Firefly dialog keeps showing up

[PTK]

The "nice shot" line is a lot older than Firefly.

In The Magnificent Seven the response was: "I was aiming for the horse"

Kurosawa's original dialogue is even better. 

[AJ Dual]

Would you rather they wore shiny silver jump suits and road big reptiles? 

The petticoats were only on one world I think and only among the rich there.  I can see styles would be radically different if people were isolated a bit or if hygiene practices were different. 

Well, there's other very 1800's styles of dress on the outer worlds, which is what I meant about petticoats. And yeah, I definitely agree that "star trek pajamas" on everyone would have been a buzzkill.

And note that I mentioned how I liked how the new BSG had "regular clothes". You didn't have to figure out if someone was wearing scientist space-pajamas, lawyer space-pajamas, politician space-pajamas, or criminal space-pajamas. It moved the plot along nicely that the clothing told you who that person "was" to a great degree and made what was going on more relate-able and remarkable at the same time.

I can't put my finger on exactly how, but Firefly sort of missed the mark with the "look", which I think didn't allow people to see past that and get hooked on the awesome dialogue and character interactions. (Not counting Fox's abominable meddling...)

[makattak]

Well, there's other very 1800's styles of dress on the outer worlds, which is what I meant about petticoats. And yeah, I definitely agree that "star trek pajamas" on everyone would have been a buzzkill.

And note that I mentioned how I liked how the new BSG had "regular clothes". You didn't have to figure out if someone was wearing scientist space-pajamas, lawyer space-pajamas, politician space-pajamas, or criminal space-pajamas. It moved the plot along nicely that the clothing told you who that person "was" to a great degree and made what was going on more relate-able and remarkable at the same time.

I can't put my finger on exactly how, but Firefly sort of missed the mark with the "look", which I think didn't allow people to see past that and get hooked on the awesome dialogue and character interactions. (Not counting Fox's abominable meddling...)

Wow, so the analogy of outmoded dress to our eyes applying that to planets "on the frontier" didn't make sense?

Would you have preferred the frontier be filled with 80's punk rockers with boomboxes?

Cause that's what was going on. Rather than create a futuristic "Star Trak" jumpsuit for the spacegoers and then create an outmoded style of dress that the story would then have to explain that although the dress of the people on the frontier planets was futuristic, it was outmoded according to the future styles, he just dressed them in outmoded styles of dress to our eyes.

I think that was a brilliant move. It said "backwater" without having to explain that, yes, they are futuristic, but they're really backwater planets. Instead, he just made them obviously backwater planets.

[Silver Bullet]

Tough crowd!  I guess I coulda woulda shoulda looked up the exact quotes.   

[Mabs2]

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Serenity_(film)

Lies.

[Scout26]

I use Goram and Humped/Ruttin so I don't have to pay into the swear jar at home....

I'm working on my chinese.....


   

[Sergeant Bob]

So, people are complaining the clothing looked like, well, real clothing, and the guns looked like well, real guns?

[roo_ster]

So, people are complaining the clothing looked like, well, real clothing, and the guns looked like well, real guns?

Pretty much.

[PTK]

Buncha whiners. 

[Harold Tuttle]

[PTK]

Noticed something on a drive today... music from Firefly goes well with Montana. 

[AJ Dual]

So, people are complaining the clothing looked like, well, real clothing, and the guns looked like well, real guns?

Not really, just that "Space Western" is rather tired and cliche, and I think it turned people off of Firefly before they could see the deeper themes and amazing dialogue/banter/humor it also contained.

I think what I'm really getting at is the superficial "Space Western" post-Civil War, the Frontier, Scalping Indians/Reavers (Taken all together it was pretty blatant, not just the clothing and retro looking guns...) now works great for Firefly that it's got cult status. I just believed it worked against it during it's initial run.

I think what they did with Battlestar Galactica worked better, where it was kind of a suits, ties, and "Vancouver In Space" for the set of planet Caprica. That sort of reflected a subtle truth about the "future". (or an advanced technical civilization, if hundreds of thousands of years in the past..)

If you took people's common perceptions of what "2010" would look like even as late as the 1970's, even 1980's, they STILL would thought "space pajamas" and flying cars, or even when they tried to ground it in some reality like other visions like Blade Runner (2019), or Back to the Future II (2025). The truth is if you could transport them here now, they'd be impressed with our PC's, flat-screen TV's, the Internet, and our cellphones, the cars are a bit more streamlined and rounded, but everything else is still pretty darn the same.  

With Firefly, perhaps going with a deliberate retro late 1800's look is integral to the story, but I'll stand by saying that aside from what Fox execs did to the show, I think it interfered with it getting wide acceptance in it's first run.

[MechAg94]

On "backwater" planets where farming and ranching and physical labor are likely big jobs, most people are likely to be wearing local homespun and hand sewn cloth or animal skin.  At the least, it will be very early generation machines making it.  That really does fit with the 1800's.  I guess they could have used suits like in old Westerns, but most of the people portrayed were not the sophisticated type with a lot of money.   

