For those people who like this sort of thing. It's a
movie version of a short-lived TV series
Firefly.
I signed up for September 27 showing in Boston. Will write a review here if I go.
September 28, 2005: Review, telegraph style.
First, my background. I did not see the
Firefly, am a moderate-level fan of Star Trek, not a fan of Star Wars (but am fond of the original movies). I do not like the fantasy style of sci fi, although I can enjoy it when it is well done. For example, the Matrix series mostly annoyed me. I am more of a bookish geek anyway. Fan of sci fi books by Stanislaw Lem (emphasis on sci). Recently, a fan of the singularity theme.
I saw the movie in a Loews theater in Boston. The audience was a typical college campus, with one or two grizzly heads. Entrance was relatively easy, with a glitch: nobody in the ticket booth had a list of bloggers and would only let in those with passes. An usher led me to a guy inside the hall, who tried to look me up and hesitantly offered that he did find my name in the list. Anyway, I got in.
The movie emotionally engages. It feels good to be a 10-year old boy again. An attempt to make characters look like real people was successful. The script is not without laughs (many for an older boy), including one-liners, funny dialog, and ironic references to cinematographic cliche. I enjoyed that and so did the audience, so I think it's not just for the text types like myself, but has a more general appeal. And the visuals are very well made, although one can see it's cgi. But it's state of the art cgi.
The genre is sci fi fantasy, or
"cowboys in space". Lots of references to other movies of the genre are built in it. Perhaps
reference is a wrong word here; I mean to say that all of these fantasy sci fi movies create more or less the same universe, or similar universes. Which is okay; the stage is set by a few words in the beginning (humanity moved on to terraforming a new solar system, blah-blah-blah) without extra verbiage. I guess the audience does not even notice it.
I did not find any new ideas. The basic idea is
don't trade liberty for safety, which is at least as old as the founding fathers, in fact much older. And
don't delegate too much authority to the authority. And (more subtle)
don't trust the experts who trust their theories too much. Regular fashionable libertarian (modern memetic word for "anarchist") kit.
As part of the plot, in order to prove their libertarian philosophical point, the protagonists start a quest for some item which will reveal a dark secret about the government! This all seems so unnecessary. The very fact that government agents do not stop at anything should be sufficient to see that the world is not as rosy as it seems to be. I guess people in the cinema world are more stupid than what I am used to. Just like in this world.
Anyhow, I enjoyed
Serenity a lot. Can recommend it to anyone who is not allergic to this kind of stuff.
.
