Firefly: Still Flying

In what was both a blessing and a curse, I was made aware of the Firefly/Serenity scene after all was said and done. Firefly was already canceled and Serenity was already on DVD after a terrible run in theaters. The thing of it was, I remember both the movie and the show when they came out, and I remember specifically not wanting to watch either of them for one reason: I really did not like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. And if you watched the trailers for either, that's always how it was billed.

"From the creator of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel comes..."

Why the hell would I watch something like that? How the hell was I supposed to know that what I was missing out on was a revolution in sci-fi storytelling (prepare for more hyperbole as the article continues)? How was I...I mean, come on...I...

I DIDN'T KNOOOOOW!

/cries

I say "blessing" because, on a whim, I watched Serenity on DVD and fell in love with it. After doing a bit of research, I found that the Firefly DVDs were available for purchase, and I got them on sale at Wal-Mart for $14.99! That's the deal of the century! I watched the episodes, one after the other, and followed them up with the movie only to find...nothing. There was nothing else. It was like a cruel joke. How could a series so clever, so smart, so downright emotional at times be tossed out into a pile with all those other shows that Peter Griffin listed when Family Guy returned to Fox?

Not only that, but knowing that Serenity was to be the first movie in a proposed trilogy was heartbreaking. Because the movie was just barely able to make enough money to recoup its losses, that trilogy was canceled as well.

=(

Years went on...seasons changed (?)...and more Firefly works were eventually released. Two comic series were churned out by Joss Whedon, both of them on the meh side of things. We got a special edition of Serenity and a newly released book of interviews, production sketches, and short stories by the Firefly writers called Firefly: Still Flyin'. It was always my hope that, someday, a studio would pick up the rights for the show and we'd get AT LEAST one more movie or TV special or...I dunno...something. But as time went by, and I hear of everything that might have happened if the story had continued...I'm wondering if we Browncoats got lucky.

Very few shows are perfect. The fourteen episodes of Firefly are perfect. Chances are, if it had gone on, it would not have been the case. As evidenced by Angel and Buffy, Joss Whedon's shows have a tendency to go off on wild-ass tangents. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not so sure how it would have worked in Firefly. You might remember Bad Horse from Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog, yeah that was actually a reference to a storyline that Joss had thought up for Firefly concerning mutant animals. Yeah.

Also (and it remains to be seen if this is canon) but in the book I mentioned, Still Flyin', Jayne is actually killed off. Yeah. And not in a particularly heroic sense, either. More in the he-got-drunk-and-accidentally-shot-himself sense. Eh.

Firefly worked so well because the characters had marvelous balance. You knew them. It was easy to know them, and peeling back the layers was the best thing about the show. It's what Lost would eventually become. To have three main characters just wiped out like that was just...I don't know. I'm all for main characters getting killed. I know stuff like that's gonna happen, especially if Joss is behind it. But...I keep thinking about how Wash died...getting randomly impaled by Reavers that somehow snuck into that hangar...somehow. It was like that fucking t-rex from Jurassic Park at the end of the movie: how the hell did that thing get into the building?! It's not the noble end to a character that I loved. Wash deserved better. Book, for that matter, deserved better...or they could have at least expanded his story before they did him in. Instead of pulling this during Serenity:

"You're gonna have to tell me all about that crazy backstory of yours, Shepherd."
"No, I don't..."
And Mal just looks at him like he's gone crazy. That's obvious foreshadowing if I ever saw it. Gawd.

It's like every death on that show was trying to compete with Admiral James T. Kirk's wrestling match with the collapsing bridge.

I've basically come to peace with knowing that Firefly might never continue, and I might be okay with that. The whole point of the series was to show how these misfit characters got by, and how their guiding philosophy was to make enough coin to keep flying. I'd like to think that they'd continue doing just that.

...I'd still wouldn't object to another movie, though...

"Mass Effect" Movie Officially In The Works!

It's (pretty much) official! Two years after the option to make the movie was bought by Marvel producers, the Arad Brothers (Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man adaptations), film production company Legendary Pictures has picked up the job of actually making it. A major company like Legendary buying the rights means that the movie will absolutely go into pre-production and will likely get fast-tracked within the next couple of years. If things don't go terribly, terribly wrong, that is.

Faith in video game films is still somewhat low, but with the recent release of Prince of Persia, that might change! Let's also keep in mind that we have the Arad Brothers (every Marvel movie since Spider-Man) and Legendary Pictures in on this (The Dark Knight, 300, Watchmen, Where The Wild Things Are, and...Beerfest) so this could be a definite winner if things are done right. What director are we gonna see at the helm? Which actor (actress?) is going to play a certain Spectre? And what of the crew? Dunno! But it's definitely exciting!

