Firefly bores me...

[Piratecat]

I take it back about disagreeing with you on every movie.

Thanks for the quick answer, everyone. I really appreciate it, although the only thing I've concluded for sure is that tastes differ.

 

[drnuncheon]

Keep in mind, I've only seen the first disc of Firefly - the rest are on the Netflix queue.

You're right, the characters are "cliches" at first, although a better term would be "archetypes". That's something Whedon does deliberately, I think, because it happened in the beginning of Buffy as well. (Willow was the "nerd", Cordelia the "stuck up socialite", Xander the "clown") It lets you get a quick grip on the characters so you can get right into the show. But they don't stay cliches - he develops them into real people as the show goes on. Cordy's greatly changed and becomes a much more developed character by the time she leaves Buffy, and changes even more during Angel. I'm betting the same happens on Firefly.

I mean, really, he's got to introduce what, 9 or 10 characters, and their personal subplots and the main plots of the episodes (which also need to be resolved). You just can't do that in 3 hours, or 6 hours. I could reduce the LOTR characters to one-line "cliches" if I wanted to, and they had what, 10+ hours with the Extended Edition?

J

 

[JoeGKushner]

Another thing that bothered me was the fake swearing. Either do it and bleep it or leave it alone. That just seemed fake and added for a little 'attitude' and it didn't take with me.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Another thing that bothered me was the fake swearing. Either do it and bleep it or leave it alone. That just seemed fake and added for a little 'attitude' and it didn't take with me.

I thought they were swearing in Mandarin? Then again, it could be babble disguised as Mandarin for all I know.

 

[mojo1701]

To combine the two is fundamentally flawed, in my opinion.

*cough*Wild Wild West*cough*

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I'm curious: people who didn't care for Firefly, how do you feel about old westerns like Sergio Leone movies? I'm wondering if there's a connection with folks who have exposure and a fondness for the genre.

Myself, I love westerns- many of them. Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns are my favorites, though I do like some of the 'classics' of the genre, such as 'High Noon', 'The Searchers', and several others. There are a lot of westerns I don't like, though. To me, it isn't about being a western, so much as the stories and characters.

For example, while I liked the "Train Job" (the first aired episode of Firefly), I didn't love it, and only continued to watch the series because I had such high hopes for it. A couple of the episodes were "meh" to me (like "Jaynestown" on first viewing), but as the series progressed, it became that much more enjoyable to me- because of what was going on with the series- the character development, the developing storyline, etc. My favorite episode, "Out of Gas" isn't really a western at all. It's not exactly sci-fi, either- it's just a good story.

In short, I guess what I'm saying is that there is probably a pretty high correspondence between "western" lovers and "firefly" lovers, though I don't know if you could point to that as the "defining" quality that makes people love or hate firefly.

 

[Chun-tzu]

I'm curious: people who didn't care for Firefly, how do you feel about old westerns like Sergio Leone movies? I'm wondering if there's a connection with folks who have exposure and a fondness for the genre.

I never used to care for Westerns as a genre. Seen a few Western movies, but none that ranked as favorites. I've since become much more open to the Western, after 3 things:

1. Firefly - The Western elements worked for me.
2. Blaze of Glory #1-4 - 4-part comic book mini-series written by John Ostrander starring Marvel's Western heroes. This story was fantastic.
3. The Magnificent Seven - which I watched since it was based on Seven Samurai

So, I got interested in the Western from my exposure through sci-fi, comics, and samurai movies.

John Ostrander said something interesting once (in an interview or a foreword) about how the Western genre is far from dead, but that it's been co-opted by other genres. For example, "exploring the new frontier" is now sci-fi, although it came from Westerns.

 

[Elf Witch]

Both my roommate and I really like Firefly and are eagerly waiting for the movie. As for liking westerns I grew up on them especially the TV westerns and to this day I still enjoy reruns of The Big Valley, High Chapparal, Lancer and some of the more modern ones like Paradise and Lonsome Dove.

My roommate does not like westerns other than Alias Smith and Jones and Wild Wild West. She is far more picking than I am when it comes to Sf as well she likes DS9 and Farscape, TOS, Babylon 5 before Sheridan came in. I like almost everything.

So I don't know what this says about why we like Firefly so much.

I liked because it was different not your clean SF show. I liked the low tech things could break down any minute feel of the show. And I liked the characters and I knew from watching Buffy and Angel that we were just starting to scratch the surface with these guys.

 

[Rackhir]

I fall into the "Eh..." group. I haven't exactly seen the entire series, but the 3-4 episodes I have seen never impressed me though most of my friends seem to worship the show.

 

[Piratecat]

*cough*Wild Wild West*cough*

Like he said, fundamentally flawed.

They're swearing in Chinese, incidentally... pretty good swears as well.