Serenity
I went to see Serenity last night, with erykah101. I am a fan of Firefly; erykah101 has seen maybe one episode. I know all the character names and background; erykah101 knows her Joss meta. Really, between the two of us, we were pretty representative of Joss' fanbase.
Serenity was, first and foremost, not what I was expecting in terms of the 'Western' format. This is probably due to the fact that it was primarily a film about River Tam and why the Alliance were after her: the least Western-like conceit of the series. There was a definite shift away from carefully veiled hints and allusions to 'Earth That Was' in favour of just plain throwing information at you. The film opened with a monologue explaining the exodus from ETW, the resettlement elsewhere (completely different, incidentally, to what I had supposed), the War - and just how big the space we're talking about really is. Or rather, isn't. It's still sci-fi, but it works more easily within our current understanding of physics and what is and isn't possible.
Anyway, back to the information overload that pretty swiftly turned out to be huge great big chunks of propaganda and therefore Possibly A Lie. I adored this. It was, for me, indicative of the shift from stories-on-the-edge (i.e. the more Western-like stories) to River's story, which is... not. From a series where we had next to no information, and was spent on the Rim, the move to the Core planets in Serenity brought the blissful overload of information that empire and control promises, but it also brought along the censored information as well. Secrets; inappropriate information; unorthodox methods: everything that does not fit within the pure and clean was excised and stripped down and filed away carefully. Either given a name and locked up - the deviants that would be put to use in whorehouses and detention centres - or had its name taken away and wiped from history. All those within the Serenity universe are shaped by this.
I could waffle on some more, but I'm trying to keep spoilers to a minimum, and it's hard to do meta without referencing the source aterial. :) So, some general impression -
The move from series to movie had a tripartite effect:
1) it brought all of the necessary information - and more - to understand River's story. This was to be its resolution in the series, years down the line. One of the effects was to make the viewer stagger a little under the sheer quantity of info thrown their way. Ironically, I think that this would be more of a disadvantage to Firefly fans than it would be to people going in blind, as it is slightly overwhelming at first.
2) The compression of a year's - or more - story arc into two hours means that the whole thing is very tight. There is not a scene or a line that doesn't relate to the A-Plot, which occasionally works to the film's disadvantage. This isn't a kid's movie. It's dark and frightening. It's conceptually unsettling. There needs to be some easing of the tension; there needs to be some attention paid elsewhere. Unfortunately, there really isn't much time and space for that, therefore we have River, and we have Mal, and we have the Bad Guy, and that's about it. In what was an ensemble cast, other than progressing River's story along, there wasn't much for anyone else to do.
3) All bets are off. All those things you wouldn't expect to happen in an average episode can and do happen. I went in with the mindset of, "previously on Firefly," and came out thinking, "that wasn't Firefly." No. It wasn't. This is an entirely different beast. There's nothing saying that everyone gets to survive, or that there's a happy ending. As a point of fact, this being Joss Whedon, you can never be sure either way. He has a certain love of deferring meaning (it must be the deconstructionist in him) that he flaunts quite spectacularly here. In other words: wait and see.
Things I loved about the film:
1) River's ass-kicking, and the brief scenes she had with Jayne. Additionally, I guessed something about her (in my own personal persion of fanon) that turned out to be true and made me laugh out loud when I saw it.
2) Jayne was sharp and funny and despite not having much to do managed to do it well. Ditto Kaylee, who managed to talk about sex in a way that made me exceptionally happy.
3) The scary. Oh my God, was it ever terrifying, and not just in a 'scary monsters!!' type of a way, although there were plenty of those moments too. There were also parts that were terrifying on a conceptual level (OMG how wanky does that sound?) that only possibly frightened me because I've spent five years training myself to be frightened of them. Think 1984 as 'conceptually scary' and you won't be far off either way.
4) Th Bad Guy. The actor - whose name escapes at the moment - turns out to be a friend of wingsmith, who was very surprised when I showed him a tiny wee piccie of the cast together at Edinburgh. I was very glad to be able to say that I enjoyed his performance greatly. I'm reading The Kingdom of the Wicked by Anthony Burgess at the moment, and he reminds me of Caleb (the student Zealot) in his dedication to his job.
Things I wasn't sure about:
1) River's slinkiness. On the show, she wore misshapen skirts and dresses and sweaters. In Serenity, she wears slinky dresses that show off her figure and - in one scene at least - plenty of cleavage. I understand that film requires sexy female characters because, I don't know, the universe will explode without them, or something, but Zoe and Kaylee and Inara are plenty sexy enough for it. There was no need to tart River up as well.
