Not to mention it was a pretty highly rated critical success.

It must’ve been hard to come out to strangers like that.

How did this not hit?

The thinking of an average moviegoer:

1) Sci-fi / Western hybrid? It's set hundreds of years in the future, but everybody acts like they are in the Old West. WTF is that? I've never seen a movie like that before.

2) The movie is based on a TV series that nobody watched. So to understand the very original Sci-fi/Western premise of the movie (the world-building), you have to be familiar with the show.
So the average moviegoer is still feeling negative about just the idea of the movie.
Also, if nobody watched the show, it must not have been any good, so why would the movie be better?

3) No stars. If the movie does not fit within a very familiar genre, average moviegoers are attracted to movies by movie stars. Serenity is an entire cast of nobodies.

4) And this is just a personal opinion. I can't imagine someone unfamiliar with the show really making sense of the movie.
Also, all those critics who praised the movie probably also praised how the movie provided closure on the ongoing narrative that was never allowed to flourish on TV. More reaason for non-fans t stay away.

I still think Serenity is possibly the best sci-fi movie of its decade.

CD, I never watched the show, as I said, and loved and followed everything in movie.

Seconded. I never saw a sci fi movie in the 2000s that gripped me like this one. Great writing, directing, acting and production values are many of the things it features. It's a miracle it got made. I'll take it over the Star Wars prequels and sequels and the "Kelvinverse" Star Trek movies without a nanosecond of hesitation. THIS is how you do a proper space opera, JJ!

If you've never watched the show, then you don't know what elements of the movie are fan service. You can follow everything, but you don't get everything.

That seems contrary to your original #2 claim:
If one can follow everyone, one thus understands, at least, the premise and world, even if they're not picking up every detail.

The film is expertly crafted to stand on its own, while providing exposition that doesn't feel like exposition, and delivering info that fans already knew in a new and interesting way. Joss Wheden later went on to do something similar with the first Avengers movie, which works whether you saw any of the previous MCU films or not.

However, there may have been an assumption among the potential audience, at least those that knew it was based on a TV show, that they wouldn't get the movie, and pre-emptively opted out of seeing it. However, with the name change and all, it's unclear how many people actually even knew it was based on a TV show. And I've mentioned this before, but the highly successful Naked Gun trilogy was based on the failed TV series Police Squad, so a failure on TV doesn't necessarily mean failure as a movie, or even movie series.

I'm also not convinced people were confused or put off by the western/sci-fi hybrid, since those two genres are often meshed together, although maybe not so explicitly. Star Wars has always had a bit of a western vibe, and The Mandalorian show has made that more explicit, and has found success with it.

I think a lot of it was a failure of marketing and advertising. Universal, like FOX before it with the TV show, just didn't know how to effectively sell it. The lack of "name' stars likely didn't help, but it's not only an interesting mash-up of genres, but a mash-up of tones. And it's not like futuristic spaceship movies tend to do all that well, if they're not tied to an existing successful franchise. It's mostly Star Wars and Star Trek in theaters, with Guardians of the Galaxy popping up, but having both its comic-book legacy and the strength of the MCU to that point to draw people in. Even Star Wars and Star Trek have had difficulty in theaters recently, with both Solo for Star Wars and Star Trek Beyond not performing to expectations.

The main thing to remember is that box office performance is not a reflection of the quality of a film. Bad films can perform well, and good films can do poorly. There's just a ton of factors that go into whether a film will be successful, and they can't all be controlled or predicted; otherwise, studios would never produce a flop.

I won't go back and pick through the posts to quote the relevant parts, so just follow.

Old Boy asked why the movie was not a hit, and I was answering that question. And the answer to that question is that people did not go see it . . . obviously, but why?

So I was explaining --which my post clearly indicated-- some of the different things the average moviegoer thought about Serenity.

One is that they thought they wouldn't understand it because they had not watched the show. True or not, this is quite obviously a reason why people would not go to Serenity. Do you think anybody who had never watched Sex and the City went to the SATC movie? Who goes to Star Trek movies?

