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Serenity Trounces Star Wars
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Apr 03, 2007 01:33 AM
from the meet-the-new-boss dept.
from the meet-the-new-boss dept.
DogBotherer writes "The BBC is reporting that the film Serenity has been voted the number-one Sci Fi film of all time. Serenity is a followup to the series Firefly. The 2005 film beat out Star Wars better than two-to-one for the top honors. This result came in a poll of 3000 readers of SFX magazine.
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I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you saying that Star Wars doesn't have a loyal fan base? That's quite possibly the most ridiculous thing that I have ever heard. "Jedi" is an organized religion in many countries. Serenity can't touch that.
Let's be realistic. Star Wars is popular to the point of becoming a cultural phenomenon, and there are more Star Wars fans that are completely obsessed with the franchise than there are people who even saw Serenity. Heck, more people dressed up as Wookies last Halloween than saw Serenity.
What's even more hilarious is that Serenity even made the top ten. Ten years from now people will still be talking about Star Wars, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and pretty much everything else on the list. Serenity won't even be a foot note.
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but what's the cross-section of those fans with SFX magazine's readers? My guess is that most of those fans are pretty-much exclusively star wars fans, and therefore likely wouldn't read a general scifi magazine like SFX.
Parent
You are all avoiding the real question (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:You are all avoiding the real question (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:You are all avoiding the real question (Score:5, Informative)
See, that's why I avoided the new BSG series for two seasons before I got on board with it. But then, once I got it through my head that it has nothing to do with the series from the 70's, the show instantly became enjoyable. All you have to do is not compare the two series, realize that the new series is completely separate from the old series, and you're in business. Kinda like the Batman series of movies from the late 80's/90's and the new Batman Begins series, or like Star Trek vs. TNG -- just reboot the part of your brain that pays attention to BSG, or create a separate partition for it, and you're good to go.
Pity that doesn't work for Star Wars.
Parent
Nonsense! (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense! On board Serenity is none other than Jayne Cobb, the Hero of Canton! He is science fiction's answer to Chuck Norris!
Jayne doesn't just shoot first, he shoots *before* first!
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
I know people who are loyal fans of a few different stories/franchises. While most people I know really like Star Wars and we'd trape along to the cinema if a new trilogy was coming out, I don't really know anyone that feels as strongly about it as people do about smaller, tighter (i.e. more consistantly good quality) franchises like Firefly.
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry...
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of all the other hyperbole in your post, this stands out as the most inaccurate. Serenity was an important scifi film and will be talked about still in ten years, as will the Firefly series. Perhaps not as much as Star Wars, but it doesn't help your argument any to overstate your case and alienate fans of both properties.
Parent
I would (Score:5, Informative)
People who did not see Firefly tend to forget that it already had cult status and recognition... Browncoats bought so many Firefly DVDs that they convinced Fox (or whomever) to produce Serenity in the first place!
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't seen FireFly, then I wouldn't expect you to think much of Serenity, because you don't have the correct context in which to place the film. I would thoroughly recommend the series to you, by the way, but your comment highlights exactly why the movie did so badly. The potential audience for Star Wars was everyone who liked cowboy films, space films, or both. The potential audience for Serenity was a subset of people who had seen FireFly. From the DVD sales, this was a fairly large number, but still tiny in comparison to most other films.
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess I'll have to be the exception that proves the rule... I saw Serenity first and completely enjoyed it. I got enough from the dialogue and how everyone played off each other to figure enough to not be confused.
Did I understand everything? Probably not. But even after seeing Firefly I still don't, but on the other hand, I found the verse crafted well enough that I figure even if I don't know an exact reason for something, one exists that makes sense.
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. People will still be talking about Serenity because people will still be talking about Firefly. It isn't a question of Serenity's value by itself, in a similar way to Star Wars' appeal not being a question of the original film by itself.
Without the latter two films in the original trilogy, Star Wars wouldn't have nearly the fanbase it does now.(Yes, including RotJ, Ewok haters) The three films of the original trilogy came out in a manner that allowed the series to span the childhoods of its first generation fanbase.(and as much as it pains me to say it, there's a good chance that the second trilogy will benefit from a similar effect) Anyway, none of the films by themselves would have inspired the fanatical devotion they enjoy now.