2) There wasn't enough time for most of the characters to do anything other than move the plot along. If they weren't doing something functional, they weren't present. This is necessary in a movie, but it did make it feel slightly relentless as if felt like there was no B-plot.
3) Inexplicable events aka what to do with characters once you don't need them to carry the plot forward anymore. On the one hand - yes. On the other hand - no. Hmmmm.
Right, so the film itself was good, and I'm giving it 8.5 out of 10 and many thumbs up.
After the movie, Joss and Summer Glau turned up for questions. Let me say now - oh my dear god, Summer is tiny. Like, tiny tiny. And, being a dancer, she doesn't look skinny or unhealthy, just tiny.
She was also absolutely adorable. She had trouble sitting in the big chair set out for her. In had a gap at the back, and she couldn't arrange herself against it, then dropped her bag through it and had to go hunt for it, then nearly fell off - bless her. "You're not to laugh at me, I tried so hard to be grown up tonight!" She wailed at one point. She is so unbelievably adorable, I think I have a slight (or possibly not so slight) crush.
Apparently, anything that went wrong on the set is Summer's fault. So, when she dropped her bag etc., the entire auditorium called, "Suuuuum-mer!" And she turned bright red. I say again - adorable.
I can't remember much of the Q & A, to be honest, because I was very much drugged up to the eyeballs. However, I did manage to gather enough wits together to ask one question (I was 'lady in the blue hat', because my mummy told me to wrap up warm. Shaddup.). I asked Joss about Book's background (because it turned out all them spoilers I had thrown at me? Were wrong.). Do you know what he said? He said, "you know when I said that I wasn't keeping anything back for the sequel? I lied." So I'm officially sulking. :)
Oh! And the Session 416 clips that have been surfacing? The doctor in them is played by Joss himself, 'cause he couldn't be bothered to cast anyone as they were done spur of the moment. And there will be more coming out, apparently. So it's all good.
There was much talk about the marketing and promotion of Serenity, as well, which mainly centred on TPTB showing the film to people. This undderstandably made Joss nervous. "But, if they're all going to see the movie before opening weekend, then, come opening weekend, won't they... all have seen the movie already?" *clutches head in pain* Hopefully, though, it'll work a treat, and all those people who've already seen it will encourage their non-fan friends etc to go see this really cool new movie.
And you should. Because it's the best damn sci-fi movie out in freaking ages. Plus? There's politics in it. And cultural imperialism. And, also, ass-kicking.
Serenity was, first and foremost, not what I was expecting in terms of the 'Western' format. This is probably due to the fact that it was primarily a film about River Tam and why the Alliance were after her: the least Western-like conceit of the series. There was a definite shift away from carefully veiled hints and allusions to 'Earth That Was' in favour of just plain throwing information at you. The film opened with a monologue explaining the exodus from ETW, the resettlement elsewhere (completely different, incidentally, to what I had supposed), the War - and just how big the space we're talking about really is. Or rather, isn't. It's still sci-fi, but it works more easily within our current understanding of physics and what is and isn't possible.
Anyway, back to the information overload that pretty swiftly turned out to be huge great big chunks of propaganda and therefore Possibly A Lie. I adored this. It was, for me, indicative of the shift from stories-on-the-edge (i.e. the more Western-like stories) to River's story, which is... not. From a series where we had next to no information, and was spent on the Rim, the move to the Core planets in Serenity brought the blissful overload of information that empire and control promises, but it also brought along the censored information as well. Secrets; inappropriate information; unorthodox methods: everything that does not fit within the pure and clean was excised and stripped down and filed away carefully. Either given a name and locked up - the deviants that would be put to use in whorehouses and detention centres - or had its name taken away and wiped from history. All those within the Serenity universe are shaped by this.
I could waffle on some more, but I'm trying to keep spoilers to a minimum, and it's hard to do meta without referencing the source aterial. :) So, some general impression -
The move from series to movie had a tripartite effect:
1) it brought all of the necessary information - and more - to understand River's story. This was to be its resolution in the series, years down the line. One of the effects was to make the viewer stagger a little under the sheer quantity of info thrown their way. Ironically, I think that this would be more of a disadvantage to Firefly fans than it would be to people going in blind, as it is slightly overwhelming at first.
2) The compression of a year's - or more - story arc into two hours means that the whole thing is very tight. There is not a scene or a line that doesn't relate to the A-Plot, which occasionally works to the film's disadvantage. This isn't a kid's movie. It's dark and frightening. It's conceptually unsettling. There needs to be some easing of the tension; there needs to be some attention paid elsewhere. Unfortunately, there really isn't much time and space for that, therefore we have River, and we have Mal, and we have the Bad Guy, and that's about it. In what was an ensemble cast, other than progressing River's story along, there wasn't much for anyone else to do.