My point regarding fan service is also true. What does someone who has never watched the show make of the appearance of Shepherd Book? Of course, you can figure out that this is a person with whom Mal and the crew have a past relationship, but you don't fully know what that relationship is, and there is no way you can be as affected by his death. Same thing with Wash.
On a less somber note, the humor of Mal and Inarra's relationship plays with much more depth to someone who watched the show. The scenes work within the plot of the movie and anyone can FOLLOW what is going on, but fans have a greater UNDERSTANDING of the characters.

There is NO WAY in the year 2005 that ANYBODY considering going to see a sci-fi movie was not going to be aware of the production's backstory.

If The Naked Gun had only been able to advertise itself as a movie based on the TV series Police Squad, then it would have been in trouble.
The Naked Gun is very similar in tone and style to Airplane, which everybody knew and loved, and starred Leslie Nielsen from Airplane, and it came on the heels of Ruthless People which was a big hit comedy.
So The Naked Gun did not need anybody to even know that Police Squad even existed.
And comedy is a different matter. The jokes have to work as jokes while you are watching the movie. Drama pulls from a deeper well of the audiences' experiences.

I'll make this one simple. Name another property before Firefly/Serenity where it was both a sci-fi fantasy with people zipping around in spaceships AND a western where people rode horses and robbed trains.

And yes, it would be great if we could pack all the Mandalorian fans into time machines and take them back to 2005 to but tickets to Serenity.

The average moviegoer is attracted to familiarity. Narrative tropes, genres, and stars.

Serenity definitely played down the Western stuff compared to Firefly, but the premise was what the premise was, and if the average moviegoer does not understand the idea of the movie, then they stay away.

Go to Wikipedia and read about all the work they had to do with Cowboys and Aliens (a box office flop) to explain the tone of the movie to audiences.

If it's just that people thought they wouldn't understand it, that's one thing, but then you also wrote, as your personal opinion, " I can't imagine someone unfamiliar with the show really making sense of the movie."

So Oldboy proves that statement wrong. While he maybe didn't get every reference, he was certainly able to make sense of it and follow along.

Yes, I think some people who never saw the SATC show saw the movie. Most likely with a group of friends, some of whom may have seen the show. And I saw several Star Trek movies before ever seeing the TV show.

This sounds like splitting hairs so as not to have to admit you were wrong. Sure, there's different levels of understanding an audience can have, but your initial post indicated both that people thought they wouldn't be able to understand at all, and that you personally agreed with that assessment.

This comes off as incredibly miopic. There's lots of people, especially 15 years ago, that make their decisions off of little more than the trailer and poster, maybe a plot summary. We here at DVDtalk are part of a small minority that dig into the production of a film a lot more than the general public does.

Here's some older posts from back in 2005, from this forum:
And yes, comedies and dramas are different, but failure as a show doesn't necessarily mean failure as a movie. Star Trek, technically, was a failed TV show with a small but dedicated fan base before the movies revitalized the franchise.

Cowboy Bebop. Trigun.

The point is that, while maybe some hybrids of genres may have to work harder to attract an audience, the western/sci-fi fusion wasn't inherently something that would keep people away.

The problem is that, with a title like "Cowboys and Aliens," that movie took itself way too seriously. That title suggests something silly and self-aware, which the final film wasn't.


Edit to Add:
You actually just described Police Squad. Airplane came out in 1980, Police Squad in 1982. It's very similar in tone and style to Airplane, which everybody knew and loved, and starred Leslie Nielsen from Airplane. It failed as a TV show.

I like it.

Liked the series. Never saw the movie.

I can't imagine someone unfamiliar with the show really making sense of the movie."

If he did not get every reference, then he did not REALLY make sense of the movie.

So regarding SATC, you're admitting that as an act purely of personal volition, people do not go to theaters and pay see movies that continue stories from TV shows that they have no nothing about?

And I am going to need you to clarify when you say you "saw" Star Trek movies that it means you personally decided out of your own sense of curiosity about a franchise you had no familiarity with, to go buy a ticket and watch the movies in a theater.

I stand by my statement that it is impossible for someone who has never seen the TV series Firefly to fully understand and (most certainly) fully appreciate the movie Serenity.
1) It's logical.
2) If it was possible, then that would mean the narrative and characterization was so dumbed-down from the world-building that had taken place on the series that the Firefly fans would have issues with the movie.

Whedon did a great job of balancing demands and presenting a narrative that is coherent as a stand-alone story, but the production of the movie was driven by fan interest in the TV series, and there was NO WAY Whedon was going to make a movie that ignored those fans and simply courted a new audience.

Serenity was a sci-fi action movie released in the fall. That means it was targeted to an adult, science fiction fan audience. In 2005, adult sci-fi fans were not blind-buying their movie tickets.
1) The trailer tells you that the movie is from Joss Whedon and only lists TV shows (Buffy and Angel) as his calling card credentials, and then tells you that the movie is based on a cult phenomenon that already has millions of fans.
2) One of the DVD Talk Forum posts you pulled is Todd completely stating that he is aware of Firefly.

All I am saying is something that is true, and the exceptions would prove the rule. Any novice curious enough about Serenity (for whatever reason) to consider seeing the movie would find out that it was based on an existing property.
Thus, their unfamiliarity with that property, coupled with the lack of movie stars and the lack of a high-concept marketing line, would negatively impact their desire to buy a ticket to see the movie, which answers OldBoy's question.
There wasn't anybody worth listening to in 2005 who was not saying how good the movie was. But telling the average movie-goer how good and original a movie is makes them NOT want to see it. The average movie-goer wants familiar and mediocre.

Fair enough. But Trigun did not air in the US until after Firefly had come and gone in 2002.
And either way, if 52 episodes of two cartoons in Japanese are your examples of the genre hybrid, then I still feel pretty good about saying that American movie-goers were going to be confused by the concept.
Again, the question is: why didn't people go see this fantastic move? Because what it was about didn't make any fucking sense to them.

And it is very well established that Police Squad failed as a TV series because it required that the audience actually be LOOKING AT THE SCREEN to get the jokes.
40 years ago, TV comedy still very much worked like radio with pictures. You only had to listen to it. So, for example, I could have spent all the time I've been writing this reply also "watching" Cheers because the comedy makes sense just listening to the dialogue and I only occasionally have to glance at the screen. Police Squad required undivided attention, and that was not how most people watched TV back then.

Rainy afternoon so I have had time to spend with this, but I won't anymore.

If you don't agree with what I am saying, then I challenge you to this thought experiment. We all agree Serenity is a great movie. If I'm wrong, then how do YOU explain its failure?

In 2008, a sci-fi action movie based on an obscure comic book came out and hit popular culture like an giant asteroid landing in the ocean. Why did people flock to Iron Man? It's an existing genre: super-hero origin story. It has big movie stars. It has a high concept plot: smart-ass rich guy builds a flying metal suit and fights crime.

I was one of those people who was way more familiar with the song Iron Man than some comic book (literally, all I knew about Iron Man was that it WAS a comic book), but the trailer told me everything I needed to know about the movie.

what I don’t know won’t kill me. That’s how I believe. I never saw a 4K image. Thus, I’m fine with my 1080p 3D tv. When I see 4K and this tv inevitably dies then I’ll know, but won’t regret not upgrading any sooner. I may not have gotten fan service bc I wasn’t a fan prior, but I still enjoyed the hell out of this film many times over. If I ever watch the series, then I’ll say “hey, how bout that? That’s what that is about or from” and then I’ll be like “that’s cool.”

My point and only point is that I believe the actual show was a major reason in this not being big. I think people feared they’d not know anything about what is going on. It was prior to all the streaming I believe. But, my other point is that anyone who likes a good sci-fi western in the vein of Star Wars then look no further. It is a highly enjoyable, smartly written, greatly performed movie.

And I’m not sure about this world building. This was not hard to follow and really only about The Alliance vs. Everyone else. They wanted a weapon and to keep a horrible secret they created. Whether to kill her or use her. Not really a thinking persons movie. Just an incredibly fun romp in space.

Again, quibbling semantics to not admit you were wrong.


No. It's more likely someone went with others who had seen the show, but some people just go to see movies. And I'm pretty sure I saw my first Star Trek movie on TV, largely because it was on and it seemed interesting. Also, I don't know why you're still arguing that nobody who hadn't seen a TV show would go see a movie based on that show when I provided a quote from one person who did just that.

