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08/14/2005: "Blog Spree #2: Serene Evangelism"
Today is August 14th. Roughly a month and a half from September 30. September 30 is The Greatness' birthday. It's also the release date of Joss Whedon's feature film debut, Serenity. The trailer can be found at the movie's web site, serenitymovie.com.
For those of you who don't know (and shame on you...just shame), Joss Whedon is the writer/director/genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel. He wrote or script-doctored movies like Speed and Toy Story. His next film will be the big budget adaptation of Wonder Woman.
At the height of his Buffy reign, Whedon used his pull to create his own version of an sci-fi ship show, with a western twist, which he called Firefly.
The premise revolved around a smuggler/captain and his crew on their Firefly class cargo vessel, named Serenity. Everyone see where this is headed yet? They do any job within their own particular moral code, legal or otherwise. In the pilot episode (I should say, the original pilot episode), the crew stops to pick up charter passengers to make a little extra money. And then the fun starts...
Here's more background with pictures - Click to See. But stop when they get to the episode recaps or you'll ruin it for yourself.
Fox payed 8 million dollars for the two hour pilot. And then didn't like it. They gave Whedon and his co-producer Tim Minear a weekend to rewrite the pilot. They did. Fox liked it and the show aired. Of course, they aired the show out of order, gave it a crummy timeslot, and pretty much killed the show before it started. 14 episodes were made. 11 episodes aired (including the original pilot, shown as a prequel two hour movie) before it was cancelled.
After the cancellation Whedon got Fox to agree to release the show on DVD, including the unaired episodes. It promptly sold 250,000 copies. Whedon (who still owned the feature film rights) went to Universal and convinced them to let him make a feature length film. He made it on the cheap (45 million for a convincing big budget sci-fi actioner), but he got to keep all nine members of the original cast.
You could see Serenity without the background of the series and be okay. But here's my suggestion to you. If you have Netflix, put Firefly disc 1 in your queue. Watch the two hour pilot, the second pilot ("The Train Job"), and the fourth episode. If you still don't like it, you've lost maybe three hours. If you do, check out the rest of the episodes. Firefly is the kind of TV that's better than most feature films. It's funny, exciting, touching, and painful. It bends genres and fucks with preconceptions. Check it out.
And then see Serenity on The Greatness's birthday. Look at that, TG. Whedon was thinking about you.