3) All bets are off. All those things you wouldn't expect to happen in an average episode can and do happen. I went in with the mindset of, "previously on Firefly," and came out thinking, "that wasn't Firefly." No. It wasn't. This is an entirely different beast. There's nothing saying that everyone gets to survive, or that there's a happy ending. As a point of fact, this being Joss Whedon, you can never be sure either way. He has a certain love of deferring meaning (it must be the deconstructionist in him) that he flaunts quite spectacularly here. In other words: wait and see.
Things I loved about the film:
1) River's ass-kicking, and the brief scenes she had with Jayne. Additionally, I guessed something about her (in my own personal persion of fanon) that turned out to be true and made me laugh out loud when I saw it.
2) Jayne was sharp and funny and despite not having much to do managed to do it well. Ditto Kaylee, who managed to talk about sex in a way that made me exceptionally happy.
3) The scary. Oh my God, was it ever terrifying, and not just in a 'scary monsters!!' type of a way, although there were plenty of those moments too. There were also parts that were terrifying on a conceptual level (OMG how wanky does that sound?) that only possibly frightened me because I've spent five years training myself to be frightened of them. Think 1984 as 'conceptually scary' and you won't be far off either way.
4) Th Bad Guy. The actor - whose name escapes at the moment - turns out to be a friend of wingsmith, who was very surprised when I showed him a tiny wee piccie of the cast together at Edinburgh. I was very glad to be able to say that I enjoyed his performance greatly. I'm reading The Kingdom of the Wicked by Anthony Burgess at the moment, and he reminds me of Caleb (the student Zealot) in his dedication to his job.
Things I wasn't sure about:
1) River's slinkiness. On the show, she wore misshapen skirts and dresses and sweaters. In Serenity, she wears slinky dresses that show off her figure and - in one scene at least - plenty of cleavage. I understand that film requires sexy female characters because, I don't know, the universe will explode without them, or something, but Zoe and Kaylee and Inara are plenty sexy enough for it. There was no need to tart River up as well.
2) There wasn't enough time for most of the characters to do anything other than move the plot along. If they weren't doing something functional, they weren't present. This is necessary in a movie, but it did make it feel slightly relentless as if felt like there was no B-plot.
3) Inexplicable events aka what to do with characters once you don't need them to carry the plot forward anymore. On the one hand - yes. On the other hand - no. Hmmmm.
Right, so the film itself was good, and I'm giving it 8.5 out of 10 and many thumbs up.
After the movie, Joss and Summer Glau turned up for questions. Let me say now - oh my dear god, Summer is tiny. Like, tiny tiny. And, being a dancer, she doesn't look skinny or unhealthy, just tiny.
She was also absolutely adorable. She had trouble sitting in the big chair set out for her. In had a gap at the back, and she couldn't arrange herself against it, then dropped her bag through it and had to go hunt for it, then nearly fell off - bless her. "You're not to laugh at me, I tried so hard to be grown up tonight!" She wailed at one point. She is so unbelievably adorable, I think I have a slight (or possibly not so slight) crush.
Apparently, anything that went wrong on the set is Summer's fault. So, when she dropped her bag etc., the entire auditorium called, "Suuuuum-mer!" And she turned bright red. I say again - adorable.
I can't remember much of the Q & A, to be honest, because I was very much drugged up to the eyeballs. However, I did manage to gather enough wits together to ask one question (I was 'lady in the blue hat', because my mummy told me to wrap up warm. Shaddup.). I asked Joss about Book's background (because it turned out all them spoilers I had thrown at me? Were wrong.). Do you know what he said? He said, "you know when I said that I wasn't keeping anything back for the sequel? I lied." So I'm officially sulking. :)
Oh! And the Session 416 clips that have been surfacing? The doctor in them is played by Joss himself, 'cause he couldn't be bothered to cast anyone as they were done spur of the moment. And there will be more coming out, apparently. So it's all good.
There was much talk about the marketing and promotion of Serenity, as well, which mainly centred on TPTB showing the film to people. This undderstandably made Joss nervous. "But, if they're all going to see the movie before opening weekend, then, come opening weekend, won't they... all have seen the movie already?" *clutches head in pain* Hopefully, though, it'll work a treat, and all those people who've already seen it will encourage their non-fan friends etc to go see this really cool new movie.
And you should. Because it's the best damn sci-fi movie out in freaking ages. Plus? There's politics in it. And cultural imperialism. And, also, ass-kicking.