Battlefleet Gothic Ultra-Deluxe Epic Scale!

/set up is a biatch
//almost as much as hauling your 'minis' to the game

Kaylee, go find the kid who's taking a dirt nap with baby Jesus, 'cause we're going to need a hood ornament.

//sometimes it's worth watching the outtakes

zulius: Watching it a second time around, I'm enjoying it a little more, but I still can't shake the whole 'Stealing from Cowboy Bebop / Outlaw Star / Trigun' feeling. I know other shows do it too, but I think it's more predominant in Firefly / Serenity.
/Mancrush on Fillon, who doesn't?

Serentiy could have been a lot better if they'd stuck to copying Cowboy Bebop. Instead, they added too many characters and stuck all plot holes through Summer Glau's character. Waste of a show with that many plots floating around. It's like a mandatory buffet when all you really need is meat and two kinds of veggies.

zulius: Watching it a second time around, I'm enjoying it a little more, but I still can't shake the whole 'Stealing from Cowboy Bebop / Outlaw Star / Trigun' feeling. I know other shows do it too, but I think it's more predominant in Firefly / Serenity.
/Mancrush on Fillon, who doesn't?

Space Western isn't exactly an original concept. It's been around since at least 1950 in one form or another. Firefly was just a really good take on the genre.

Example: Judge Dredd had a Western storyline published back in 1977, set on the moon. That's about 20 years before the anime you listed was made.

KiplingKat872: doglover: zulius: Watching it a second time around, I'm enjoying it a little more, but I still can't shake the whole 'Stealing from Cowboy Bebop / Outlaw Star / Trigun' feeling. I know other shows do it too, but I think it's more predominant in Firefly / Serenity.
/Mancrush on Fillon, who doesn't?

Serentiy could have been a lot better if they'd stuck to copying Cowboy Bebop. Instead, they added too many characters and stuck all plot holes through Summer Glau's character. Waste of a show with that many plots floating around. It's like a mandatory buffet when all you really need is meat and two kinds of veggies.

NotSureIfSerious.jpg

Look at all the great westerns. You've got 3-7 people.

Firefly (I've been in Japan since 2004, get the TV Show and Movie names confused) has nine, I repeat NINE protagonists on the ship. That's TOO MANY. Cowboy Bebop has maybe 10 main characters TOTAL. Only 4 protagonists and one dog.

Compare this to what is perhaps the greatest western John Wayne ever did: The Searchers. You've got 3 protagonists, maybe two. Firefly was a nice attempt, but they went too far too fast and filled up the roster like a Star Trek. But Star Trek isn't a western. You can have many people.

Face it, Firefly doomed itself.

Shiny!

/can't believe I beat you to this, people

KiplingKat872: I would say that its survival as a cult hit, despite how little of it there is, indicates Whedon had a pretty sucessful formula.

Fox certainly didn't help.

And of course Whedon had a successful formula. He stole it from Cowboy Bebop, who in turn stole it from every Western ever. And Westerns stole it from other traditions. Etc etc etc. All stories are old.

Also, I've never heard of the Wild Bunch, despite repeatedly asking people for recommendations of good ones right here on Fark.com, which lends credence to my assertion that many protagonists is the exception, not the rule in Westerns. And I thank you for that. Looks good.

But I'm tellin' you, FIrefly was good, but doomed. They had talented actors and novel twists, but Serenity was flying on wax wings.

KiplingKat872: I would say that if you have never heard of the Wild Bunch, especially while living in Japan, your expertise on what makes a good western is pretty limuted. That's one of the classics.

I've seen most of 'em.

Any given top ten list, for example, http://www.filmcrave.com/list_genre_movie.php?genre=Western, is usually made up of everything I've seen.

Also, I'm not just counting movies. How many outcasts were in Poker Flat? 4 and a mule. How many cowboys in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? 3. How many protagonists in Tombstone? Even WITH the wives 8 and Tombstone isn't even actual fiction because the characters are based on real people. But really, there's only 4 actual main characters.

Trigun 4, Outlaw Star 5, Cowboy Bebop 4, Hang 'Em High 1, Unforgiven 3, Butch Casidy and the Sundance Kid 2, and I can't remember how many in bloody McClintock but even if it's a lot it's also a comedy.

vossiewulf: Kaylee, go find the kid who's taking a dirt nap with baby Jesus, 'cause we're going to need a hood ornament.

//sometimes it's worth watching the outtakes

That quote was exactly what I thought when I saw this- which of the bodies is dirt-nap kid?

KiplingKat872: Plus you are creating a false analogy by comparing a TV show which was supposed to have 20+ 45 minute episodes to tell their story to films which only have two hours to tell theirs.

Not really. Firefly was Cowboy Bebop in live action. The format, the setting, all of it. Cowboy Bebop has maybe... 6 episodes out of 26 that advance the main plot. But it's still rock solid.

Firefly has the same thing. You're not seriously gonna tell me the planet where everyone worshiped Jayden had anything to do with anything. That's just a random story. All TV shows do that.

And yes, all of the story lines were good. I really liked the preacher's whole deal (until the movie) and mechanic chicks are hot.

But Firefly was trying to cover too many bases in one swoop. Yes, complex plots and huge casts can work. But they can also backfire too. Especially when you're doing a space western.

KiplingKat872: And it's Jayne. Not Jadyn.

I should get bonus points for gettin' that close.

KiplingKat872: You just don't like big casts and complex plots.

Not true. I love complex plots, like in Game of Thrones or something where there's so many players that even introducing them all takes a whole season. But the difference is that Game of Thrones keeps it sharp. The whole menagerie moves forward in logical steps and the themes are the complexity of intrigue and the changing fortune of war.

Much like range coffee is served black, though, you want to keep it simple when you're dealing with Western themes. Too many characters and too much going on and you no longer have the Big Empty sucking at your soul and driving you to question the meaning of it all. That's what it's all about, in the end, with a Western. And Firefly was most certainly a western.