Ahem. Anyhow so River and the Reavers are what I think will feature predominantly in the movie. Be interesting to see if there was a connection.

For a while I thought Joss was turning into Captain Ahab over continuing the Firefly story but he's proved me wrong.

Simon | September 09, 01:02 CET

Just once I'd like to see a film that captures the soundlessness of space. A visual explosion very close to the ship, seen from INSIDE the bough of the ship through a viewscreen or a reinforced transparent portal, and it's completely silent, but you see the shockwave visually coming towards the ship and then suddenly you *feel* it and hear it as an audience member, along with the crew. That's what Whedon could do with the movie. That'd prove Firefly always belonged on the silver screen. Joss'll pull it off. It's possible to use music to substitute sound effects, so that the audience & the director are communicating: "yeah I know there's no sound in space so here's an orchestral soundscape to give it some depth and character for ya." The work of Bernard Hermann in Hitchcock's film came heavily into play when it came to stuff like that. The birds were both the music and the sound. Whedon's got the choppers. From Hush to OMWF, everything he's done the past decade or so has been building up to Firefly the Flick. It's gonna be great.

[ edited by ZachsMind on 2003-09-09 00:39 ]

ZachsMind | September 09, 02:39 CET

One of the things I loved about Firefly was that space was silent. No sound, no background music, just utter silence. No music can capture the eerie awesome emptiness of space; music over space shots is just humans trying to bring human-being into the Void, where it can't exist. Firefly made space awesome. There was a shot in the middle of Bushwhacked that was one of the grandest things I've ever seen on tv - two characters are hiding from the Feds on the outside of the ship, and you see their faces inside their helmets, and the camera pulls back to show their tiny forms clinging to the hull of the ship, and further back to show how tiny Serenity was in comparison to the Fed ship, and further back until the humans and the ships were lost in the black emptiness between the stars. Just - awesome.

zencat | September 09, 03:52 CET

I love the no sound in space, it was brilliant. Though big picture people ... if you have to compromise on something, to 'keep flying' I say as long as 'its heart' is still intact.

Did he say he was still looking for a home for Firefly? Does that mean T.V. ? I mean the movie comes first, and that's all cool and whatnot, but Firefly relauched as a T.V. series is my 'couch-potato-dream-come-true'.

ascii_102_117 | September 09, 04:05 CET

"Firefly the Flick" -- I love it!! We can call it ...

wait for it ...


Flickerfly!!!



Oooh. Now that's almost kinda deep. Because think about it: here the show was supposed to be a roaring fire 'n all, but all it ever got to do was *flicker*.

Wow. I'll be in my bunk. Pondering. Hmmmm.

(Oh, and by the way, it's a good job the movie's getting made because I was starting to go a little Ahab myself!)

melsta | September 09, 04:33 CET

My partner and I were watching the commentary track on the Babylon 5 episode "Signs and Portents" tonight. JMS speaks therein of circumstances under which sound might be present in space (in the evacuating air of a just-destroyed ship, for example). I got his meaning, but I thought space shouldn't have ambient sound for reasons other than the logistical.

There's a powerful battle scene in Akira Kurosawa's Ran. We hear no battle noises. There's music, but otherwise no sound is present. Pretty much all you can do is focus on visuals and fill in your own sickening blanks as individual soldiers, then innocents, die in gruesome ways. It's the most powerful scene of war I've ever watched.

When JMS finally got round to In The Beginning, there's a space battle evocative of that scene from Ran. A pale shadow, but not dissimilar, and certainly forceful in its own right.

I've never seen Firefly TV (waiting on DVDs; that's my excuse). I want it to be like this.

weds | September 09, 05:22 CET

I only caught two or three episodes of Firefly in it's tv run, and both times the characters were on a planet. So I don't recall the silent space thing, but if Whedon was already doing that, then "Flickerfly" will be the greatest science fiction film since Clarke & Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. Which means it'll surpass Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, and The Matrix. Not necessarily in being more flashy, but in what it will do to the heart when you watch it. Whedon has said what he wants to do is invade our dreams. Not that his past work hasn't already done that, but Firefly the movie has the potential to do that for generations to come in a way that television series don't quite have. I'm revved.

ZachsMind | September 09, 05:46 CET

My dream is that Joss will come in and show all the current hot shot genre directors how it's REALLY done. "Minority Report was pretty cool, and I liked the first Matrix ... but MAN have you seen Firefly?!? Best ... movie ... ever!!!" OK, maybe it's a LITTLE early to be making these predictions, but I have faith in Joss ...

And since you brought it up ZachsMind, I think that the greatest science fiction movie of all time is Night of the Living Dead. Sure, the science is ridiculous, but its relentless, uncompromising portrayal of a world utterly changed seems to me to have its roots in s.f., and few films have shaken me to my very core the way this one did.

bobothebrave | September 09, 06:38 CET

Don't get me wrong in what I'm about to say. Night of the Living Dead is one of my top twenty favorite films of all time. Expertly crafted, and far ahead of its time. However, NotLD is a horror thriller, with a twinge of scifi, but it's no more or less scifi than BtVS is, or over half the crap the SciFi channel was spewing before I gave up on cable television altogether. When Joss joked recently about how SciFi Channel would turn down Firefly cuz it's too scifi? That's funny cuz it's so true. If NotLD passes for scifi, it's on a technicality, because technobabble is used to explain away why the dead is animated. However, its primary thrust is that of a thriller, with strong horror overtones, and the scifi is there kinda like paprika or a leaf of basil, to give the taste some depth.

ZachsMind | September 09, 17:29 CET

Okay, I'm relatively new and this is my first comment. :) Anyway, if Joss stuck with the no sound in space I would see the movie just for that alone. That has always driven me crazy about science fiction shows - I scream at the TV "THERE'S NO SOUND!!!" *ahem*

I have wanted to see Firefly but I have never had the chance. So I look forward to renting the dvds when they come out and per chance buying them... and seeing the movie. :)

lyn | September 10, 03:19 CET