Visual Media – Page 2 – LonelyMachines

Serenity is a go!

Well, the Firefly movie is on schedule for a release date next spring. The original cast are all on board. As usual, Harry Knowles claims to have a leaked first-draft script, and he quotes a very apropos and encouraging bit of dialogue:

Wash: Yeah well if she doesn’t give us some extra flow from the engine room to offset the burnthrough the landing is gonna get pretty interesting.

Mal: Define “interesting.”

Wash (calm suggestion): “Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die?”

Nice to see Whedon’s still got it. Incidentally, rumor has it he’s also working on an X-Men script.

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“We can’t die, because we are so very pretty.”

Well, the Firefly DVD’s out, and it was worth the wait. All the original episodes are here, as well as two others that weren’t shown. What’s nice is that they’re arranged in chronological order, rather than the shuffled mess that Fox chose to present them in.

In case you don’t know, Firefly was a great sci-fi/western show written by Joss Whedon (Buffy, etc). It received a lackluster push from Fox, and like the much-deserving-but-ultimately-slighted Futurama (which also received a great treatment on DVD), it ended up dying in relative obscurity. Despite this, the show had a fervent following, and fans were willing to wade through the pre-emptions and random schedulings to see it. When Firefly was cancelled, a large group even went so far as to take out a full-page ad in Variety to petition its reinstatement.

In the end, though, Fox just didn’t know what to do with it, and the show folded.

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Donnie Darko

After being bugged by my friends ad nauseam to watch this movie, I finally rented it the other night, and so far I’ve watched it twice, and I still haven’t unraveled the whole thing. It’s that good.

Basically, it’s an odd combination of American Beauty, Magnolia and 12 Monkeys. Yes, you read that right. It uses approaches from several different genres, but doesn’t neatly fit in any.

Donnie Darko is a troubled (possibly schizophrenic) teenager attending an upper-class Catholic school in upscale Fairfax. He comes from a nice Republican nuclear family. He’s in therapy. See where this is going? No, you don’t.

One night, Donnie is woken by the apparition of a shadowy character who resembles a death’s-head bunny rabbit. The rabbit informs him that the world will end in 28 days. While this is happening, a jet engine falls out of the sky and lands on Donnie’s house, falling directly into the bedroom where he should have been sleeping.

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Thoughts on Firefly

When I first heard about Firefly, all I could think was, “Hmmm…live-action Cowboy Bebop.” The set-ups are remarkably similar-so much so that most feedback from geek cognoscenti has cried rip-off at every turn. Add to that the fact that this show is written by the same guy who gave us Buffy, and you’ve got a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

Well, I’m relieved to say that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Fox has been willing to take quite a few risks over the years, especially with their prime-time lineup. Sometimes they’ve stumbled and quickly moved past such mistakes, and sometimes they give the right push to something that turns out to be not only brilliant but highly influential. Witness the success of The Simpsons or the X-Files.

They’re certainly taking a big risk here. Prime-time science fiction hasn’t done well since the original Star Trek run in the ’70’s.

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How the script for Episode II was really written

(2000, the offices of Lucasfilm. George Lucas, Lynn Hale, and Rick McCallum are meeting to discuss the script and details for Episode II)

George Lucas: Okay, so I want this one to be called “Jar Jar saves the Universe.” Now don’t freak out, I know the fans wanna see Annie, too, so we’ll throw him in, along with that short guy, whasshisname?

Rick McCallum: Yoda?

Lucas: Yeah, Yoda! The kids’ll love it!

McCallum: I don’t think this is the angle we want to go with…

Lucas: And why not?!? People love Jar Jar! You told me so!

Hale: Well, maybe, George, we were trying to avoid hurting your feelings, and…

Lucas: And what?

McCallum: Well, George, people don’t like Jar Jar. For many reasons.

Hale: Many.

Lucas: Name one!

(Lyn Hale pulls out a file labeled “Phantom Menace reviews.” George looks over it, aghast. He screams, and at one point, paces the room crying.

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Thoughts on Episode II

When I was eight years old, I sat in a movie theater while the closing credits for The Empire Strikes Back scrolled up on the screen, and I was pissed. Pissed that Han had been sold down the river, pissed that Luke had gotten the snot beaten out of him, and most of all, pissed that George Lucas expected me to wait three years to learn whether or not Vader was really Luke’s father. Back in 1980, that was one heck of a cliffhanger.

As Episode II ends, we’re left with no such anticipation, but more a sense of resignation, a quiet voice that says, so this is where it all goes wrong. We know the fate of the principals, and we’re just sticking it out to learn the exact details. And so, the prequel trilogy unfolds with all the suspense (and drama) of a history lesson.

Part of the problem lies in the storytelling, or lack thereof.

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