Sidenote: Matthew Stover's adaptation of God of War is out in stores today! Go buy it!

Source: io9.com

STAR WARS! And... new fic: A Thousand Generations

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
Grand Moff TARKIN tirelessly searches for Rebel threats to the evil GALACTIC EMPIRE. Meanwhile at the dark heart of the Empire, middle-aged pilot MARI DALTO recovers a forgotten relic of the Jedi knights....

---

Today is the anniversary of the release of one of my very favourite movies (and I know Knightfall loves it too) Star Wars. AKA Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

It's just such a brilliant film - the perfect, fun action film. It's a tongue-in-cheek but lovingly-crafted homage to Arthurian legend, Kurosawa's samurai movies, Westerns, World War 2 films, medieval fantasy, classic science-fiction and, best of all - the old Flash Gordon adventure serials. It shamelessly steals concepts, characters and scenes from all of these, but mixes them together so beautifully. It has Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Alec Guiness in it, it has one of the best music scores you'll ever hear in your life. There is a fighter-plane dogfight, there are shoot-outs... robots... a saloon with crazy aliens in in. The villains are Peter Cushing and a seven-foot tall, half-robot, black-armour-wearing space Samurai with magical powers, a red laser-katana that he wields like a broadsword, and the voice of James Earl Jones.

We've talked about Star Wars a lot on this blog, but with good reason. It's such a big part of sooooo many people's childhoods. It's a pop-culture phenomenon like no other, and changed movies for ever.

And I grew up watching it, over and over and over. And I never got bored. Here I am, so many years later, watching it yet again and barely to take my eyes off it. Earlier today I was reading a novel based on it, and after that I wrote a chapter of my fanfic based on it.

---------

Yes, my new Star Wars fanfic... is HERE!

I just launched the story on fanfiction.net - and just a minute ago realised that today is the original movie's anniversary! How's that for timing, eh? It's the will of the Force, man.

I swore I'd finished with fan-fiction, but I always felt there was one fic I should have done. Or should have finished. I had the idea for 'A Thousand Generations' years ago, and worked on a couple of versions of it, which were all abandoned.

Now I'm writing it for real. It's a short (about 10 chapters) adventure story, set a couple of years before the original film, and attempting to tap into its style. Like the first movie, it's about a confrontation between the evil Empire and the American Rebel Alliance. And like the movie, it's told from the perspective of two ordinary people who get dragged into the fight.

It's about a middle-aged transport pilot (space Fed Ex) and her part-time student employee who find an old Jedi lightsaber and get mixed up in the Rebellion. It's about the war, but the subplot is all about the Jedi - specifically I'm trying to explain why various characters in the film don't 'believe' in the Jedi and the Force, only twenty years after seeing Samuel Jackson being hurled out of a wndow by lightning.
So - it's a fun, dark adventure story, with a lot of mention of the Jedi's role in the 'dark times' of the original films.

I've been trying to capture the spirit of that first film - the space battles, the heroic Rebels and hero's journeys, funny droids and fiendish, Nazi-like villains.

If you're interested, please give it a look! This really is a labour of love for me. It's supposed to be my last entry on fanfiction.net - a final attempt before I commit to writing proper, original fiction. So - this one honestly means a lot to me.

If you read, I really hope you enjoy it.

--

Anyway - read my fic! And also - enjoy the Star Wars anniversary celebration day, thing! Here's a really nice litte video that just talks about the original three films, their varied influences, and the effect they had on several generations of nerds, kids and film fans....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25zE6cs2vtw&feature=related


M.B.

The "Lost" Finalie: A Perfect Ending To A Clever Ruse

(SPOILERS AHEAD. DROP ANCHORS, LADS!): I watched Lost from the beginning: the very day it premiered. My preconception was that it was just a show about a bunch of guys, you know, lost on an island after an awesome-looking plane crash. It slowly became something more than that, though, as many will surely know. The first episode gave us so many questions that it still hasn't answered for, but what would follow was best summed up by Charlie. "Guys, where are we?"

I don't know, Charlie. I just don't know.

Basically, I looooved the first season. It was amazing in how it wrote intriguing mystery into its story, how it played with its characters and how in one flashback you could go from hating one person to truly understanding and sympathizing with them. For instance, the ending to the episode "Walkabout" where we discover John had been in a wheelchair was, to me, one of the most powerful and flat-out emotional things I had ever seen in a TV show. Not only that, but it really affirmed that premise that this island was something supernatural. I bought Season 1 as soon as it came out, and remember being so excited when Season 2 rolled around.

