Koki on 3/8/2009 at 06:57
VGCATS IS A NO
rachel on 3/8/2009 at 08:10
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
Frankly, I'd have to agree somewhat with criticising Firefly's genre mixing too, perhaps unfairly it always struck me as little more than a way of differentiating it from similar series like Farscape (and both series' ultimate antecedent, Blake's 7).
Personnally it's the blending of several genres that makes it so good in my view, and that's why
Serenity wasn't as good as the show, because they cut down on that and made it feel like a generic sci-fi film (a good one, but it could have been better).
Also for the record I loathe A:R and I also understand people not liking
Firefly. It's jut putting the two on the same level that I can't stand. ;)
june gloom on 3/8/2009 at 08:53
The common factor is Joss Whedon. Joss Whedon is pretty much an automatic skip for me at this point.
icemann on 3/8/2009 at 11:47
Buffy, Angel and Firefly are fucking awesome. He got those right.
The rest were meh.
Vivian on 3/8/2009 at 12:09
One more ticket for the 'Put Joss Whedon in a wheelie bin and push him into the sun' bus, pls
Muzman on 3/8/2009 at 12:19
I think he's definitely a very decent TV writer, even if you don't like his style. His stuff manages to be thoroughly geeky and genre while still throwing in quite plausible plot contortions that spice everything up and keep things interesting. You do feel like its familiar but you haven't seen it quite like this before (and it's not completely predictable). That's a pretty skillful thing to do on a regular basis.
I never saw 'Farscape' much until recently, so 'Firefly' seemed pretty unique. It's still pretty distinctive to me though; the whole Western part was very strong I thought, and I like Westerns. Farscape is still just a more interesting than usual space show, and not by virtue of its style or premise (its characters are pretty archetypal to begin with, let's face it).
A hook is a hook, is all I'm saying. Farscape had to grow, where Firefly had me right out of the gate. Plus it's got no bloody aliens in it, which is just awesome.
Serenity and A:R do make a good case for Whedon staying away from movies, however (or tossing away his rules of structure books and going nuts or something). I think I did read somewhere that the thing was pretty extensively rewritten, by the director in some cases. They probably only left a few clunker lines behind like "I can get you off..." out of some misplaced courtesey. This doesn't mean the unadulterated version would be any better. The whole premise is bone headed (what is it? 250 years further into the future and Ripley's dead? There's nothing left to connect with and we're just being jerked around space and time.)
What I can never understand is, with all this malleable identity and body horror stuff, how they didn't finally see the chance to bring Giger together with Cronenberg (edit: it's too obvious. I had to go look. Apparently they did offer it to him). It probably still wouldn't have been much of an Alien movie, but it'd be memorable that's for sure.
belboz on 3/8/2009 at 12:30
Giger refused to do another alien film after the first one, he did so much work for the first one, then only 5% of what he did, actually made it into the film. So he told the film company where to stick it.
nicked on 3/8/2009 at 12:34
Quote Posted by icemann
Buffy
Yeah except for the major plot holes and really dumb ideas that mean the whole show falls apart if you think about it too much. Like the mayor in season 3 - he does a ritual to turn into a demon. Before this happens, however, he is utterly
invincible for 100 days, that's over 3 months, and he does nothing. He sits around hoping no-one will figure out he's going to turn into a demon. If I was a supervillain with 100 days of invincibility, I'd sure as shit do something better than biding my time. I'd go to Buffy's house and tear her arms off for a start.
Also, if a new slayer is called when an old one dies, and Buffy died at the end of season 5, where was the new one?
Joss Whedon is a lazy hack who gets by because most of the general public
don't think about it too much.
Muzman on 3/8/2009 at 12:41
re: one up
That's true of all design jobs though, particularly those striving for originality. They got Jean Giraud in there as well and Chris Foss. The space suits look like Mobius, a bit. There's nothing of Foss's work in the film at all.
Giger had lots of fights with Fox over the years as they effectively tried to weasel credit away from him (and the writers) through incremental changes to things.
Matthew on 3/8/2009 at 12:48
Quote Posted by nicked
Also, if a new slayer is called when an old one dies, and Buffy died at the end of season 5, where was the new one?
Because Faith is technically the last in the line, so it would have to be her that was killed?
