A Whedon hater’s opinion of Serenity
Colby Cosh trashes Joss Whedon and the Cult of Firefly for about a thousand words before admitting that he actually liked Serenity. His points about the creepiness of Firefly evangelists are well-articulated and correct (it is kinda creepy), but basically miss the point. Says Cosh:
The Browncoats want everyone to like “Firefly”. (Or, rather cynically, they want just enough people to like it so that studios will go on bankrolling it.) In the end it’s not clear that the show matters as much as being part of the group that watches the show.
The parenthetical, I think, is more true than the original assertion, and it’s a very different kind of evangelism (if it’s even evangelism at all).
I’m certainly not a Browncoat… I didn’t even know Firefly existed until it was off the air, so my views might not be typical. I don’t care if everyone likes my favorite shows, but if no one likes them, they’ll be cancelled. I don’t like stories to just end, with all sorts of loose threads and unanswered questions. I guess I’m just selfish that way. If I had $40 million to throw around I would have payed Whedon and company to make Serenity, even if they insisted that only I watch it. Sure, it’d be lonely not being able to discuss the movie with anyone, but I’d sacrifice that if it meant that I could find out what happened next.
But I don’t have Oprah money, so I just had to hope that there were enough fanboys out there to make the movie economically feasible. I have to believe that nearly all the Browncoats, even the proactive ones that used the Internet to cajole, feel the same way. So I don’t think that “being part of the group,” other than the economic power that comes with a crowd, is the most important element here. It really is about the story.
I’m glad that Cosh liked it, no matter how reluctanctly. After all, that’s another few bucks that the studio might put into a sequel. It also gives me another (ironic) opportunity to evangelize to an untapped market for Serenity: the Whedon-haters. If Colby Cosh, Whedon-hater, liked Serenity, you might too! Go see it tonight!
Popularity: 3% [?]
Fanboys (and girls) are always creepy–which, if I were to be honest, is probably why my obsession with Mark Lanegan’s music can be disturbing.
I hadn’t heard of Firefly until I went to a wedding last year, I’m not a huge fan of TV science-fiction, and I was pretty skeptical of the show at first. Hell, you know I hated Buffy, so you can’t even say that I was a fan of Whedon. Happily, this is one time that the geeks are right.