Serenity Trounces Star Wars

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.

Star Wars is Sci-fi

[Rocketship Underpant]

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.

I would

[hummassa]

(put my waging money on it)
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!

Science Fiction?

[ZeroSerenity]

Let me throw this out there. Science Fiction:
A. The effect of future technology on human life. (Source: Gazfather)

So let me also throw this in the fire. Star Wars hardly qualifies as science fiction. I don't mean to use the term "space opera" but it seems popular here, though there is no singing involved. Really the best term to use here is "Fantasy". Sure, it shares some science fiction themes such as government corruption and the effect of interstellar transportation, but if you break it down it shares little in common with actual science fiction. Example, Koushun Takami's Battle Royale [wikipedia.org] was a science fiction novel (which spawned a movie and others) but carried almost no overly futuristic technology like Star Wars, though the Science Fiction theme was defenetly there and showing the ever widdening gap between children and their parents.

To say that Star Wars is Science Fiction is very wrong. Even Lucas himself said something like this. (I think)

Re:Come on

[Nimey]

I thought the second worst sin committed was killing off certain people needlessly.

No. There were Real Life reasons for killing Book and Wash. Book's actor wanted out of acting to do political activism full-time, and Wash's actor had other acting commitments.

Re:Be sure to watch Firefly THEN Serenity!

[Se7enLC]

I agree 100%

I had never seen Firefly, but I had a lot of friends who were fans of it. We all saw Serenity, and while it was a decent movie, if you asked me a week later what I thought of it, I wouldn't have even been able to recall what it was about.

Recently, I was convinced to sit down and watch all of firefly. I really enjoyed it. Then I watched Serenity again. It was like I was watching a completely different movie!

Seeing the movie by itself, you don't really get attached to the characters like you do in the TV show. [Spoiler] When Wash and Shepherd die, you don't really feel badly about that in the movie, because you didn't really know them. Shepherd especially, he wasn't much more than a background character.[/Spoiler]

Re:I hate Star Wars

[Homr Zodyssey]

IMHO, Firefly didn't lose viewers because of the quality of the shows. It lost viewers because the network kept switching the schedule around and airing it at bad times. I was only able to catch two episodes (which I loved) when it was on its original run.
Now, when sci-fi channel brought it back, I caught every single episode. Of course, it helped that I had a TiVO by that time.

Re:You are all avoiding the real question

[wiggles]

Battle Star Galatica (even that raping-of-my-childhood bastard new series)

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.

Re: IMDB sci-fi list

[Anonymous Coward]

http://imdb.com/chart/scifi [imdb.com]

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
2. Star Wars (1977)
3. The Matrix (1999)
4. Metropolis (1927)
5. Alien (1979)
6. Aliens (1986)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
9. Blade Runner (1982)
10. Donnie Darko (2001)
11. The Incredibles (2004)
12. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
  (... skip some ...)
30. The Invisible Man (1933)
31. Planet of the Apes (1968)
32. Brazil (1985)
33. Kaze no tani no Naushika (1984) / Warriors of the Wind
34. Delicatessen (1991)
35. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
36. Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (1986) / Castle in the Sky
37. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
38. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
39. X2 (2003)
40. Serenity (2005)
41. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
42. The Truman Show (1998)
43. Spider-Man 2 (2004)