Though Firefly and its associated stories won't have that childhood-spanning quality, with the revolutions and evolutions in media and entertainment, Firefly won't need it. Star Wars came out at the dawn of the VCR. Firefly was born into an era where the home entertainment industry is not just well established, but arguably as important as the theatre industry. Even more importantly, Firefly was born into an era where movies and television shows are traded on file-sharing networks. It isn't nearly so hard to stay in the public consciousness now as it was in 1977, 80, or 83. If you raved to a friend about this movie you saw then with lasers and swords and intensive breathing apparatuses, and it was out of theatres or on its way out, there wasn't much chance of your friend seeing it.(not that you would have been a particularly good friend had you waited that long to tell them about it) Now your friend can get the show off the net and be on their merry.
And then, of course, there's also the penchant of the internet to foster geeky forums devoted to minutiae. If the internet can resurrect a forgotten Sega Mega Drive game [wikipedia.org] from 1989 and turn its horrible translation into a cultural phenomenon, then surely it can foster a fanbase for a well conceived but ill-fated sci-fi franchise from 2002.
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what happens when you only have ~120 minutes (movie) instead of ~650 minutes (series)
Few people will sit through a 600+ minute movie, no matter how deep it is.
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
One is a visionary, well-versed in the peaks and troughs associated with that status. The other is simply a master storyteller, laying his foundations like a brickie and keeping his eye on the finish line.
Dang, it's 4AM, Hope any of that made sense, as I'm not gonna preview it!
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I hate Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW: if you liked Firefly/Serenity, then watch Cowboy Bebop series - it gave a lot of inspiration to the Firefly. And Trigun is of very similar quality but with more humour and even more bitter end.
Parent
Serenity was good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serenity was good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Replicants (the bad guys) return to earth and they are hunted down by a cop (the good guy). Cop kills all the replicants, but falls for another one, and they do a runner.
The questions that the plot raised - what made the replicants not human? what makes humans human? Was the cop human or not? How do we know our memories are real? - are all pretty deep, complex, and ambigious. Add to that top quality acting from everyone, superb cinematography, good backstory (a dank, dreary, rainy world), a good script (once they ditched the noir voice-over), and all the little touches (like the photos on Deckard's piano, the owl and the snake) some memorable lines (which are not endlessly requoted by the office wit, keeping them freash) and you have a great movie.
Parent
Re:Serenity was good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following (Score:5, Insightful)
As for "Star Wars," I don't agree that it necessarily ought to be classified as fantasy, but it's also silly to see it as representing all of science fiction, as so many people do. "Star Wars" was an example of one particular branch of sci-fi, but it came to be seen as what sci-fi really was because ignorant studio execs all tried to clone it after it made a lot of money. Good science fiction is easy to find it books, but very hard to find on screen, IMO. It's hard to see either "Serenity" OR "Star Wars" as the best sci-fi movie ever.
David
Re:"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the movie is pretty good, technically speaking, but it made some gigantic assumptions on the exposition of the characters, plot details, etc. It felt like a really good TV season finale, not a theatrical movie that stood by itself.
I can see how watching the movie without following Firefly would feel like catching the last episode of a series you don't watch, with closures for plot points that were never opened, and characters that you have no reason to care about... fine for late night cable, but not the same entertainment bar for paying a ticket to watch a movie in the theater.
Admittedly, I doubt adapting it to a stand-alone movie would work. A lot of what was great about Firefly as a series depended on having that span to explore the universe and the characters over an episodic show. The tempo would have to be very different.
As part of the show, I think the "movie" was great and well worth it.
As a movie per se, it was overrated, because the very vocal fans are Firefly fans, and saw it (and hyped it) as part of the show.
It reminds me of the X-files movie in that sense, except Serenity was better made and had more of the grass-roots-hype, and less of the bovine and equine abuse.
Parent
Re:"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, let me give you some advice. If you wanted to like Serenity but felt it was lacking character developement and plot, i suggest you give the Firefly DVD boxset a try. Hell, just buy it. The movie is OK, but the series were mindblowing, IMHO, and some of the finest blend of sci-fi and adventure i witnesed on TV in quite a while. I know a lot of people who didn't think much about the movie but fell in love with the series after watching a few episodes.
Parent
Re:"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following (Score:5, Insightful)
I find people have a tendency to ally themselves with a certain bit of media or subsection of culture, they'll then defend any show, movie, or book that falls into this subsection even though they realize that it isn't very good. Conversely they'll denigrate anything that falls into categories that they don't like, regardless of its quality. I know I've often found myself wrestling with these very tendencies.
