Serenity is a good movie !

[chani]

And I'm sad for Joss that it doesn't work better. Actually when I check the box-office and see the money some crappy films are making, I'm pissed-off. Unfortunately for Joss' sake there are also good movies out these days (BTW I mean to see L'Enfant des frères Dardenne, Polanski's Oliver Twist, and probably the last Blier starring Monica Belucci)...

Il ne reste plus que 3 cinémas où le film passe encore à Paris, allez voir Serenity bon sang!

A few days ago, someone on the C&S, deanna b, reminded me of another reference on the movie. Here's the quote from the thread (I hope deanna b doesn't mind me reposting this here):

"Forbidden Planet," was basically Shakespeare's Tempest put in a futuristic setting on an alien planet. The spaceship in that was the C57D. What's the markings on the spaceship of the PAX scientist, and on the transport shuttle that they come across on Miranda? C57D. Chris Buchanan indicated that it wasn't just a coincidence. I guess it's "hanging a lantern on" the fact that Serenity wasn't the first SF movie to be based on The Tempest.

I noticed the marking indeed and knowing Joss and his taste for visual details, I was sure it meant something, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It's definitely a wink to Forbidden Planet. So while watching again the film yesterday I kept looking for details I hadn't noticed, seeking new movie references like in a game.

The scene on Beaumont planet is an obvious wink to Blade Runner as I already said in my first Serenity entry, especially the brief shot of "the guy riding the bicycle" (we see a similar shot on Blade Runner) but I think that the second scene on Haven when they found the damage (before Book's boring death) might also be a wink to Terminator 2. I'm actually talking about the shot of "River behind a swing on fire".

Also, on many shots The Reavers kinda called to my mind the First Slayer from Restless, which would make sense if it's Joss' vision of primitive people (but the Reavers are far from being my favourite bit, they are like the dead people on Miranda...sort of cheesy).

Besides what the holo-woman said on Miranda called soemthing else to my mind.She mentioned that the Miranda people stopped figthing, working and breeding because of the PAX...It's exactly what happened to the futuristic society of a very bizarre movie,  al ow-budget Sci-Fi film that few people have seen and that John Boorman directed in the 70's (the whole crew being probably on drugs then!): ZARDOZ!

Zardoz is the kind of film that you cannot really label, it defies rating. Certain ideas are brilliant, it's full of cultural references but at the same time it's often kitsch and laughable. It could be a pure rubbishy film and an under-rated one as well!  Some people think it's a masterpiece, others that it's the worst film ever, pretentious and crappy at once. As for me I like it for its oddity and also because a hairy-chested Sean Connery keeps running around in a loincloth during the movie! A character couldn't be more macho!

But the point is that Boorman showed people who were pure sybarites. Nobody "paxed" them, they did it to themselves, bannishing violence and living inside of a safe Vortex as Eternals (thanks to something called the Tabernacle...an idea that Dan Simmons used in his Ilium btw). They don't work  because they have beasts working for them in the outside, either cultivating the soil or being exterminators under the rule of a God represented as a giant flying stone head and named Zardoz (well first the Vortians only wanted to exterminate the outside people which thus would leave a better world, theirs, but then they thought they could use them as farmers) . They don't breed (the males actually don't have erections anymore which leads to an interesting/funny/embarassing scene when Sean Connery is errrr  studied by the Eternals...) because they are Immortal so they don't need to. And they don't even sleep (which means that they don't dream)...but some of them become apathetics (they just lie down...like the Miranda people on Serenity) or renegades (they are bored!).

Sean Connery plays a brutal, former exterminator, trained to kill (in other terms a weapon as River Tam) who penetrates the Vortex and brings violence on (and of course SEX!), seeking revenge because he found out that Zardoz was not a real God but a mere con trick based on a book: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"! Yeah the savage turned out to be actually very smart, learnt to read by himself and did the maths understanding that the flying stone head was the wizard's mask concealing the truth. He even ends up quoting Niezsche! 

At the end of Zardoz, the other salvages, Connery's colleagues, penetrate the Vortex thanks to him, killing around...kinda like the Reavers attacking Miranda people, or being used as a weapon against the Alliance.

I don't know if Joss Whedon actually thought of Zardoz when he made Serenity (but we know he used the Wizard of Oz in Angel), or if it's simply Boorman who thought of The Tempest when he made Zardoz, but both of them have a thing for the dialectics beast/brain, salvage/civilized or man/monster...

...or should I say cavemen vs astronauts?

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[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

Is this the third time?