Serenity...NOW!
I’m so excited—the movie based on one of my favorite TV shows, Firefly, opens on Friday. Advance buzz about Serenity indicates a hi-larious and action-packed adventure. What it doesn’t have is Jessica Alba in a bikini. Her new movie, The Deep, or Nubile Young ’uns in the Sea, or High Concept T&A-Fest or whatever it is called, opens on the same day and that’s got Serenity fans worried. But they shouldn’t be. Yes, there is an audience that will go to see a movie just to see Jessica Alba in a bikini. But I think an awful lot of those same people (Hollywood’s dream audience, 13-25 year old males) will also want to see Serenity—case in point, my son’s 15-y.o. friend, who’d never heard of Firefly, said he was going to see the movie because “it looks coooool.”
And then there are the rest of us who will see it. I saw clips of the crowds that turned out for the Serenity sneak screenings during the summer and what impressed me was the variety—old, young, black, white, Asian, red state, blue state. And women. Lots of women. Older women like me who are perpetually ignored by the marketers/advertisers, women who have a little extra cash to spend on Serenity t-shirts, moms who will only give their kids their allowance if they promise to spend it seeing Serenity and not Jessica Alba in a bikini. Women like me who love a good, rollicking sci-fi flick. Who saw Star Wars when it first came out, fell in love with Han Solo, wanted to be Princess Leia. We’d hoped to recapture that magic with the SW prequels, but they fell dismally flat.
And then Joss Whedon, the man who brought Buffy to life, gave us Firefly and a whole host of questions/ideas about the future, morality, bureaucracy, hope…you name it. Serenity’s crew flew the skies, looking for work (legal or not) and a way to survive. The ship had a dashing, oh-so-conflicted captain with tight pants, a wise-ass pilot, a love-him/hate-him mercenary named Jayne, a man of the cloth, a crusading doctor—and four astounding, well-written, very different female characters. A girl mechanic who not only sees the glass as full, but overflowing; a futuristic prostitute who has complete control over her career and her body; a kick-ass warrior woman who gets all the best lines in the show; and a victimized teenager trying to cope with the fact that the government experimented on her brain, turning her into…well, we never got to see what because the TV show, mismanaged and misunderstood by FOX, was yanked.
But now we have the movie and hopefully those questions will be answered. While I wished the show could continue as a series—Whedon is a storytelling, character-building genius whose talents are best displayed in an on-going series—I am content with the Big Damn Movie. And yes, I plan to go often and early—I hope you, my constant readers (all three of you!) will too!
Janet – No power in the ‘verse stopped us!
And then there are the rest of us who will see it. I saw clips of the crowds that turned out for the Serenity sneak screenings during the summer and what impressed me was the variety—old, young, black, white, Asian, red state, blue state. And women. Lots of women. Older women like me who are perpetually ignored by the marketers/advertisers, women who have a little extra cash to spend on Serenity t-shirts, moms who will only give their kids their allowance if they promise to spend it seeing Serenity and not Jessica Alba in a bikini. Women like me who love a good, rollicking sci-fi flick. Who saw Star Wars when it first came out, fell in love with Han Solo, wanted to be Princess Leia. We’d hoped to recapture that magic with the SW prequels, but they fell dismally flat.
And then Joss Whedon, the man who brought Buffy to life, gave us Firefly and a whole host of questions/ideas about the future, morality, bureaucracy, hope…you name it. Serenity’s crew flew the skies, looking for work (legal or not) and a way to survive. The ship had a dashing, oh-so-conflicted captain with tight pants, a wise-ass pilot, a love-him/hate-him mercenary named Jayne, a man of the cloth, a crusading doctor—and four astounding, well-written, very different female characters. A girl mechanic who not only sees the glass as full, but overflowing; a futuristic prostitute who has complete control over her career and her body; a kick-ass warrior woman who gets all the best lines in the show; and a victimized teenager trying to cope with the fact that the government experimented on her brain, turning her into…well, we never got to see what because the TV show, mismanaged and misunderstood by FOX, was yanked.
But now we have the movie and hopefully those questions will be answered. While I wished the show could continue as a series—Whedon is a storytelling, character-building genius whose talents are best displayed in an on-going series—I am content with the Big Damn Movie. And yes, I plan to go often and early—I hope you, my constant readers (all three of you!) will too!
Janet – No power in the ‘verse stopped us!
posted by Janet at 10:02 AM
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