Watch the First 9 Minutes of Serenity

An anonymous reader writes "As reported on FireflyFans.net, Universal is attempting further promotion of the sci-fi action film Serenity by making the first 9 minutes of the movie available online. The clip contains the opening backstory that sets an Alliance assassin on the trail of the ship's crew; it's an effective hook. On Yahoo movies, Serenity is ranked as the number 1 film currently in theaters and is hanging in a top-ten spot in the highest rated movies of all time. Slashdot has previously covered Orson Scott Card's review, the film's opening, an interview with Joss Whedon, and much more. It's all out of love..."

The Firefly TV episodes matter more

[Nonesuch]

I saw Serenity the week it had come out, and if SciFi hadn't just a few weeks back shown the first two episodes of the series again, I don't think I would have understood what happened in the movie.

The movie depends quite a bit on the overall backstory from the one season of the television show. If you haven't seen the show, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

Luckily "Firefly - The Complete Series" is available on DVD.

What the Heck

[dduardo]

"Unfortunately, the Operating System you are currently using is unsupported."

The beginning is good

[temojen]

It gave enough backstory for my girlfriend (who never saw the series) to know what was going on, and even covered some stuff I missed in the series (like the setting being one big solar system, not interstellar).

meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the hype personally, sure it's an ok tv show but it's nothing special. Some nice looking girls, a few gags, some spaceships and that's about it. Better than most but not great.

Mod me as a troll if you like but I know there are a few people that think like this so *shrugs*

Re:Site doesn't like Linux/Mozilla

[The Fanta Menace]

Here's the direct link to the video file, although I still don't know of a Linux player that can handle it:

http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/viv/39 29_Serenity_720.viv [vividas.com]

Re:The Firefly TV episodes matter more

[Supurcell]

I, and the people I was with, thought Serenity stood well on its own. Going in, I didn't know who the characters were, but on the way out I felt very attached to them. I never felt lost. I assume there were probably some jokes that I didn't get, because I didn't watch Firefly, but the movie was exciting and funny enough on its own.

Just finished watching

[colonslashslash]

Serenity at the local cinema with several friends, one, like me, was a fan of the short-lived Firefly series, and the other 3 had never seen it before. Everyone enjoyed the movie, and although obviously it's something that is going to appeal more to fans of the series (mostly because these people are more attached to the characters), it does work as a stand alone movie very well. The brilliantly delivered dry humour, drama and all out action sequences are more than enough to satisfy almost everyone in the audience.

The only shame I feel about this movie is that it is a gem released during such a mundane (IMHO) year for theatrical releases, so although it stands out from the 2005 crowd, that in itself unfortunately isn't saying much at all. Still, I'd recommend it very highly to those who havn't seen it yet. And if you are even a more moderate fan of the series, then what the hell are you waiting for? Gogogo.

One thing that did dissapoint me was the lack of the theme tune, unless I missed it, but I didn't hear even a snippet during the whole movie :-(

Re:The beginning is good

[Anonymous Coward]

In the show, they're pretty explicit that it is interstellar.

Uh, no they are not. Read the Serenity Visual Companion for more information about the solar system.

Re:Just finished watching

[mackil]

Actually they do play it at the very end of the credits... no lyrics, just the guitar. I guess that shows how big a geek I am... staying till the end of the credits...

Re:UNSUPPORTED?

[gronofer]

I was thinking of downloading it, hacking it up a bit in a video editor and releasing a new movie of my own, much better than the original. This would have cost them millions, since nobody would have bothered with the inferior version after that.

Unfortunately, my operating system is unsupported, so they are safe this time.

Re:WTF?

[ceejayoz]

Had you actually tried it, you'd have noticed that it's not a browser popup, it's a Java permissions popup, which is (correctly) not blocked by Safari.

Worked fine on my Safari with popup blocking. Hell, I actually had to use Safari because it wasn't working right on Firefox for Mac.

Re:Site doesn't like Linux/Mozilla

[The Fanta Menace]

The nice thing about linux is that most distros come with the `file` utility. Just run it on the ".viv"; file /path/to/serenity.viv

Already tried it; it just says 'data', so file doesn't know about it. I've tried it with a number of players so far (xine, mplayer, realplayer, even Windows Media Player running under Codeweavers' crossover) and none of them can read it.

My guess is that it's an mpeg wrapped up in some sort of drm that requires their encryption key to play it.

Re:Site doesn't like Linux/Mozilla

[Dlugar]

Here's the direct link to the video file, although I still don't know of a Linux player that can handle it

I've done some digging around and unfortunately it looks like:

1) The .viv file is some sort of propriety format
2) There's a Java archive (jar) on the page that is automatically selected for Windows or OS X that has a file extension of .jpeg[1]
3) Inside the Java archive is a Java applet, PlayerApplet.class, that apparently does nothing but act as a proxy for another file inside the class, a DLL file in the Windows version, probably something similar in the Linux version

Looks like we're out of luck.

Dlugar

[1] There are actually four files which you can find here:
http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/pl ayer/vivid_ocx.jpeg [vividas.com]
http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/pl ayer/vivid_jni_ms.jpeg [vividas.com]
http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/pl ayer/vivid_jni_osx.jpeg [vividas.com]
http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/pl ayer/vivid_jni_sun.jpeg [vividas.com]

They're each JAR files (which are basically just zip files) so the more enterprising can download them and figure out exactly what they do.

Re:The beginning is good

[Scrameustache]

I missed in the series (like the setting being one big solar system, not interstellar).

