Not necessarily: "plans to see it" doesn't drive up ticket sales quite the way "actually saw it" does.
Well, I like Buffy and Joss Whedon in general, but that trailer is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever experienced. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm very scared to.
Ben, I was sure you would say that. I trust you to come to understand why your objection is hollow.
Joe -- Give it a chance. The trailer just sucks. As I mentioned here, it looks like Whedon chose to create a crappy trailer that doesn't ruin the plot points instead of the typical Hollywood trailer that gets you to see the movie but gives away too much of the story. (Flightplan anyone?) In my book, that's something to be rewarded.
Yeah, I remember that comment, which is why I'm still maybe gonna see it. There are also about five movies in the queue ahead of Serenity for me, though.
Actually, ogged, I take myself to have conclusively proven that everyone you know is everyone.
I'll see it, but I don't know when. Stupid kid.
Everyone I've talked about it with has no plans to see it because of the terrible trailer. The only reason I'm considering it is the internet buzz. (That was a good move on their part - to give free tickets to bloggers.) But, looking at the box office data from this weekend, it seems to have been a terrible weekend in general. Serenity did better than A History of Violence, which has been getting lots of positive media.
I saw it. It was purty good.
Though the western speak was a mite annoying.
I most recently did the same reality check after seeing Me and You and Everyone We Know.
I would have guessed 5'1'', but it's hard to tell with movies and camera work.
"Serenity didn't do so well."
It did the most I expected it to do. #2 of all movies as measured? With no major stars, no money, and no hook beyond that of being an obscure cult of sci-fans who like crap?
Your expectations were based upon what? The typical leaping of U.S. movie audiences towards smart, funny, cult skiffy?
If it was based upon knowing people with other than mass tastes, well, heck, back in the day, us skiffy people would only be talking to each other, and being beaten up by everyone else, and there'd be no movie, but only, at best, a piece of shit tv series in which we'd see "holy psychic, Mal!," and giant carrot people showing up in the movie. .
So my expectations are hardly disappointed, myself. I live in a universe in which the Batman tv series impressed people, and Lost In Space didn't result in any executions, and neither did the original Battlestar Galactica.
Mere tolerance for intelligent action-adventure skiffy that ignores science is heaven on the way way to better. (More science-fictiony sf in movies? Well, there's 2001, 2010,, and Contact, at least; but we live in a universe in which the more science-fictional is in mass vernacular, the less it is; the less accurate it is, the more it is "science fiction," and the more accurate, the less. Assholes.)
"Well, I like Buffy and Joss Whedon in general, but that trailer is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever experienced."
Um, what did the subject get switched to?
"Joe -- Give it a chance. The trailer just sucks."
I have six trailers, and I've not tried to look for all of them. Which is under discussion?
Your expectations were based upon what? The typical leaping of U.S. movie audiences towards smart, funny, cult skiffy?
Dude, Buffy became a massive show in its time. It's not completely out of the question that the public has accepted that Joss Whedon can put together a product and launch it without the slow accretion of word-of-mouth buzz and critical applause. The movie certain had a hook: Joss Whedon. It turns out that that isn't quite enough to move a movie.
"Though the western speak was a mite annoying."
There's no western speak. No one in Serenity or Firefly speaks remotely like people in the American West do or did. They speak an amalgam of dialect according to imagined period and place, and Joss-speak. It's not as if there's a pretense to otherwise.
But the main problem of mass-market-on-tv-or-in-movies sf is the whole notion of things being different. Even as entirely tame, and as barely barely barely different, as a/v skiffy is compared to good written stuff, it throws intelligent people not used to paradigm shifts, let alone larger audiences. That's why good-movie-and-tv-sf is closer to being an oxymoron than would be desirable. An intelligent and authentic mass media version of, say, The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman, or of Greg Egan, or of Gene Wolfe, or, basically, of any actually thoughtful sf doing the real sf thing, is almost impossible to do commercially successfully. Pretty much by definition it's almost impossible to blow people's minds in a highly intelligent, based upon newish science, way, that's fully accessible to a mass audience.
