With This Trailer, Maybe People Would Have Actually Gone to See It

Firefly‘ fans often lament that their favorite show was canceled halfway through its first season. Well, the plain fact is that hardly anybody watched the series, and its broadcast ratings were terrible. Likewise, when Joss Whedon somehow miraculously managed to convince a studio to let him make a feature film out of it, the movie ‘Serenity‘ bombed at the box office too. Maybe if it had trailers done like this one in the style of recent blockbuster ‘Inception‘, it might have actually excited people enough to make a hit out of it.

Video mash-ups in which two unrelated movies are combined together proliferate on YouTube. This one does a particularly good job of re-editing footage from ‘Serenity’ to the score from ‘Inception’, and it’s a hell of a lot more exciting than any of the film’s official trailers:

For the record, I like both ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’, but have never loved them the way that obsessive fans (so-called “Browncoats”) do.

(via Topless Robot)

5 comments

  1. Recut trailers were all the rage a couple of years ago. I believe this is the one that started them all.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic

    There are some great ones out there, ones that make Terminator 2 look like the perfect ad for NAMBLA, and that I Am Sam was a movie about Sean Penn stalking Dakota Fanning.

    (This wasn’t the one I was looking for, but… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDZ3WxFb_WY)

    Wait until you see The Shining as a comedy (I think this is it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXL8lMIbgn8)

  2. ugh. this is a sore subject for me. because universal did such a lousy job promoting the film. they did advance screenings to the fans. they are the ones YOU dont need to convince. they are going anyway. that year the studio released a fall picture in the summer with cinderella man and a summer movie in the fall with serenity. and they both bombed. the only time i saw a preview for serenity was with batman begins and i went to a lot of movies that year. and it wasn’t on any previews on dvd. good trailer btw.

  3. HuskerGuy

    No comment on the trailer as I can’t watch it at work, but I will say that I was late to the party with Firefly/Serenity but love them both now.

  4. Tim

    A good trailer, and it might have drawn a few more people into the theater. My only issue with it is the one instance of “The funny” at the end after 2 minutes of serious space drama.

    The problem, for me, with the whole movie not drawing people was the fact that there were no stars (at the time) attached to the project. As Josh mentioned, the TV show had a small audience as well. Those two factors lead to its poor showing at the box office.

    Finally, without seeing the show first, certain…events of the movie lacked emotional resonance. So, those who went into the movie blind probably didn’t come out raving about it. Without the emotional attachment to any of the characters, Serenity is probably just a low budget space action flick.

  5. Patrick A Crone

    Firefly was set up to fail. The first episode they aired was out of sequence. It bounced around on FOX’s schedule after it’s first few episodes. I liked Serenity alot. But it was a movie for Firefly fans. Alot of my friends who hadn’t seen the show were a little lost.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *