Saturday, October 01, 2005

This is a continuation of the blog from last night. Josh Wheldon may have given Sci-Fi a much needed change of direction. For too long sci-fi has been in the hands of the Star Trek franchise and the visions of Lucas and Speilberg. All of them have seemed to become devoid of ideas and quite frankly has grown tired. George Lucas probably destroyed the Star Wars series with the prequel which started poorly and never improved and Speilberg seems to want to rehash old stories and hasn't added to the equation.

Sci-Fi has had some nice additions, one thinks back to the Babylon 5 series and realize things can be good. Now Josh gives us a movie that improves both sci-fi and the westren in one deft well written movie. Certainly this is not new, since the same characteristics were obvious in the series Firefly. When I first heard about it I was sceptical, a western based in Outer Space, but with great acting and fantastic writing the series was wonderful.

Now the movie, I discovered the hope is that a trilogy will emerge from this first movie. I think it will, I also believe that if Serenity doesn't do well the first week not to worry, it will get stronger as the weeks go on. Word of mouth will drive people to see it and those who see it will go again and again. In many ways this is the New Matrix. If you remember the first Matrix and certainly the best of the three came under everyone's radar. After all it came out the same year as the first Star Wars movie and yet the Matrix got stronger while SW fan could spew enough venom and hatred towards Jar-Jar Binks. The vision of the Matrix would seem to have only appealed to the hardcore cyberpunk and yet it had a message which got into people. However then came 2 and 3, which although good movies, except for that rave scene in the cave, never could capture the essence of the first. Let's hope that same problem doesn't ruin the start of the potential trilogy. Keep the spirit of Firefly alive in the next two and this may be the best sci-fi movie trilogy of all time.

After saying all this, let me repeat, You will see Serenity and you will see it again. You will also buy Firefly the complete series on DVD and then when the movie comes out you will buy that DVD. Trust me you will.

No comments: