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SERENITY (Sep 2005) PG-13
aka: FIREFLY: THE MOVIE.
Director, Writer: Joss Whedon.
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, Ron Glass, Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Krumholtz, Michael Hitchcock, Sarah Paulson, Yan Feldman, Rafael Feldman.
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 uROUGH NOTES
by
Jon Dunmore ©
The adventures of a hip crew of lovable space brigands onboard a Firefly-class spaceship called Serenity.
SERENITY is the big screen version of the small screen series FIREFLY.
And the movie is not exactly stand-alone. I find that every angle I come at it - as an objective observer, as a fan of good science fiction, as a fan of morally ambiguous characters - for SERENITY to work, there is that necessary connection to the bigger 'verse of the television series which fleshed out these characters before we ever met them here in Moviedom. If you're coming to writer-director Joss Whedon's space opera blind, there is the tendency to ask: Just who are these people and what do they want with my willy?
Intelligent writing, with the
rooted in some kind of 1800s western vernacular
This movie opens with a quick recap of Earth-That-Was and the war and terraforming of outer planets - the situation we are thrown headling into in the TV series FIREFLY. This quick recap gives us a good grounding, and it also goes for the River Tam story, opens with her beign experimented on.
DP is Jack Green - Clint Eastwood's boy!
river:
suddenly she's uma thurman agasint yhe Crazy 88s.
No sound in space - a tiny aspect like that speaks volumes about the bravery of this show.
opening very interesting - an exposition within a classroom hologram within a dream sequence within a lab within a hologram. to understand what theat means, watch the movie.
Chiwetel Ejiofor - great actor in a great role - a chilling eerie role assassin pursuing the psychic chick.
good fight sequences aikido-type sequences
in the end, no sympathy for
river - not her fault that she got screwed up by the govt - but if she's beomce suvh damaged goods, -- I'm with Jane on this one - weigh up the benefits opposed to the cost of keeping her - she HAS not benefit to the ship, it's not their business - why not either let them govt get her, or kill her leave her somewhere.
sexual tension vetyween inari and gale not as much played up in theis movie - it had the tensile strngth of Oglden Gate bridge cabels i the series, not so much here.
on the strength of one recording from one supposed sicnetiest hologram they get message that govt created drug that callmed people to the extent they let themselves die - but 10% went the other way - made them reavers. Ok that's cool - one lady claiming to be sicnetist on a hologram . Let's hope that people dont take just one unverified report as truth in anythign - god knows that how the fox network operates.
even the "lovable" cahracters - the big lunk Jayne - he's not that nice a guy - hes' a merc and he's always willing to sell out his shipmates for coin
They made that device of going inand out of crazinessbecasue we all know that if she was "on" all the time, she would be an unstoppable force, becasue she takes out the bad guys too easily. so they had to make her not so superhero-ey by being introverted and rain mannish.
everyone knows that psychic chick - if they did unleash her she's a superhero so they thought of that device of going in and out of craziness so they cant unleash her at will - so at en dits an annoying deus ex.
ITowards the climax, we begin to feel like the end of THE DIRTY DOZEN, or WILD BUNCH or SEVEN SSAURAI where each of the main characters that we have grown to love gets picked off one by one (after all, this movie had no guarantee of continuing the series or making a sequel, it was purely fanhood run wild) , Then the annoying happens: River almost happily announces, "my turn" and turns into a bone-crushing unstoppablelethal weeapon again. talk about deus ex machina.
you know whats annoying this psychi warrior quivers and bug-eyes in fear doesnt do anything thru battle - sudenyl "it's my turn to tgake care of you now."
f they didn' tget the opportiunity to do this film, (which means if the series wasn't canceoled) that psychic chick would have been a constant annoyance with her powers and non-pweros and going dumb and suddenyl gettting teeth - it would have been going on interminably - never resolved - at least the one good thing about he series ending is that it forced the resoution of her character arc.
She is a psychic, or empath, or whatever the stree cred term is now.
when chiwetel operative shoots him in back just as he's about to get to the broadcast place - he shoots him in the back - but he doesn't kill him. When they battle two minutes ltater he's trying to make Gale fall on his sword, but two muinutes earlier he could have shot him in the back and been done with it. But it only gets his attention to turn arond and fight. How stupid! That means he's not serious and not as evil or ominious as we firts thought him to be.
giant shaft with two gigantic spinning fans at bottom - right in middle of shaft - who rote this part - some kindergartner? you mean you didn't have the bdget to include big iron chunck that smashed together that they would time the smashes and run through? You coudln't afford a circular saw on a track that the heroine is tied up on the conveyor belt?
miranda - they can't find any records - but Miranda is one of th emajor mons of Jupiter - I'm sure they haven't totally given up on the nomencalture from Old Earth times. On the contrary, they would have embracesed all thealready-named moonlet and worlds outside of Earth's once-blinkered view.
surprisingly good space battle scenes - that rival Lucas
not as much levity on this voyage - darker than the series.
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SERENITY (Sep 2005) PG-13
Director, Writer: Joss Whedon.
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite,
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