You have to remember that in BG, the people were refugees from developed urban planets, not backwater farming areas.  Their clothes should be more modern and stylish.

[taurusowner]

Pretty much.

Not really.  I just can't get into shows that are supposed to be "other worldly" and yet they don't look anything of the sort.  I saw and liked Star Wars looonng before I knew anything at all about guns.  But on the other side, BSGs use of the Beretta CX Storm was just as cheesy as Firefly.

I do think the use of "space pajamas" is most sci fi shows is lame, but I know it would be hard for the costume departments to make detailed new fashions for every new world.  But at least with space pajamas they are trying to make it look different and other-worldly.  I guess to me persoanlly, the "first taste" of a show does a lot to make me like or not like it.  Even in one of my favorite shows, Stargate, they end up having the semi-advanced cultures use firearms that look A LOT like earth weapons.  But they didn't do it in the movie or the first episode, so I already got hooked on the show.

With firefly, even the first 5 minutes looked goofy and I couldn't look past it enough to see whatever positives there might be later on.  I wish they would have at least made the attempt to make it look other-worldly.

[roo_ster]

The clothes that were practical on the mid-late 19th century are practical wherever, whenever hard work out-of-doors is to be done.

In my state of residence, many who work in a rural setting wear garb very similar to that worn 150-200 years ago.

Maybe it is because I see folk like this on a regular basis that I don't think the garb is a Hollywood cliche.




1850s or 1950s?  Or taken in 2005 at the Mesquite Rodeo and photoshopped to look old?









Taken recently & photoshopped to look old, or Taken a ways back with photoshopped specs?



No doubt this is recent.  Don't they know they ought to be wearing space pajamas in 2010?



















The last time you met, she shot you, Mal.












Taken in 2007

[Fjolnirsson]

Thanks, Jfruser. I was trying to think the best way to make that exact point. Even down to Mal's "browncoat". Duster style coats have a very specific function, one which would be very handy on the frontier, either now or anytime in the future. If you notice, he doesn't dress that way on the inner worlds so much, though his basic dress may stay the same.

[S. Williamson]

Thanks, Jfruser. I was trying to think the best way to make that exact point. Even down to Mal's "browncoat". Duster style coats have a very specific function, one which would be very handy on the frontier, either now or anytime in the future. If you notice, he doesn't dress that way on the inner worlds so much, though his basic dress may stay the same.

Or wear it around on the ship.

The last time you met, she shot you, Mal.

But that was due to a perfectly legitimate conflict of interest! 

[Perd Hapley]

Thanks, Jfruser. I was trying to think the best way to make that exact point. Even down to Mal's "browncoat". Duster style coats have a very specific function, one which would be very handy on the frontier, either now or anytime in the future. If you notice, he doesn't dress that way on the inner worlds so much, though his basic dress may stay the same.

That's true.  He put on the duster when he disembarked.  Perhaps he wanted the option to hide his gun from Alliance, or local authorities. 

[kgbsquirrel]

Noticed something on a drive today... music from Firefly goes well with Montana. 

Yeah, just keep rubbing it in, and rubbing it in.


*expletive deleted*che.


 


Using (slightly modified) current weapons and then changing their sounds to the futuristic pew-pew was kinda cheezy though. I mean c'mon, a double DShK should sound like a double DShK, not a star wars blaster.

[Balog]

Space Western is tired and cliche? What other explicitly Western theme sci-fi shows are out there, I musta missed them. The only thing that ever really bugged me about the look was the lil brass kinda red dot on Zoe's mare's leg.

[Regolith]

Space Western is tired and cliche? What other explicitly Western theme sci-fi shows are out there, I musta missed them.

Same here.  Maybe it's because I don't watch much TV or movies, but I can't think of any other space westerns off the top of my head...

[Mabs2]

Same here.  Maybe it's because I don't watch much TV or movies, but I can't think of any other space westerns off the top of my head...

Cowboy Bebop.

[Regolith]

Cowboy Bebop.

Forgot about that one.  But that's still only one other example...for something to begin to become cliche there needs to be a lot of them.

[BlueStarLizzard]

i haven't seen much space westerns either...

the whole idea is that humans haven't really changed all that much in terms of advancement.
those border planets haven't got the money to pay for the fancy stuff on the inner developed planets. they are the third world countries to the central planets industrialized riches.

whedon wrote it up after reading Gettysburg, thus the obvious western/civil war flar. he was going for Reconstruction era, with great industrialization in the East and extreme rural in the west.

the prop guys could (with context) have decorations and styles of items from any contempiary culture, but were limited in how "futuristic" they could get unless on the central planets, as the idea was that we have all these cultures, but most technological and cultural advancement on the rim was stopped or even regressed due to isolation and poverty.

its all in the commentary (yes, i have watched it all multiple times with the commentary) and the special features.

[S. Williamson]

I think the decision to go with "pew-pew" over BLAM was a poor one, but they tried to justify it (can't remember how, though).

The music, however, will never be paralleled.  Especially the score from Serenity. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtAfe-sY2-g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7HCdC6IRUU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZfUd88le7Y

and, of course:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7idn3PcKBM