Serenity: The Review
Oct. 12th, 2005 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianSo I've finally seen Serenity.
To dispense with the details, at least to start with, I thought it was good if you completely divorced it from Firefly. The first half-hour (after seeing Simon's rescue mission -- FINALLY!) was slow as pigshit rolling down a hill in January; the exposition could have been handled a lot better. And even after the exposition was done, some of the stuff that was going on really was too hit-you-over-the-head. I mean, okay; Alliance does bad things to people. We see River. We get that. The Operative ... he was just annoying. I wanted to see the Two By Two people. They at least had some menace to them. They weren't this "Mission from God" wannabe-Vader clown. Yech. Still, the core idea was the same, just stripped down a lot, and for cinema, it has to be. It had legs, no doubt about it.
Down to details. I still don't agree with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cholten99 that Joss is having this abusive relationship with the fans. Frankly, I don't think he thinks about the fandom much at all. Sure, he knows it's there, and he probably wonders how they'll react to things, but I don't think it's a guiding force. If he was really fucking with the fans by killing Wash, then he would have done it in a far more drawn-out, melodramatic way. As it was, it was a thing that happened. In that story, it was just too much to ask that everyone came out unscathed. Come on; they shot at Reavers. They got chased by what amounts to a platoon of Reavers. Then they -- sorry; then Wash wove his way through a hellacious fucking firefight between Reavers and Alliance. Two of the most deadly things that the Serenity crew had ever faced, and he went through the whole thing without a scratch until that one bunch of fuckers followed them into atmo and then EMPed the boat. And he brought it down. Not without damage, sure, but he brought Serenity down with no casualties. That kind of skill / luck combo, while making a good story, doesn't make a great story. It gives nothing except a sort of a "Oh, what a relief. I was worried for a minute there, but everyone gets out safe". It's a good story, yes. But it's not a particularly memorable one in the face of the hundreds of thousands of stories just like it. And that wasn't the story Joss was telling, anyway. "I am a leaf on the wind," says Wash. And of course, if a leaf is on the wind and soaring, it's removed from the tree and is going to die. I bet it hurt him as much as it hurt everyone else who had a soft spot for Wash. Hell, more -- Joss did create Wash, after all. Anyone who thinks that people kill off characters that good just to fuck with people has no concept of what writing's really about, and how much goes into it. If it made you want to cry, Joss did his job; it shouldn't be a matter of, "Oh, he's just fucking with us now". He doesn't know us.
The rest ... Kaylee was kind of wasted, and I'm still not entirely sure about how River got used in the end, and Book was just ... what a horrible way to die ... but that was a story, well told. Maybe it wasn't Firefly, but I don't know if I'd have wanted it to be anyway. After all, the X-Files movie was just an extended version of an episode and it was awful. Serenity's just meant to be ... well, Serenity. And with a little luck, she'll keep flying.
A little long-winded, but there you go. There should be shower and bed soon. Like, now-soon. Tomorrow is another day. Maybe one in which Affils work actually gets done.
To dispense with the details, at least to start with, I thought it was good if you completely divorced it from Firefly. The first half-hour (after seeing Simon's rescue mission -- FINALLY!) was slow as pigshit rolling down a hill in January; the exposition could have been handled a lot better. And even after the exposition was done, some of the stuff that was going on really was too hit-you-over-the-head. I mean, okay; Alliance does bad things to people. We see River. We get that. The Operative ... he was just annoying. I wanted to see the Two By Two people. They at least had some menace to them. They weren't this "Mission from God" wannabe-Vader clown. Yech. Still, the core idea was the same, just stripped down a lot, and for cinema, it has to be. It had legs, no doubt about it.
Down to details. I still don't agree with
cholten99 that Joss is having this abusive relationship with the fans. Frankly, I don't think he thinks about the fandom much at all. Sure, he knows it's there, and he probably wonders how they'll react to things, but I don't think it's a guiding force. If he was really fucking with the fans by killing Wash, then he would have done it in a far more drawn-out, melodramatic way. As it was, it was a thing that happened. In that story, it was just too much to ask that everyone came out unscathed. Come on; they shot at Reavers. They got chased by what amounts to a platoon of Reavers. Then they -- sorry; then Wash wove his way through a hellacious fucking firefight between Reavers and Alliance. Two of the most deadly things that the Serenity crew had ever faced, and he went through the whole thing without a scratch until that one bunch of fuckers followed them into atmo and then EMPed the boat. And he brought it down. Not without damage, sure, but he brought Serenity down with no casualties. That kind of skill / luck combo, while making a good story, doesn't make a great story. It gives nothing except a sort of a "Oh, what a relief. I was worried for a minute there, but everyone gets out safe". It's a good story, yes. But it's not a particularly memorable one in the face of the hundreds of thousands of stories just like it. And that wasn't the story Joss was telling, anyway. "I am a leaf on the wind," says Wash. And of course, if a leaf is on the wind and soaring, it's removed from the tree and is going to die. I bet it hurt him as much as it hurt everyone else who had a soft spot for Wash. Hell, more -- Joss did create Wash, after all. Anyone who thinks that people kill off characters that good just to fuck with people has no concept of what writing's really about, and how much goes into it. If it made you want to cry, Joss did his job; it shouldn't be a matter of, "Oh, he's just fucking with us now". He doesn't know us.The rest ... Kaylee was kind of wasted, and I'm still not entirely sure about how River got used in the end, and Book was just ... what a horrible way to die ... but that was a story, well told. Maybe it wasn't Firefly, but I don't know if I'd have wanted it to be anyway. After all, the X-Files movie was just an extended version of an episode and it was awful. Serenity's just meant to be ... well, Serenity. And with a little luck, she'll keep flying.
A little long-winded, but there you go. There should be shower and bed soon. Like, now-soon. Tomorrow is another day. Maybe one in which Affils work actually gets done.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 03:41 pm (UTC)(and yes, I liked it - I snagged a copy of the visual companion book that has the script and other shiny things on Sunday)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 05:46 pm (UTC)