I think this’ll be my last instalment of Serenity Lost.  Sadly, I’m no closer to knowing why Serenity wasn’t a hit. 

If any of you out there can tell me, please let me know.  I mean, look at how much money Indy made, and outside of a bit of nostalgic charm, it wasn’t very good.

If you’re looking for more criticisms of the movie/tv show, there’s a pretty good thread over at Fireflyfans.net.  I especially like the post where someone draws attention to the plot/script problems in “the Message.”  It was like a Harry Potter book.  One three second conversation would have solved everything.

If you’re looking for answers, I just haven’t got any.  Best I can do is join in with your fist shaking at the skies (“Shake harder, boy!”).

Fillion jokes that he’s stolen a lot from Harrison Ford. The truth is, Harrison’s renown skill to seem like he’s getting the absolute crap kicked out of him only works in a good script (like the original Raiders and a couple of Jack Ryan movies). When it’s used in a campy setting it’s hard to sell. In Serenity, Joss made sure there was no doubt of the seriousness and danger in the script, and because of that, Fillion shone like Indy under a flying wing. There are few things better than a hero who can take a beating, and Mal can certainly do that. Because of his love for the setting, character, and people he was working with, Fillion threw himself into the fight scenes in Serenity. In some ways, it’s unfortunate that they aren’t overshadowed by Summer Glau’s fighting performance. That girl trained for months and provided Joss with skills any director would kill for an actor to have. Still, Fillion bounced his face on purpose so often it swelled up like… well, like a guy’s face if you bash it against plexi-glass enough, and for better or for worse that kind of performance often steals the show.

The point is that the physical dedication and talent of those two in Serenity made for a sci-fi adventure that draws the viewer in and is far more impressionable than Christopher Lee waving his arms around mixed with an obvious double and the epileptic frog that Frank Oz’s masterpiece had been reduced to.

Sorry, I kinda went off there.

At the end of the commentary on the Serenity Special Edition, Adam Baldwin said something to the effect of them having done their best, but that you can’t control the audience. I don’t think I got that quite right. Go listen to the commentary if you wanna check, but you probably get the idea.

As I’ve said, after repeated viewings, I’ve more than warmed up to Serenity. Whether you agree with it or not, Whedon gave a boatload of thought to every inch of that script, and (despite unwarranted criticisms) did a very skilled and deliberate job of directing. The actors gave their all, and it really came across. Still, it failed to strike a chord with audiences. 

Now let’s face facts.  When you say “audiences” you more or less mean “American audiences.”  Worldwide sales are a feather in your cap, but the U.S. is where a film makes its real cash. So, that means that Serenity failed to connect with the American people. It’s easy to lose track of what that means sometimes. A lot of what you see or hear paints an “enlightened” opinion. You get the impression that the Bush administration is the worst thing to ever happen to the States, reality TV is the root of all evil, musicians are graded on their skill, and well crafted and creative movies are the industry’s goal.     

It’s very easy for a guy like me to buy into that and accept it as popular opinion. The problem is that this opinion represents a very small and vocal percentage of the population. Politics, culture, and industry are driven by the masses. Like it or not, these masses are the true American people, and if you take a step back you get a clear picture of what that means.  More people have repeatedly voted for Bush than those who voted against him, which means he actually represents the nation’s values and beliefs. Reality TV continues to grow in popularity and eats up the air time of traditional shows. To bring it all back on topic, why not surf one of the movie sites that list how much movies brought in, and get a look at the long list of films that have done significantly better than Serenity.    

Welcome to the world of the real. Placing the blame for Serenity’s failure on the shoulders of Whedon and the crew is like blaming Greenpeace for dead whales.

So, Whedon got his movie after Firefly was cancelled, but Serenity failed to reach its $80 million target to get a sequel. What happened? I’m gonna bounce back and forth on comic strip days between what I think worked and what didn’t.

It’s safe to say that I was a total Browncoat fanboy. I made a fanfilm and flew down to Atlanta to show it off.  However, after watching Serenity in the theatre, I lost interest for about a year. After eventual repeated viewings, I learned to accept that Serenity is a pretty sound movie which has lured me back. At the time, I can remember that it was the wholesale character slaughter that turned me off. I’d never watched Buffy or Angel and hadn’t been exposed to that particular storytelling technique of Whedon’s. While the fanboy in me was disappointed to see characters I loved die, that wasn’t what turned me off.  

What originally sealed the deal on being a Browncoat for me was the camaraderie and sense of family between not just the characters, but the actors as well.  You can’t watch a bonus feature off any of the discs without realizing how close the cast and crew were.  You have to assume how rare something personal like that is in the soulless corporate greed machine that is Hollywood. When the TV show was cancelled, they were all devastated. You could feel it. The button that Tudyk sent Joss is one of the most touching industry stories I’ve ever heard (go watch the TV commentaries if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Whether I agree with them or not, I think I understand all of the reasons why Whedon killed off Book and Wash.  It’s sometimes hard to see the subtitles when you get the explanations given to fans. What bothered me the most, and pulled me right out of the story at the time, was that he did it to the actors. With sequels being a clear goal, to remove Tudyk and Glass from the ride felt like excluding immediate family from Christmas. Sure actors like a good death scene, but it seemed like this bunch truly loved working together in this world Joss had made. To me, that personal connection should be more important than anything, including the pile of cash a studio hands you and even the fans you’re trying to please (as unprofessional as that may seem). The odds of Whedon gathering such a family again are exceedingly unlikely. To break that once in a lifetime family up for what was questionably the good of the story just felt horribly wrong.

Any other criticisms I might have pale in comparison, probably because the rest are more cerebral than heartfelt.