Your original statements didn't include the equivocation "fully." You're shifting goalposts.

Interestingly, it doesn't mention Firefly, does it? Maybe part of the the problem was that Whedon wasn't a big enough draw at the time. Certainly the promotion of the Avengers films leaned more heavily on the previous MCU films and characters than who was directing it.

Shifting goalposts. What about Cowboy Bebop? Maybe before asking a "simple" question you think will prove your point, you should make sure you actually know what all the possible answers are.

Meaning, a movie based on a failed TV series can still do very well, even if few had seen or remember the TV series. So you can't blame the failure of Serenity on the failure of the TV show Firefly. After all, if Universal thought that, they'd never have greenlit the movie. If Paramount had thought that, we likely never would've had any Star Trek aside from the original series and the animated series.

How do you explain any movie failure, especially the box office failure of a good movie? Again, if it was easy to figure out why some movies fail and some movies do well, studios would never have a flop. Sometimes it's just zeitgeist, a movie is ahead of its time in certain ways, or the marketing couldn't capture it accurately, or pitched to the wrong audience.

Maybe, to some, there was a perception that they needed to see the TV show first to see the film, but digging back into old threads, there were a number of people doing just that; Sci-Fi Channel was airing episodes at the time, and the DVD set was popular. But the movie is also clearly structured in a way so that somebody completely new who hadn't seen the show can follow along and get the main amount of the story and characterization, even if missing some nuance and callbacks, and people have posted reviews saying that they understood and enjoyed the movie just fine without seeing the TV show. So I think it's too simplistic to say that "one couldn't follow the movie if one hadn't seen the TV show," and point to that as being a major reason why it failed.

Maybe, as sort of the antithesis of how Star Wars caused Paramount to revive Star Trek as a big screen movie franchise, Star Wars Episode 3 ended up burning people out on space operas for that year. Universal certain flinched and moved Serenity's release date from May to August. The lack of big name stars likely didn't help, Whedon wasn't known as a big movie director yet, and it wasn't a widely known or already popular property. It had a small but dedicated fanbase, and Universal was working on ways to try and leverage that for promotion, but maybe hadn't found the best way to do that yet. Or maybe it was still too soon for social media to be a big driver of movies. This was 2005, two years before the iPhone, a year before Twitter, and Facebook was still limited to some colleges.

It was a cult show. It lasted one season but somehow the cult audience it had got the attention of the studio (Universal) and a film came about to wrap it up. It also bombed. People also forget that a "cult audience" by definition means a small following. That's all Firefly/Serenity ever had. I love them both, but let's be real.

It was no suprise that the movie bombed, due to the circumstances. Never the less, if the movie had been "judged" meerly by its quality, it should have done better, but it was impossible to market the movie properly.

I l

Star Trek was also a "cult show" that was cancelled after 3 seasons, and it only got the third because of that cult following demanding one, then still failed in the ratings. It also had a failed revival in the animated series. Yet that cult following got the attention of the studio (Paramount), and a film came out. Somehow, that "cult show" had broader, mainstream success with the movies, which then launched new TV shows, more movies, etc.

The question isn't really whether a failed or "cult" show can or can't have much better success as a film franchise, history has shown that it's possible, but why one succeeds and another fails. Rottentomatoes score shows that the movie was positively received by both critics and audience, so it seems like nearly everyone who sees it likes it, which shifts the problem from being the film itself to the question of what was stopping people from giving it a shot.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/serenity

You're talking about a generational gap of sorts. Star Trek is embedded in the framework of pop culture and was relatively large in scope for the time and its audience were expected to be glued to the television set. When did that series first air? Mid-60's and then the first film was 40+ years ago. They kept the legacy going for it even now, but Firefly was and will never be Star Trek. It was also dumped on Fox Friday nights. Wow, what a way to treat a show. Outside of the X-Files and Millennium which used to air Friday nights -- it's a shitty time slot to dump a show on. Folks are not usually home Friday nights - they're out partying, hence the low ratings. Not only was it low rated, but Fox even dumped them out of order during airing. So the few people that did see it at the time loved , as did critics. Too bad the ratings tanked it and was canceled.