Simply put firefly fans were fanatical enough about firefly that they earned themselves a movie. When this movie came about, even though it wasn't as good as the series, they had so much personally invested that they continued to push it every chance they got. I'd suspect that a good portion of those firefly fans who voted for Serenity realize, and would even admit that Serenity isn't the greatest science fiction movie ever. But they perceive an attack on Serenity as an attack on their community, and therefore themselves, and thus feel the need to defend it.
Parent
Let the Flamewars begin.... (Score:5, Funny)
Who Has the More Active Fanbase (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even most active (Score:4, Interesting)
Now look at the last Serenity convention - the Flanvention. Even if it had not abruptly folded the day before it was to go off, it only had some 500 people attending - as did the one the year before that I attended. Now partly that was a limitation by choice of the event organizers, but I'm not sure they quite reached even 500 the first one.
I really, really like Firefly and Serenity - but they have no-where near the fan base that Star Wars does, in either size or bredth or sheer fanatisim. This was just a case of Browncoats gaming the polls before the Star Wars Bantha could wake to smite them.
Parent
Obvious unfair advantage. (Score:5, Funny)
I thought so.
All Hail Terry Gilliam (Score:5, Interesting)
"Serenity" was fun and all, but those are good films...
Awesome sampling, really (Score:5, Funny)
Why did either one win? (Score:4, Insightful)
3000 people? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly conclusive evidence, given the fact that 99% of people who have seen Star Wars have never heard of the magazine in the first place
Serenity was excellent, but definately not ground breaking - that's the difference.
puh-lease (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the depths of mediocrity that Lucas has since sunk to, give credit where credit is due. Star Wars and all the technology that ILM created during the making of the Star Wars films changed the industry forever. Blade Runner certainly changed the look of sci-fi films, but it still didn't have the impact that Star Wars did. I'm not sure that was the overriding criterion for making the list, though.
Serenity was great (GREAT! "I am a leaf on the wind!"), but c'mon, let's not get stupid here. While you don't have to have watched Firefly before Serenity to enjoy it, it certainly helps immensely. The whole Mal/Inara history has much more comedic impact if you have the Firefly backstory. The Rev? A complete throwaway character if you haven't watched Firefly!
The bigger surprise(s) of the list (for me) were what was included, that most fans have forgotten:
Planet of the Apes (the original) and Forbidden Planet. Right on.
Back to the Future? Uhm, I don't think so.
The Star Wars film that most fans seem to think was the best (Empire Strikes Back) wasn't even on the list? That seems a little odd.
A bit of historical context (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there was a time when the hero in a story was always entirely good - I think the modern term would be "all american" (think Flash Gordon). The idea of a hero with flaws and conflicts was popularized by Lord Byron, oh about 200 years before Han Solo hit the big screen. Here's the wiki article for further research. [wikipedia.org]
I realize that you didn't actually claim that Lucas had invented the Byronic hero. I just want to make it *painfully clear* that he didn't invent it. But you're right, Han Solo did make the archetype very popular.
It bothers me a bit that Lucas gets any credit. Lucas is an idiot who stumbled clumsily into a great movie (ep. IV) that he really didn't deserve. Lucas himself has no clue what a Byronic hero is. Lucas doesn't appreciate it or value it at all. This is why he was willing to change episode IV so that Gredo shot first. Lucas is a drooling idiot staring at a movie that is accidentally good, and going "deeerrrrr, lets maik hand shot first, har har. deeeerrr."
If Lucas understood Han Solo, he would have made it *more* obvious that Han shot first.
Also, in the scene in Empire where Han is getting lowered into carbonite, Lea says, "I love you" and Han says, "I know." How cool is that guy, you know what I mean? Well, Lucas actually wrote the script so that Han says, "I love you too" but Harrison Ford changed it. What a moron Lucas is. He has no clue whatsoever.
Parent
Sci-Fi Movies... (Score:5, Interesting)
Brazil
Blade Runner
Altered States
The Fly
Solaris
Red Planet
Forbidden Planet
Metropolis
Alien/Aliens
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Tron
Dr. Strangelove
The Last Starfighter (cheesy I know, but what is cooler than a kid who becomes the hero of the universe by getting top score in an arcade game)
Logan's Run
THX1138
Alien Nation
Amazing Stories
The Black Hole
Westworld
Charly (film adaptation of Flowers for Algernon)
War Games
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Dark City
Dark Star
And the list could go on and on and on..... (really, I have tons more I love to watch now and again)
Notice, you don't see Serenity or Star Wars on there. Yes, I do like them, but do I consider them Sci-Fi? Maybe in the same way that I consider "The Terminator" or "The Transformers" to be Sci-Fi.
