nickbarnes (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nickbarnes) wrote,@ 2009-04-30 12:13:00 |
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Firefly and Serenity
How grumpy am I allowed to be about SF on TV and in the movies, after having stayed up late catching up on the end of Firefly and then watching Serenity?
Pros:
- fun characters;
- snappy script, sometimes very funny and/or insightful;
- some interesting new takes on old stories;
- shiny shiny effects. See the shiny. Lick the shiny;
- (Serenity) lovely lovely lighting and camera work, (maybe a bit too much glow filter);
- hot cast. Where do I sign up to crew this ship? Man.
Cons [ETA: these are, for me, outweighed by the pros, but still]:
- absolutely no sense of scale whatsoever, drives me completely nuts; slightly better in Serenity than Firefly but still. A planet is considerably larger than a village. It's even larger than the drive down to Starbucks. It's likely to have more than a few dozen people living on it, more than one marketplace, more than one port, more than one sleazy bar. Oddly enough, a solar system is very much larger than a planet, and a galaxy is way way bigger than a solar system. To get around one of these places in any reasonable timescale requires you to be going rather a lot quicker than, say, a jet plane. Stupid stupid writers with their crappy liberal-arts degrees and their teeny tiny imaginations.
- also, space does in fact have three dimensions, and is near-as-damnit completely empty. When travelling from A to B, you are considerably more likely to win the interplanetary lottery, even though it's rigged by the Federation, than you are to accidentally bump into something, or somebody. Especially if it's somebody or something you are trying to avoid. These writers failed arithmetic as well as physics.
- no effort to rationalize the different technology levels. Spaceships versus horses. This can be done in several different and interesting ways, none of which have, I think, ever been done on TV or in the movies. They're just not trying.
- some very very stupid plots. Off the top of my head: Someone is smuggling fancy-pants organs from A to B inside his body. At B, his own organs will be put back in. So how exactly are his own organs being transported from A to B? At least the plot of Serenity was better.
In short: if you wanted to make Little House on the Prairie, make goddamn Little House on the Prairie. If you're going to bother making SF, please put in a little bit of effort and make some actual SF. And hire at least one writer who can count past 10 without taking off his or her shoes.
How grumpy am I allowed to be about SF on TV and in the movies, after having stayed up late catching up on the end of Firefly and then watching Serenity?
Pros:
- fun characters;
- snappy script, sometimes very funny and/or insightful;
- some interesting new takes on old stories;
- shiny shiny effects. See the shiny. Lick the shiny;
- (Serenity) lovely lovely lighting and camera work, (maybe a bit too much glow filter);
- hot cast. Where do I sign up to crew this ship? Man.
Cons [ETA: these are, for me, outweighed by the pros, but still]:
- absolutely no sense of scale whatsoever, drives me completely nuts; slightly better in Serenity than Firefly but still. A planet is considerably larger than a village. It's even larger than the drive down to Starbucks. It's likely to have more than a few dozen people living on it, more than one marketplace, more than one port, more than one sleazy bar. Oddly enough, a solar system is very much larger than a planet, and a galaxy is way way bigger than a solar system. To get around one of these places in any reasonable timescale requires you to be going rather a lot quicker than, say, a jet plane. Stupid stupid writers with their crappy liberal-arts degrees and their teeny tiny imaginations.
- also, space does in fact have three dimensions, and is near-as-damnit completely empty. When travelling from A to B, you are considerably more likely to win the interplanetary lottery, even though it's rigged by the Federation, than you are to accidentally bump into something, or somebody. Especially if it's somebody or something you are trying to avoid. These writers failed arithmetic as well as physics.
- no effort to rationalize the different technology levels. Spaceships versus horses. This can be done in several different and interesting ways, none of which have, I think, ever been done on TV or in the movies. They're just not trying.
- some very very stupid plots. Off the top of my head: Someone is smuggling fancy-pants organs from A to B inside his body. At B, his own organs will be put back in. So how exactly are his own organs being transported from A to B? At least the plot of Serenity was better.
In short: if you wanted to make Little House on the Prairie, make goddamn Little House on the Prairie. If you're going to bother making SF, please put in a little bit of effort and make some actual SF. And hire at least one writer who can count past 10 without taking off his or her shoes.
