Serenity

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by lin robinson

So this didn't do well at box office? Odd, it's a way cool film. Some glitches...but not more so than Star Wars or many of the scifi blockbusters.

I rented it twice in the same week. It has some really powerful moments. Didn't see the TV series..but noticed that some of the other moments--especially between the lead male and his "Indian" girlfriend had a sort of "Hercules TV" feel about them.

I don't understand why this wouldn't have been big with viewers. Was it launched against some 900 pound gorilla? Badly promoted?

Fox didnt even show the eps in the right order. Im surprised it has fans at all.


Of course it didnt do great at box office it being a series and not a new movie people could give a fair chance. It cost so little to make too, so im sure the people behind it are happy with what they got from BO.

Only people that says it was a flop is jealous fans who dont see why Firefly has cult status or unrealistic people that expect any movie these days under 100 million dollars BO a flop.

[mirinda]

They didn't show them in the right order? Are they insane or just stupid? I never even saw any episodes aired over here....

I loved the movie. As soon as I can find it to buy......

How many seasons of the show are there?

[Delvo]

There's a list of strange things Fox did with Firefly. They demanded a new pilot episode to be written in less time than it takes to write one, put them in the wrong order, scheduled them for the weeks during which they knew they'd have a huge stream of baseball playoff games coming up to pre-empt anything else, put it in a time slot which they knew was the death of every other Fox show they'd put in that time slot, skipped it around in the schedule, used bizarre advertizements (when it was advertized at all) that seemed to try to make it look bad, omitted it from press events they held to promote other new Fox shows, and gave reluctant, brief, avoidant answers when asked about it. (And I think I'm forgetting one or two things.) I don't think the whole company was out to destroy it, but I do think it appeared to have become undermined by some kind of conflicts within the company's upper management.

[Metryq]

I'm still making my way through Firefly/Serenity-related threads, so perhaps this has been mentioned before. Did anyone else notice the registration numbers on the crashed rescue ship on Miranda?

It was C-57D, the same as the starship in Forbidden Planet. (The number is also seen on a shuttle that Jayne inspects—probably a scooter from the rescue ship.) Miranda, the name of the planet, was Prospero's daughter in Shakespeare's The Tempest, the basis for Forbidden Planet.

The message in Forbidden Planet is that even after a million years of civilization, the lost Krell were still "human" at heart. The "ego" and "super ego" of the Krell had advanced, but the "id" still lurked inside. And the Krell technology empowered that inner savage.

In Serenity the social engineering carried out by the Alliance planners released a similar "id monster"—the Reavers. The chemicals added to the air processors stripped the unwitting populace of all passion and will-to-live. They all died of apathy. The chemicals had the opposite effect on a tiny percentage of the population—it stripped away the veneer of civilization and left nothing but savagery.

Mal gives a pep talk to his crew where he says, "They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people...better. And I do not hold to that." Yin yang. Mal knows that people cannot be good without the struggle against evil, a theme brilliantly executed in the Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within." (Kirk learns that his strength of command comes from the savage inside, properly tempered by the intelligence and compassion of his "good" side.)