So we wind up with, in mass market visual sf, sci-fi instead. And thus sf being generally judged by the crap.
Your expectations were based upon what?
Not my expectations: Variety, Defamer, and the linked Box Office Mojo all say that it didn't do as well as expected. And if Variety says it didn't do as well as expected, there's no reality-based community to say otherwise.
"Dude, Buffy became a massive show in its time."
Um, Buffy was on something laughed at as a "network," the WB, and was cancelled for failing even there, and was picked up by that other massive success, UPN, to hold along with all it's other massive sucesses that all America watched.
Possibly "massive" means something differently to you, such as "major tv show," or other, than it does to the U.S. tv industry, or to me. Buffy didn't die before it ended, which Whedon's other tv shows did. This is not indicativative of America adopting a massive paradigm shift towards full acceptance of fantasy and sf premises. At the best it suggests greater acceptance of terrifically well-written and funny stuff that has little or no fantasy or sf content, but that uses its trappings and premises very well for entertainment.
Which is fine and great, and as much as I can realistically hope for. But if anyone thought that either Joss Whedon created the new Star Wars, or that either SW or Firefly had any real sf content, they're mistaken. (I realize that the latter is likely something no one here had in mind, and is purely a product of my own head, inescapably.)
Gary—and Jesus Christ is it a chore to debate with you—surely you don't think Nielsen ratings are the sole indicator of success? Currently Firefly is sitting at #2 in DVD sales. Buffy has ranked in an absolute killing in DVD sales, and has reached that highest sphere of television afterlife: near-constant syndication (on channels extending beyond the paltry purview of UPN). Also, and more importantly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has entered the cultural lexicon. Whether or not every American watched the show in its prime, Buffy was a massive, massive, massive hit.
It's still "open" a movie, Kriston. As they say in Lubbock.
"Buffy has ranked in an absolute killing in DVD sales, and has reached that highest sphere of television afterlife: near-constant syndication (on channels extending beyond the paltry purview of UPN)."
I've not looked up figures; in this market, it died and is no longer being broadcast in syndication as of the turn of the season. There's not even an undead market. Bewitched, Hogan's Hero's, and even F-Troop did vastly better. Someone probably thinks they'll make movies of them!
:-)
Buffy wasn't cancelled by the WB; UPN outbid them for seasons 6, 7 and 8 (I think; this is all from memory, but a quick google scan seems to confirm the truth of it).
Numbers-wise, I remember reading that JAG on CBS (which had the same time slot) was reliably a higher-rated show, but Buffy destroyed them in key demographics, so it was a more valuable show for everyone involved -- advertisers, network execs, entertainment reporters, etc. It makes sense: the over-40 set isn't on the forefront of any trends; the zeitgeist is all about the 18-34 group, and to a lesser extent, the 12-17 group. Buffy nailed both of them. Culturally, Kriston is right -- Buffy had a huge impact; it was a very influential show. They don't create a spinoff series for a flop, or even a so-so performer. They create spinoffs for hits.
I agree; Joss Whedon's name isn't enough to open a movie. I'm surprised this film got funded, and it looks to me like it got purposely underfunded. I'm guessing Joss had a one- or multi-picture contract with a studio, so they said okay, you'll get your movie, but with no budget for stars, effects, or promotion. The trailers were terrible, and very infrequently run. Nobody went on Letterman or Leno (I think). If it came in at number 2 for its opening weekend, that's a kind of miracle, if you ask me.
This is such a weird line, from the Box Office Mojo article about Serenity:
Serenity corralled a tame $10.1 million from 2,188 theaters, failing to buck modest industry expectations.
Failing to buck expectations? So, in other words, it did what everyone thought it would do, and is therefore a failure? Obviously, if everyone thought it would exceed expectations, then "expectations" were for it to be a big success, right?
"Buffy wasn't cancelled by the WB; UPN outbid them for seasons 6, 7 and 8 (I think; this is all from memory, but a quick google scan seems to confirm the truth of it)."
No, that's more accurate; I misstated; my bad, sorry.
" Culturally, Kriston is right -- Buffy had a huge impact; it was a very influential show."
And I should have said that I agree with that.