Serenity was a spaghetti-western in space, only not as good as the real spaghetti westerns such as "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" or "Pale Rider". I didn't even think Firefly was that great either. Star Wars was entertaining, but I thought it just to be another action flick like Indiana Jones or whatnot, only set in space. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie, but I just didn't see it like I guess some other people see it. The Empire Strikes Back was excellent, and one of the few in the series that Lucas didn't get to screw up the first time around, hence why it was better than the rest. Space opera definitely. I felt like I was watching a fancier Flash Gordon with a better plot.
BTW: Everyone needs to quit dwelling on the whole "Luke this" "Luke that" thing. The entire story arc of the movie series was about Darth Vader, not Luke. The whole Luke obsession thing is almost homo-erotic
To quote Mal... (Score:5, Interesting)
As both a Star Wars and a Firefly fan, my first reaction to this news was disbelief, but as i read a bit and thought a bit, i realized that i agree - Serenity is better. Of course you have to realize that no matter what the poll actually said, both were judged on their entire series, not just on the individual movies. Star Wars includes episodes 1-6 and Serenity includes Firefly. Would you rather watch Episode 2 or any 4 episodes of Firefly? Star Wars was the phenomenon that it was because it was new and amazing. Serenity was better because the story and characters are better.
Plus, be honest, when the Serenity and her 'escorts' come flying out of that nebula, don't shivers just run down your spine? No scene comes close to that "whoa" factor in all of Star Wars, imo. (Blasphemous as it may be to say, the light saber fight between Darth Maul, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Qui-Gon Jin probably comes the closest.)
Whether Serenity (+Firefly) is better than a lot of the others is a much tougher question.
1977 (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Wars was released in 1977. If we're talking about the original Episode IV movie, we're talking about a movie that is 30 years old. Many movies have come and gone since then, and Star Wars still holds up remarkably well. I enjoyed Serenity, but I think its success in this particular popularity contest is primarily based on it being the best scifi movie to appear in recent years.
Take another poll in 2037 and see where the two stack up. I suspect Serenity will hold up well, but I don't know that it will have the broad effect of Star Wars. Despite its faults, Star Wars embraced big themes and grabbed hold of the imagination in a way that few films have.
Re:Damn Brits! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd wager that there is more theoretical technology and theoretical futuristic social structure in star wars then serenity and probably most of firefly.
So what do you define as science fiction?
I mean, it's fiction, about science.
Firefly barely had enough science to make it not qualify as a current fiction w/ spaceships.
Parent
Re:Damn Brits! (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, science fiction is fairly loosely defined and Star Wars fits very well under some definitions and not at all under others. Firefly is given more science-fiction credit because of the fact that it didn't have random fantasy elements (well, except for River's psychic-ness, but we never got around to getting a good enough explanation of whether it would be better classified as a faux-science or a fantasy element, but from what we did get, it seemed as if they wanted to at least try to make it more the faux-science route.)
Parent
Star Wars is Sci-fi (Score:5, Informative)
Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction.
Science fiction and fantasy are both speculative fiction sub-genres.
Science fiction is mostly defined by its setting and subject matter: outer space, aliens, time travel, imaginary technology, etc. Star Wars is certainly science fiction, even though it crosses the boundary a little with what might be considered magic (as does Dune). What Star Wars is not is hard sf, a sub-genre of science fiction in which the plot itself is based on plausible scientific theory.
Parent
Re:Rigging (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1999, the city of Paris organized an online poll in which we were asked to vote for the most important person of those two millenia and someone in my electronic school put his name, so we all voted for him, then another scholl put up its own champion against ours. shortly before closing the poll, they had to eject both of them because their poll, supposed to be based on notoriety, had two totally unkown winners above 40% each, with Jesus being a good third around 3% and everyone else below 0.5%.
Parent
Re:Serenity/Firefly: overhyped? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll translate for those of you who don't feel like reading: Serenity and BSG have too much emotion and too little technobabble. I'm uncomfortable with the former and therefore dislike shows that deal with it.
Parent