Firefly

DVD Review: Firefly Provides Serenity

Firefly - The Complete Series

DVD from Twentieth Century Fox Home Video

Release date: 09 December, 2003

Over the weekend I got my hands on a copy of Firefly, the short lived science fiction series that was on FOX a few years ago. What, you don’t remember it? How could you? There were only a handful of episodes that actually aired. Most of which were on Friday nights, which is the graveyard shift of primetime television.

From what I have learned, Firefly has a substantial cult following, during its limited time on the air and even more so after it was cancelled. I assumed it was the typical fanboy reaction to every science fiction series that gets booted from the airwaves, but I heard some glowing reviews from several people that had seen the show. This was not your typical "boldly go where no man has gone before" show, full of actors with bad wigs, rubber masks and face paint attempting to be a different alien every week. This is a show that has compelling stories with interesting characters that cannot be simply summed up with just a single adjective to encapsulate their personality.

With the release of 12 episodes on DVD, the show has had an underground resurgence. This rebirth has even spawned an upcoming movie version entitled Serenity. Think about that for a second. A movie based on a television show that did not last for even a season. Usually I would say that Hollywood has truly run out of ideas and we should expect to see movie versions of Manimal, Street Hawk and the Misfits of Science on the horizon. However, in this situation I believe (or want to believe) that Firefly/Serenity has the potential to become a serial success. I do not predict this to be the next Star Wars trilogy, but from what I have seen of the series, we could be on to something here.

The days of original blockbuster movies are over. Lately we have been sentenced to safe remakes and retreads of the familiar in our movie theaters. Why did they remake Bad News Bears or The Longest Yard anyway? What did you really think of the Dukes of Hazzard movie? Maybe we could get yet another Charlie’s Angels movie? (I provided Amazon links to the originals because all of the remakes are so horrid) Serenity can break us out of the remake trends in Hollywood and provide what so many movie goers are clamoring for: original, compelling, exciting stories. I highly recommend watching this series on DVD. Then watch Serenity when it hits the movie screens on September 30th.