would have been a better Idea.
posted by chibigodzilla at 6:32 PM
7 Comments:
I agree with your summary. I too was left feeling somewhat incomplete. And I never stopped to think about what each of the characters represents. Kudos!
-Ichigo
the deaths of book and wash seemed senseless, serving no purpose to move the plot forward. and, like ichigo, never thought about the characters representing lost parts of mal.
good insight, chigo. keep going.
-rangiku
OK, before prople start giving me too much credit. I watched the Firefly director's comentary an Joss mentions how Kaylee 'is like the heart of the crew.' That comment got me thinking about all the other characters.
The other statement he made is that he told Adam Baldwin, in the pilot episode, 'Jayne believes that he is the hero of this story.'
YAY! chigo got a blog!! anyway, I havent seen firefly, yet but its definately on my todo list!!
Keep up the good work!!
-coll1nam11
Score!! Chigo has a blog.
I like your insight...I'll have to subscribe to this now.
That's a really interesting way to put the movie. Awesome rant Chigo.
-Shika
While I agree that a movie isn't epic enough to contain all that is firefly, Serenity can be looked at as a glorified episode. We couldn't get ourselves anymore Firefly on TV, so we start putting episodes on the big screen. If we could've gotten more sequels, then the series of movies would have equated to a season of television.
If we'd only had 3 firefly episodes then the series wouldn't have felt very epic either neh?
As for that anonymous rant about the deaths of book and wash serving no purpose, I call bullshit on you. Books death wasn't quite as grand as I may have hoped, but it was what pushes Mal over the edge, and Wash's death serves as a brutal reminder that they are not invincible, they're real people.
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