Great article - but this did catch my eye: "Kaylee is aggressively sexual " - WTF? That would not be the way that I would describe Kaylee, [SPOILER] not even including the blast door battle scene in Serenity where Kaylee "rediscovers" her motivation to fight!

catalyst2 | September 22, 10:19 CET

Sorry, but there is a spoiler down in the presentation of characters.

onesnailshort | September 22, 10:20 CET

I've added a tag and heads up. I wish they'd make their minds up about how many copies the DVD has sold. I've seen 200,000, 1 million and even 2 million copies mentioned in various articles.

Simon | September 22, 10:27 CET

Nielson will sell you the DVD figures, for those who don't know - for $200.

gossi | September 22, 13:21 CET

Um, gossi... are you sure about that?

Assuming you mean Nielsen Media Research / ACNielsen.com, I know they track TV ratings, but I'm not aware that they track DVD sales.

However, Adams Media Research does provide data on DVD shipments and gross sales (and sells reports on any individual DVD title for a mere $75) - though only estimates, since the studios make it a policy to not release actual figures (generally).

It occurs to me that Whedonesque could take up a collection (i.e. via PayPal). Surely there are 75 among us who'd pitch in a buck to get an authoritative answer to the Firefly DVD sales mystery.

Robogeek | September 22, 14:16 CET

I'm reasonably sure - there's a specific division of Nielsen who've offered out the figures. Somebody actually posted their email on the US browncoat site about a month ago.

gossi | September 22, 14:34 CET

This is fantastic exposure for Serenity...USA Today has the largest circulation of American daily papers--over 2.1 million. An article like this, so favorable and promising, can only boost attendance.

Chris inVirginia | September 22, 18:36 CET

Kaylee as sexually aggresive! I hardly think thats an accurate description. Sexually frustrated maybe! After all she "hasnt had anything near to her nether regions that wasnt battery operated in a year" Or something along those lines! And catalyst2, the moment you just descibed had the whole audience bursting into laughter! One of the best moments in the movie And it feels great that one of those 500,000 copies sold was mine :) The way I see it, with the release of 'Serenity' the numbers can only go up.

Apocalypse | September 22, 19:09 CET

re the Kaylee line: I think the answer is that if a woman, such as Kaylee, demonstrates that she, like wow, *enjoys sex*, she will be labelled "agressive," "brazen," and (enter your own adjective here) by the moral majority . . . I'd also venture to say that Zoe (and Wash) are not considered "aggressively sexual" - even though they're leading each other off to the bed half the time -because, well, they're married.

SoddingNancyTribe | September 22, 20:43 CET

It seems that they just pick up that number from previous articles rather than do any research themselves. Reporters, especially entertainment reporters always seem to make the assumption that if newspaper/magazine prints a fact, that they must have checked it somewhere and it's correct.

Start writing articles online saying that Firefly has sold 5 million copies and I wouldn't be surprised if over time that number starts poping up in big media articles.

It has been mentioned in some articles that the 200,000 units sold was in the first 6 months, which if true I would imagine that sales would by now be at the 1 million range or higher.

Matt_Fabb | September 22, 21:59 CET

It has been mentioned in some articles that the 200,000 units sold was in the first 6 months, which if true I would imagine that sales would by now be at the 1 million range or higher.

I would concur with that assessment. Firefly has spent (A lot) more time in the Top10 at Amazon the last three months than it did the first six. I don't know how those numbers translate into sales, but it has to be good.

SpookyRiverFan | September 22, 22:15 CET

Re: Kaylee. I brought a Firefly virgin to the first screening I attended, and had the expectation that even though she's a Merchant-Ivory lover, she is also a feminist and would likely find all three women immensely appealing and inspiring in their own ways. Instead, when the crew were discussing triggers, and Kaylee said "I don't understand," my normally kind and mild-mannered friend blurted out, "that's because you're stupid." And in a post-screening recap, she said Kaylee was her least favorite, because she was so dumb and was embarassingly focused on getting herself a shag.

Made me realize that the characters with the least screen time do really suffer from lack of familiarity with the series. I watched Kaylee carefully the next time around, trying to clear my mind of what I knew of our delightfully innocent and saucy mechanic, and though it pained me admit it, I could sorta see what my friend saw...

eta: "Firefly" virgin in the first sentence, to avoid a confusion about the type of virginity involved

[ edited by barest_smidgen on 2005-09-22 22:42 ]

barest_smidgen | September 23, 00:41 CET

I can't speak for the movie, since I haven't seen it, but I never found Kaylee to be sexually aggressive. I thought she was refreshingly open and healthy in her sexual attitudes.

I loved that she broke the mould of "bad girls do and good girls don't" that tv and films still cling to, like it's the last cold beer at a frat party. At first I didn't like her very much because I found her to be aggressively cheerful, but her casual attitude to Inara's profession and her "relationship" with Bester, to get close to his engine, really endeared both her and the show to me.

She's the "good girl that does, just because she likes to" and I think that's probably my favourite thing about her character.

[ edited by aeval on 2005-09-23 01:25 ]

aeval | September 23, 03:20 CET