You didn't miss it, they just didn't mention it.
It was the subject of much debate amongst fans before the movie, in fact. I thought they had more than one solar system, since it was implied in the way they talked about systems and whatnot, but, seems not.

Re:Site doesn't like Linux/Mozilla

[BJH]

The format comes from Vividas [vividas.com], and while this page [vividas.com] says they support Linux, they seem to mean it in the sense that you might be able to run their Java player under Linux if you're lucky.

Re:The Firefly TV episodes matter more

[Dionysus]

Have to agree with the other people who responded to you. I saw it with a friend who had never seen Firefly, and he didn't have any problems.

Re:My Review

[McSmithster]

Well though you shouldn't be moded flaimbaite you clearly don't understand Firefly or Serenity.

"I never feel convinced that any of the effort by the 'good side' or the 'bad side' is significantly important to those characters."

Thats kind of the point. Its not about the good and the bad. These guys are frickin mercenaries. They kill people for money. Who is suppose to be the good guys???? Its about surviving. Its about life. Not some holy war where they uphold only the most noble of virtues. The characters are more then one-dimensional. They arent good, they arent bad, they are people. They have flaws and they face problems and dilemmas. They over come them but sometimes they dont. Should everything be so perfect and nice where even the smallest of actions changes the balance of the never-ending war of good vs. evil? No, because thats not how life works. This isnt star wars, where the good triumphs. This is something more and the characters are unique. Its not a monolithic story line like most Sci-Fis are, so I can see why you have a hard time understanding the story and characters.

Re:Special 16 year old girls

[bytor4232]

His "obsession" as you call it comes from his origional inspiration for Firefly and the Buffyverse: the Uncanny X-Men. His favorite comic book character is a character named Shadowcat, who is young, troubled, etc. Buffy is pretty much a duplicate of Shadowcat, as is River and Kaylee in a much lesser degree. If you enjoy Wheldon's work, check out Astonishing X-Men which has been running for about 2 years now.

Wheldon is a master story teller, and I am really enjoying his work. I saw Firefly last weekend and immediatly went on a hard target search for Firefly this weekend. Watched the entire series, and am blown away. I never know TV could be this good. Too good to continue I guess :(

Re:The beginning is good

[Catbeller]

Whedon simply didn't get the difference between a solar system, a group of stars with solar systems, and a galaxy. He may have been straightened out later.

I was butting my head on this for a while: after all, if the new solar system was colonized by Earth, then - bloody hell! - they had interstellar drives. For hundreds of millons of passengers.

But the series never shows anyone making star hops. They're all fusion rockets, and they only travel a few million miles, spending weeks or days en route. Probably deuterium/tritium fueled.

What happened to the mighty starships? What happened to the Terran supertransports? And didn't anyone read "The High Frontier" on Earth? Why go to another star and terraform planets when you can stay around our solar system and build land areas in habitats with congomerate land area millions of times that of Earth's surface?

The confusion rattled me after I figured out that Serenity wasn't a starship. If the author can't figure out the difference between a solar system, a group of stars WITH solar systems, and a galaxy of Earths, he ain't writing science fiction -- he's using the form instead. Sci-Fi instead of SF. With the caveat that his universe doesn't make any sense.

However, I ignore all that and love the movie. I just wish they taught astronomy in writing classes.

Re:Site doesn't like Linux/Mozilla

[S. Traaken]

Can play it under linux :D

Install wine (winehq.org)
Install ie6 with tool from http://sidenet.ddo.jp/winetips/config.html [sidenet.ddo.jp]
(Possibly install dcom98. Not sure if its essential or not.)
Start ie.
Change security settings (Internet Options -> Security) to allow installation of unsigned activex controls
Go to the site http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/in dex.html [vividas.com]
You'll get a dialog telling you to install a jre. Cancel.
Say yes to installation and execution of anything activex related.
Click on Dial up.
Watch the movie in its window.

The fullscreen options (low, med, high) give me an error about unavailable display modes. I'd love to know if it is possible to get this playing the higher res versions in a window, but my javascript/webdev fu is weak. http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/pl ayer_script.inc [vividas.com] would be the place to look - playPressed() would be the function. Getting it called as playPressed('http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Se renity/viv/3929_Serenity_720.viv',true) would do the trick (2nd arg inidicates whether to play in a window or not.

(Alternatively, a patch for wine that sorts out the screen mode problem would possibly do the trick).

Now available in QT, WMV & RealPlayer

[Cheshyre]

IFilm now has the first nine minutes available in three other formats [ifilm.com]: streaming Windows Media, QuickTime and Real Player

Are those more accessible to your OS?

Re:What the Heck

[Angostura]

Just FYI, it runs on Mac OS X just fine. So it's not just a Windows thing. If anything this makes it more puzzling that it doesn't run on Linux.

Re:Stupid: Target audience, and I can't play this.

[sweetnjguy29]

I also tried running this on linux and got the same message. However, if you go to the website http://www.vividas.com/support/ [vividas.com], and look under system requirements, it says that Vividas will run under Linux using WINE emulation if you have 192MB RAM, Pentium III or better CPU 450MHz or better CPU clock speed and an Accelerated Graphics card, with at least 4MB of memory. Its still in testing, however.

This isn't an example of a company ignoring the linux community. This is an example of a company trying to control distribution by using a proprietary format. It took over my entire desktop while playing...couldn't quit out of it until it finished...must be some sort of DRM scheme.

I think they would have been better off using a normal format...but this appears to be an industry format: http://www.akamai.com/en/html/about/press/press518 .html [akamai.com] for more details.

You can take off your tin-foil hat now.