Serenity is basically Universal throwing Whedon and its audience a bone. It's an awesome movie but if you're not familiar with the show it's not going to make much sense. Sure, as with every film, you can still watch it, but the mythos will be lost upon you. Just like if you watch a Star Trek or Star Wars film/series out of sequence.

Personally, the marketing didn't help get audiences into the theater. Then again, it only had one season to work from. It was doomed from the start.

Star Trek was over forty years ago. It was the prototype of fandom and the cult franchise.

These days, almost everything is a cult hit.

I think the problem Firefly/Serenity is that it has a small fanbase that was vocal and passionate, but it never crossed over into the mainstream. Sort of like the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon; it was a big internet thing but it didn’t translate into box office success. Or Grindhouse.

Wtf has this thread become? I just wanted to know why didn’t hit? Or confirm, it might have been the cult series that diminished the returns. Holy mackerel...this is thread of year shit!

"Relatively" is a pretty loaded term. Again, NBC only renewed Star Trek for a 3rd season due to a letter campaign, and then cancelled despite another latter campaign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_T...%E2%80%931968)
I think it's hard to imagine, from here in 2020, that Star Trek was something other than an immediately and consistently successful franchise. However, in reality, it struggled on the air for 3 seasons and was cancelled. How many shows that are cancelled after 3 seasons have a successful movie franchise and multiple TV spin-offs?


So dumping a show on Friday is a death-knell, you say?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_T...%E2%80%931969)
NBC moved Star Trek to a bum timeslot, and it was losing affiliates.

This is focusing on the show, not the movie, but I don't think this hurt Firefly all that much. The big potential issue was that FOX skipped the pilot, but the marketing team apparently didn't know and used footage from the pilot to promote the show before it aired. However, the second episode was specifically written as a "second pilot," and the show wasn't as heavily serialized as shows can be now. In the commentary, I think for Out of Gas, they mention that they write at least the first 5-6 episodes of the show with the assumption that it may be the first episode anyone had seen of the show. I watched the show when it first aired, and it wasn't obvious in any way that the episodes were in anything other than intended order. The show even reshot a scene for Objects in Space to accommodate it being aired in a different slot than originally intended.

Why would Universal have done that? They had to license the movie rights from Fox TV Studios, then produce a feature film, with a feature film budget. This wasn't a "TV movie" capper like Sense 8 or Deadwood got, this was a theatrical release with a production and marketing budget to match.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was the most successful of the 6 movies featuring the original cast, by a healthy margin. Lots of people went to see that who otherwise never watched Star Trek, and they enjoyed themselves because it's a good, standalone story. I saw Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan decades before I ever sat down and watched the episode "Space Seed." I showed Serenity to my dad, who doesn't watch much TV, and he enjoyed it. A good story is just a good story, and unless it's explicitly heavily serialized, most movies can stand on their own.

Snakes on a Plane was a situation where the only real interest in the film was in the title, to make fun of online. A studio mistook the "buzz" around mocking a movie title that so boldly proclaimed its wacky premise as something that would translate into people paying money to sit in theaters and watch a B movie based on said title/premise. But mocking a movie title online is free, paying to see a movie takes money and time, and most we're willing to part with either.

Grindhouse was two cinephile directors crafting loving tributes to a niche sort of viewing experience that had long disappeared, and finding that the audience wasn't as wiling to indulge their quirks as they had in the past. Plus, didn't tickets cost double or something? Nowadays, it'd probably be billed as a Fathom event, with the two films getting separate wide releases.

Serenity was simply a solid space opera, crafted in a way that you didn't need to know anything about the previous TV show, or even know said TV show even existed, to enjoy it. The TV fans alone weren't going to be enough to drive the box office of the film, but they were an indicator that the property had appeal, if they could just convince people to come see it.

Serenity is an odd name for an action packed science fiction epic. It could have more to do with the lack of box office draw than we might want to admit.

But there are a lot of great movies that didn't do well in the box office that became classics: It's a Wonderful Life, Blade Runner, A Christmas Story, The Shawshank Redemption. I'd count Serenity among them. And ultimately, Firefly is the tv show I can recommend to people that wins more people over than just about anything TV show I've recommended. (On the flip side Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the tv show I can't sell anyone on).