I was never really all that excited about it again.

Like a sheep, I was towed around, taunted with answers that I would never get. Got my heartstrings tugged over characters who would later do something so out of character that it canceled out everything I had felt about them. The mysteries became so...vague and absolutely crazy that I just somehow knew that no answer they could give me could possibly work to my satisfaction. In short, I became really annoyed with the show. I knew it was a con. A clever ruse. J.J. Abrams had figured out a way to keep tons of people interested without actually trying.

People try to make the show out to be deeper than it actually is. Hell, even I was trying to figure out the significance of "the numbers" and so on, but the only thing the show ever did was be deliberately vague. Show us symbols and give us words that we could interpret this way and that. Disregarding all that bullshit, the real conflict that the show provided was a worthwhile one: Jack's argument from science, and Locke's argument from faith. It wasn't an argument that either of them were going to win. It was really up to the audience to decide who was right...but, I guess, in the end, Locke was.

I stopped watching Lost over four years ago, and I made a promise that I would tune in to the final episode and see if the show's producers had the stones to answer all the questions they had posed. Well...they didn't. They really didn't. After all the insanity, the greater questions about the true mystery of the island were left hanging in the air. It didn't surprise me. What DID surprise me was how moved I would be by the ending regardless.

I cried. I really did. Because of all the things I was expecting from the finale, I didn't expect a happy ending. And it was. The writers, once again, pulled out something that was noticeably out of their ass, but did it in true Lost form, and made me care somehow. The episode was riddled with little allusions to all the important moments in their characters' lives. Everything worked out for everyone. All the people who died came back (technically) and got the ending that we had always hoped for them. Because, throughout all the bullshit writing, it really was the characters who were the star of the show. No matter how silly the writers got with the concepts and plot points, we were suffering the annoying consequences along with the characters.

The ending was...perfect. As perfect as it could have gotten, given the quagmire the story had eventually become. I've read a few responses where people say that "All the questions were answered," and to that I call BS. Nothing was answered. The island and its working are still as ambiguous as they were when the show began. Nothing's changed. Only the characters have, and the writers brought all their greatest triumphs together into one room, and had them confidently march into the unknown together.

I really can't imagine how else they could have ended the show and still left me as satisfied for having tuned in on that first day. It had me in tears and it still has me all emotional, even many hours after it ended. It was what the Battlestar Galactica ending should have been!

As the light filled the room, as Jack closed his eyes for the last time: it truly was a happy moment.

=)

Draw, Partner: Red Dead Redemption Impressions

I'm a Wild West aficionado. Living in California, ground zero during the Westward Expansion, has certainly helped that interest. Thirty minutes away, you can visit a region near the Merced River where the hills had been blasted away by hydraulic mining during the Gold Rush. Thirty minutes more, and you can visit one of the oldest Wells Fargo offices, the store where Ghirardelli Chocolate got its start, and where there's supposedly an abandoned Pony Express station (though, I dunno where it is). So when I heard this game was actually enjoyable and provided an immersive Wild West experience, I went out and bought it the very next day. And I am not one to impulse-buy brand new video games these days.

My teacher asked us during one of our classes: What is the West? Is it an actual location? Is it California? Oregon Country? Nevada, Utah, or Colorado? Or when we say "West," are we actually talking about a certain essence of it? The gunfights, the saloons, tumbleweeds, and train robberies? The hats and spurs? Maybe, maybe not. We all sorta decided it encompassed everything west of the Mississippi, but it's up to interpretation.

Rockstar Studios has chosen to give us a quasi-realistic interpretation of the Wild West for their game, Red Dead Redemption, because, more often than not, people can't help but think of Clint Eastwood or John Wayne movies whenever the subject is brought up. To most, it was a place where a man's revolver was the only law of the land. Where the day wasn't done until someone was killed in a duel and bleeding out in the sand. By putting this all in a game, they've given us the Western adventure that we've always wanted, or didn't know we wanted.

The story revolves around a man named John Marston, a man hired by the government to bring a wanted outlaw to justice. Things, of course, don't go according to plan. Marston goes and gets himself shot, gets fixed up by a local ranch owner, and proceeds to conjure up a plan to get revenge by enlisting the aid of some of the craziest characters to ever be put to disc. They are the reason the term Motley Crew was coined.

The story leaves much to be desired. It's a MacGuffin-driven plot, for sure, but its enough to allow for some truly great character development. Marston himself is great, but even though he's meant to be the badass gunslinger (kinda), he gets pushed around A LOT. Nearly everyone in this game gives him the runaround and even with the scars across his face, he starts to look like a pussy as the game goes on. Everyone else in the game outshines our main character, unfortunately. You've got the snake oil salesman, a man who's lost his livelihood looking for buried treasure, a lawman, and a drunk weapons expert by the name of Irish. As I said: a motley crew to be sure.

