Firefly, Serenity, and the Mechanic
Completely by accident I wound up owning a copy of Serenity, a movie written and directed by Joss Whedon. (Hey, it was a two-for-one packaged with Chronicles of Riddick... was I going to say no?) Little did I know Joss Whedon had created a TV show called Firefly, and that the movie was the conclusion of its unfortunately short run of a single season. I won't go into any more of the history of Serenity, since that's already covered elsewhere on the Internet. Instead, here's my take on the movie:
I liked it!
I tend to be a little hard on SF movies, and have higher expectations than most Hollywood production crews are willing to come up with. I work in the science and technology field. When a writer can't get their basic science right, or picks a point of departure from established physics that's inappropriate or silly, it bugs me.
I was overjoyed to find this wasn't the case with Serenity. What's more, it was a SF movie in that the setting was futuristic, involved space travel, and had lots of action take place on board a space ship, but the movie was about the people, not the technology. Getting the characters right is equally important to getting the science right. All SF stories have points of departure from established science. That's par for the course. But people are people. Departing from that puts a screenwriter on dangerous ground indeed.
The characters in Serenity were wonderfully human. I've enjoyed Joss' writing in the past, and was an avid fan of Buffy and Angel when they were on the air. That same almost playful lightheartedness was apparent in the Serenity script, even during some of the darkest moments in the film. The very places where I'd tend to whistle in the dark where the times when the characters would come up with some almost poetic line to relieve their stress. It was great.
I won't make the blanket statement of "you must go see it!" since it depends on the viewer as much as how a novel is received depends on the reader. What's good for me may not be good for you. But if you like his other stuff, it's worth a look. I sure enjoyed myself.
In particular I really identified the character of Kaylee Frye, the mechanic. It's not often that these "below-deck" characters show up in SF stories. When they do I get my antenna up. A huge number of them wind up resembling Blish's character of Scotty (who by golly can change the laws of physics when necessary). It's refreshing to find one who doesn't speak with a thick brogue.
Kaylee is one such character. She's passionate about the machine, she takes things personally when it doesn't work or when someone makes snide comments about it, and she's uncommonly chipper and up-beat. She's also extremely human and earthy, and isn't cardboard by any means. In short she reminds me a lot of the people I work with. It's neat to see a mechanic portrayed this way. (I have to wonder what Joss Whedon did to come up with her character!)
I like it even more that her title is "mechanic" and not "engineer". Many of the engineers I've known have been good designers, even some of them good at fabrication. But only a handful could pick up a wrench and get down in the dirt. This is what a mechanic does by definition. A mechanic fixes the things that break, re-designs on the fly, often with whatever parts or tools are at hand, and by golly makes sure the thing works, no matter the odds. Kaylee is a mechanic.
One aspect I really enjoyed about Kaylee's character was that in addition to being a mechanic, she still got to be a girl. This is something few writers really pull off well, so it's nice to see. She would've been a flat character, otherwise. Thumbs up.
The only sad note to all this is that Firefly is still canceled, and the natural sequel to would be to continue the series. Ah well. You take what you can get. Thanks to everyone involved in Firefly and Serenity. What a fun ride.
-- Pencil
I liked it!
I tend to be a little hard on SF movies, and have higher expectations than most Hollywood production crews are willing to come up with. I work in the science and technology field. When a writer can't get their basic science right, or picks a point of departure from established physics that's inappropriate or silly, it bugs me.
I was overjoyed to find this wasn't the case with Serenity. What's more, it was a SF movie in that the setting was futuristic, involved space travel, and had lots of action take place on board a space ship, but the movie was about the people, not the technology. Getting the characters right is equally important to getting the science right. All SF stories have points of departure from established science. That's par for the course. But people are people. Departing from that puts a screenwriter on dangerous ground indeed.
The characters in Serenity were wonderfully human. I've enjoyed Joss' writing in the past, and was an avid fan of Buffy and Angel when they were on the air. That same almost playful lightheartedness was apparent in the Serenity script, even during some of the darkest moments in the film. The very places where I'd tend to whistle in the dark where the times when the characters would come up with some almost poetic line to relieve their stress. It was great.
I won't make the blanket statement of "you must go see it!" since it depends on the viewer as much as how a novel is received depends on the reader. What's good for me may not be good for you. But if you like his other stuff, it's worth a look. I sure enjoyed myself.
In particular I really identified the character of Kaylee Frye, the mechanic. It's not often that these "below-deck" characters show up in SF stories. When they do I get my antenna up. A huge number of them wind up resembling Blish's character of Scotty (who by golly can change the laws of physics when necessary). It's refreshing to find one who doesn't speak with a thick brogue.
Kaylee is one such character. She's passionate about the machine, she takes things personally when it doesn't work or when someone makes snide comments about it, and she's uncommonly chipper and up-beat. She's also extremely human and earthy, and isn't cardboard by any means. In short she reminds me a lot of the people I work with. It's neat to see a mechanic portrayed this way. (I have to wonder what Joss Whedon did to come up with her character!)
I like it even more that her title is "mechanic" and not "engineer". Many of the engineers I've known have been good designers, even some of them good at fabrication. But only a handful could pick up a wrench and get down in the dirt. This is what a mechanic does by definition. A mechanic fixes the things that break, re-designs on the fly, often with whatever parts or tools are at hand, and by golly makes sure the thing works, no matter the odds. Kaylee is a mechanic.
One aspect I really enjoyed about Kaylee's character was that in addition to being a mechanic, she still got to be a girl. This is something few writers really pull off well, so it's nice to see. She would've been a flat character, otherwise. Thumbs up.
The only sad note to all this is that Firefly is still canceled, and the natural sequel to would be to continue the series. Ah well. You take what you can get. Thanks to everyone involved in Firefly and Serenity. What a fun ride.
-- Pencil
posted by pencil at 2:41 PM
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