Serenity sucks
So this has nothing to do with Houston, but I wanted to vent a bit about the movie Serenity. Just so you know, I've seen the entire Firefly series and rather enjoyed it, so I'm not just bashing this movie because I didn't understand it. I'm bashing it because it is a bad movie. I think this movie is already spoiled, but beware: the rant below CONTAINS SPOILERS.
One of the things I liked about the series is that I didn't have to watch it with a theater full of wackos. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge sci-fi fan. But it turns out I hate a lot of other sci-fi fans. Especially the fantasy side of sci-fi. Ug. I saw a preview of Serenity, and I knew I was in trouble when before the film started some yahoo insisted that the entire audience sing Joss Whedon "Happy Birthday" so he could record it on film and mail it to Whedon. I didn't sing. Nor did I sing the second time when the yahoo couldn't figure out how to work his recorder and asked the crowd to re-sing.
Anyway, back to the movie. I understand that a movie format present a unique challenge: it is difficult to condense the rich back story of the entire cast of characters into two hours. So right away, this movie is going to be confusing to people who haven't seen the series because it pre-supposes that the audience already know a lot about the characters. But that's an lame excuse. Peter Jackson seemed to have no trouble presenting the richness of Tolkien's universe in movie format (although granted it did take him three hours per film).
Second, wtf is up with the inclusion of kung-fu? I realize that since the success of the Matrix, every sci-fi movie producer is probably asking the writer "Where are all the cool fight scenes we can film in uber-slow motion?" In the TV series, the character River Tam is more or less a damsel in distress. We see her display amazing shooting skills at one point, but a master of hand-to-hand combat she is not. In the movie, suddenly she's Bruce Lee on PCP. Now, I'm all for strong female role models, but I can't really support such a blatant move to add action-based eye candy.
My main gripe with this movie is that the plot is horrible. The premise of the movie (and series) is great: a band of misfits run their own ship, make their own rules, and buck the law. But the plot revolves around "Reavers," which are demented, psychotic individuals that in the TV series were supposedly driven mad by the emptiness of space. They're certainly scary, but um, how do crazy people maintain and fly spaceships again? If a chunk of foam or a frozen o-ring can take out the space shuttle, I'm pretty sure a ship full of bat-shit crazy cannibals isn't going to last long in space. But that's a minor gripe compared to this one: it's really the government that created the Reavers. Gasp! It turns out government scientist were messing with happy pills for a whole planet, and they took things one step to far. They made a drug that makes 99% of people so happy they are too apathetic to eat, but drives the other 1% nuts. The happy folks die and/or are killed by the Reavers, and the Reavers somehow manage to build a self-sustaining community.
First, how can you keep a whole planet of people cut off from the rest of humanity? Are you telling me that none of these millions of people had any brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. that noticed they disappeared? Image that California fell into the ocean. While many red-staters might be happy, you'd have a pretty tough time hiding the fact that it happened from the rest of the country. Hell, some poor white girl can't even disappear on a Caribbean island without hordes of media slimeballs spending days on end recounting every nuance of her life. Are you telling me the media will somehow miss an entire planet? No way!
Second, having the Reavers be a government mistake is a lame plot device. It was better, I think, when we were lead to believe they were normal people whose minds were unbalanced by unnamed horrors of space. Since we weren't exactly sure what caused them, there was suspense mixed into the horror of their existence. Now, they have all the suspense of a Superfund site. Sure it sucks to be screwed by the government, but we live in an era where the government routinely bends us over the couch and has its way with us. So frankly, I'm not that shocked that the government of the future also screws those is purports to serve.
One of the things I liked about the series is that I didn't have to watch it with a theater full of wackos. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge sci-fi fan. But it turns out I hate a lot of other sci-fi fans. Especially the fantasy side of sci-fi. Ug. I saw a preview of Serenity, and I knew I was in trouble when before the film started some yahoo insisted that the entire audience sing Joss Whedon "Happy Birthday" so he could record it on film and mail it to Whedon. I didn't sing. Nor did I sing the second time when the yahoo couldn't figure out how to work his recorder and asked the crowd to re-sing.
Anyway, back to the movie. I understand that a movie format present a unique challenge: it is difficult to condense the rich back story of the entire cast of characters into two hours. So right away, this movie is going to be confusing to people who haven't seen the series because it pre-supposes that the audience already know a lot about the characters. But that's an lame excuse. Peter Jackson seemed to have no trouble presenting the richness of Tolkien's universe in movie format (although granted it did take him three hours per film).
Second, wtf is up with the inclusion of kung-fu? I realize that since the success of the Matrix, every sci-fi movie producer is probably asking the writer "Where are all the cool fight scenes we can film in uber-slow motion?" In the TV series, the character River Tam is more or less a damsel in distress. We see her display amazing shooting skills at one point, but a master of hand-to-hand combat she is not. In the movie, suddenly she's Bruce Lee on PCP. Now, I'm all for strong female role models, but I can't really support such a blatant move to add action-based eye candy.
My main gripe with this movie is that the plot is horrible. The premise of the movie (and series) is great: a band of misfits run their own ship, make their own rules, and buck the law. But the plot revolves around "Reavers," which are demented, psychotic individuals that in the TV series were supposedly driven mad by the emptiness of space. They're certainly scary, but um, how do crazy people maintain and fly spaceships again? If a chunk of foam or a frozen o-ring can take out the space shuttle, I'm pretty sure a ship full of bat-shit crazy cannibals isn't going to last long in space. But that's a minor gripe compared to this one: it's really the government that created the Reavers. Gasp! It turns out government scientist were messing with happy pills for a whole planet, and they took things one step to far. They made a drug that makes 99% of people so happy they are too apathetic to eat, but drives the other 1% nuts. The happy folks die and/or are killed by the Reavers, and the Reavers somehow manage to build a self-sustaining community.
First, how can you keep a whole planet of people cut off from the rest of humanity? Are you telling me that none of these millions of people had any brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. that noticed they disappeared? Image that California fell into the ocean. While many red-staters might be happy, you'd have a pretty tough time hiding the fact that it happened from the rest of the country. Hell, some poor white girl can't even disappear on a Caribbean island without hordes of media slimeballs spending days on end recounting every nuance of her life. Are you telling me the media will somehow miss an entire planet? No way!
Second, having the Reavers be a government mistake is a lame plot device. It was better, I think, when we were lead to believe they were normal people whose minds were unbalanced by unnamed horrors of space. Since we weren't exactly sure what caused them, there was suspense mixed into the horror of their existence. Now, they have all the suspense of a Superfund site. Sure it sucks to be screwed by the government, but we live in an era where the government routinely bends us over the couch and has its way with us. So frankly, I'm not that shocked that the government of the future also screws those is purports to serve.
posted by Bradley Thomson at 8:05 AM
3 Comments:
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Don't forget the cringeworthy inclusion of the horrible mr. Universe.
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