Though the plot is simple and the main character is meh, the twists and turns are great. The voice acting is comparable to the best moments of any BioWare game, and the expert use of motion capture adds quirky realism. It's odd not to be able to react to these cutscenes, since I'm coming down off another playthrough of Mass Effect 2 ( I keep waiting for a Paragon or Renegade option to pop up), but the cutscenes are still magnificent, and manage to draw me in like a really good movie would.

But let's get into the bread and butter of the game, which is the environment. Rockstar practically invented all that a free-roaming sandbox game should be, and they've push it to the limit with RDR. This game is vast, dreary, yet alive. Time passes; day turns into night. Some days will be cloudy, others completely clear. Sometimes you'll be able to see a storm begin to roll in from afar and overtake you with rain as lightning crashes all around you. Trees sway with it, trails become muddy. You could sit there and just watch it all and still be entertained. I know I did for awhile.

Though what you're mostly going to be dealing with the most are trails and open, dusty plains, there is still plenty to see. Sometimes, you'll stumble upon a group of rabbits jumping away to their warren, or deer bounding along, hawks soaring over your head or circling a corpse of something off in the distance. And, yes, you can kill 'em all. Animals of every shape and size can be shot and skinned for hide and other bits so's you can sell them for cash money. You can even get various awards depending on different hunting challenges the game provides.

So, that's the environment, now on to the gameplay. RDR plays almost exactly like GTA 4, so if you're still familiar with those controls, you probably won't have to think to much about it here. Everything handles very well. Most of your traveling will be done on horseback, and though I STILL have some troubles getting the horse to do what I want it to, 90% of the time everything works out.

Throughout the world, you'll have various missions to attend to at your leisure. You have: the main quests, which will open up different parts of the world as you progress; sidequests such as stranger requests, bounty hunting, horsebreaking, or nightly patrolling; games like poker, blackjack, horseshoes, and that one game where you stab a knive between the gaps of your fingers really fast like; then you have the random events. When these random events occur, you'll be given a task on the spot. For instance, you might come upon a bunch of thugs hanging a man who didn't deserve it. You can choose to ride on by, help the man, kill the man, or kill everyone. Which touches on the amount of freedom you have in this game.

Very much like GTA, you can kill just about everyone. You can rob banks, stores, and even trains. You can get your lasso, strap people to the back of your horse, or be a complete douche and drag them behind you for awhile (which I did, yes). You can even do that dastardly deed no villain should ever neglect to accomplish, and that is to tie a woman to the railroad tracks. You can do all that, or you can be the honorable sort, and help people that need it. Stay out of temptation's way. It's all up to you. The game leaves a lot of room for role playing.

But even with the 20 hour campaign, the sidequests, the free roaming, the bounties, the hunting, all of which could keep you busy for 20 hours more...there's still a multiplayer mode. This is basically where it becomes awesome. The world is completely opened up to you, and you're set loose to complete various challenges, missions, or just goof off. By the way, ANYONE can kill you. This whole thing reminds me a lot of the PvP zones of World of Warcraft. You could be sitting there, trying to shoot a certain amount of birds for a challenge and you'll randomly get your brains injected with a bullet. It's certainly not as bad as WoW, where you could get camped for hours, but the game does encourage grouping up.

The first time I tried this, I entered the game and was immediately chased around the world for hours by these two guys. I was alone, but I put up a fight, killing them enough so that I was able to get the high ground every time. Eventually, they invited me to their posse, and we then ran around killing people, completing missions, getting achievements, and riding around in a stagecoach, taking shots at any player who happened to pass by. It was amazing. And you gain XP and levels by doing just about anything, be it riding on your horse, walking, or shooting things.

Basically, I'm really liking this game so far. The story leaves much to be desired, but I wouldn't trade away the marvelous characters throughout. The missions are fun (expect shootouts aplenty), the world is fantastic and creatively designed, and the multiplayer is practically an MMO in itself. (Also, the game gives you items for your Xbox avatar as you unlock certain things! Yeah!) You're getting a huge package when you buy this game, and the sheer amount of things to do will all but convince you that the $60 you shelled out for it was well worth it.

See you, space cowboy.

(EDIT: I should also point out that the soundtrack is spectacular! Case and point: the game's opening scene.)

(ANOTHER EDIT: There's a settlement in the game called Plainview that's packed with oil derricks. Fucking win.)