Serenity Trounces Star Wars ?! April 3, 2007
Posted by showmescifi in firefly, scifi, serenity, serentiy, Star Wars.trackback
There is no question that Firefly and the Serenity movie are great works of pop SciFi.
BUT..are they better than Star Wars?
Apparently that’s what readers of SFX voted in a recent poll.
At first I thought the poll was some kind of April fools joke..turns out it’s just SFX that is the fool.
Star Wars is the greatest SciFi enterprise of all time period. While others can be extremely good nothing yet produced in the history of the planet earth is better. PERIOD. Nuff Said.
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Show Me SciFi 
If George had left the first three films alone, and not made the prequels, I’d have been right there agreeing with you.
Sadly, our childhood memories have been cruelly pooped-upon by CGI overkill, bland writing and grating characters, and having Serenity make the top of the list is a fitting punishment. (Empire Strikes Back is better than SW, anyway)
Firefly/Serenity is sublime viewing and deserves every accolade it gets.
I (mostly) agree that Firefly/Serenity is sublime viewing and deserves every accolade it gets. It was a show that was canceled too soon and a movie that wasn’t properly marketed.
It doesn’t look likely that Joss Whedon will get Firefly back on TV anytime soon…but we can always keep our fingers crossed for direct to DVD right?
Hahaha. ‘Mostly’ is fine with me. 🙂 I have all sorts of body parts crossed that Firefly will return.in some form, but with Jewel Staite (Kaylee) now earning her keep in Stargate Atlantis, this seems unlkely. (Also, Fox being the ultra-right wing organisation they are might not want a thinly veiled civil war pastiche returning in ANY form).
However, I’m sure I read recently that we have more Firefly comic goodness coming from Joss in the near future, in a very similar vein to Buffy – Season 8. Worth looking out for.
PS: When are the Babylon 5 direct-to-DVd’s out?!?!
July 24, 2007 ..so not too long a wait
Episodes 4, 5, and 6 are definitely a greater class of SciFi than Serenity was (epic story, easy to identify with), however Firefly by far was better than Episodes 1, 2, and 3. Both shows/movies benefited from great special effects and actors to become SciFi cults. However, they are also two separate genres. I wish Fox hadn’t screwed over Firefly as much as they did. I was waiting to see the further development of Badger and Monty. 😦 Oh well, maybe . . . just maybe . . . Firefly will return.
I am a huge StarWars fan, let me restate.. HUGE… I study the stories as a model of storyteller (as I am an aspiring author). I think that StarWars is an excellend example of Campbellian storytelling (Hero’s Journey type stuff, archetypes and mythic adventure, that kinda jazz). But where I come in on this argument comes from a basic assumption of mine…
STAR WARS IS NOT SCI-FI.
Star Trek is.. Star Wars NOT. Star Wars is SPACE FANTASY. There is very little science in Star Wars, much spirituality and mysticism, much high adventure, many strange creatures. But almost no attention is paid to scientific accuracy or even plausibility.. which, lets face it, is half of what makes sci-fi sci-fi.. without it you just have the fi.
StarWars is closer in genre to Lord of the Rings than it is to StarTrek or Babylon 5 etc.
So on the argument of Serenity vs StarWars, which is better SCI-FI.. I would say Serenity. And I am a huge fan of Serenity too… but StarWars is directly responsible for the creation of Serenity and Firefly so I would never say that it is just plain better than StarWars.
In an interview with Joss Whedon about the origins of Firely he said something like: “I was watching a documentary on the Civil War, and that got me thinking about the Millenium Falcon… because most things do.”
Now I will agree that there was a certain something lacking from the newest StarWars movies… that being a certain Han Solo-esque space piracy and bad boy sarcasm/humor. Serenity has this in spades… but lacks a great deal of the spiritual side of StarWars and high adventure that makes it truly epic.
Personally, my ideal would be somewhere in the middle of Serenity and Star Wars.
(I am a big enough geek that I run a StarWars tabletop RPG. It takes place in the Legacy era and I inject a great deal of Serenity inspired elements into it to try to create this feel.. but to be fair, those Serenity inspired elements were first inspired by StarWars.)
-E
[“If George had left the first three films alone, and not made the prequels, I’d have been right there agreeing with you.”]
Frankly, I think the Prequel Trilogy is slightly better than the Original Trilogy. But I love them both. I’ve never seen SERENITY, but I have seen FIREFLY. I didn’t see the magic. It simply didn’t thrill me.
[]”Now I will agree that there was a certain something lacking from the newest StarWars movies… that being a certain Han Solo-esque space piracy and bad boy sarcasm/humor.”]
In other words, you wanted the Prequel Trilogy to be some kind of remake of the Original Trilogy, but with new names? Is that it?
The Prequel Trilogy DIDN’T NEED a certain Han Solo-eseque character with a bad boy sarcasm. It was a different type of story.
Star Wars is the BEST Sci-Fi Experience any has ever seen! George Lucas has a mind of a genius to create such a world that no one has ever even imangined!