Frog blast the vent core

I have mixed feelings about Joss Whedon. I never cared much for Buffy and the only episode of Angel I've seen involved the one where he's turned into a puppet. (If they're all like that, I may have to see more. But I imagine they probably are not...)

Anyway, despite that I loved Firefly. Even though Westerns in space have been done before (Cowboy Bebop, I vaguely remember hearing about a video game with the same premise, Space: 1889, etc.), there's something about the execution of the show that I really liked. Fox mangled the show by airing it out-of-sequence, interrupting it all the time, etc., but the cast and crew may finally have a chance to reach a bigger audience.

So anyway, I've been trying to figure out about how to talk about seeing Serenity last night without spoiling anything for you. If you're interested in the show in any way, I strongly recommend running to the theater this weekend. Close personal friend Maliceangst and I are both fans of the show and have seen the episodes several times. The guy next to us didn't know anything about it, but grew to like it as the movie went on.

It being Firefly, I can safely say the following things happen without giving away the store:

• Explosions
• Fighting
• Sexual tension
• Crazy people
• Witty dialogue with a smattering of weird Western idioms and Cantonese swearing

Malice and I had a couple of theories as to what happens next. If the film does well, there could be either a new series or a couple of films. Or it may get the bad mojo from the single trailer they had at the preview—a film version of Doom starring the Rock.

Now don't get me wrong. I dig on the Rock, he makes me laugh, I still giggle when I think of his appearance on SNL as Nick, the stop-smoking helper who punches you until you quit smoking. And I have to give them props for filming in first-person-shooter vision! Still, it's not as if Doom had a narrative more complicated than a grocery list. And I suspect the reason that the studio was giving out free passes to Serenity was to judge the reaction to the Doom trailer. If they were going for camp, the howls of laughter were right on the money. If they were looking for a serious film about hell and zombies and demons, well... there's not enough time to recut the movie for its October release.

I think if they're going to make any video game into a film, they should go for Marathon. There's enough backstory to fill years and years of a Web site. Holy shit. I've been reading that page off and on for ten years. TEN. That's like a millennia in giant robot years!

Anyway, doing Marathon for a movie would be at least a trilogy, plus it sets up the inevitable Halo movie, and then you could do Pathways Into Darkness as a prequel. And as Bungie is Microsoft owned now, there's an inexhaustible supply of money for marketing. My personal favorite reason is that I want to see another generation scream like Bobs. And Bobs with guns. "See you starside."