Serenity Fails at the Box Office

So there you have it Browncoats: the dream is fizzling out right before your eyes. The reality is now staring back at you: Firefly was cancelled and is never coming back on TV, and Serenity has failed to generate interest from any kind of sizable audience. The jig is up: your beloved franchise is dead?finally. Now we can all stop hearing about it. The truth is that the whole concept was never that good to begin with, and the TV show was certainly nothing special. People will just latch on to any space-faring sci-fi nugget that comes around once in a blue moon; thus is the nature of nerdiness. For God?s sake, the fans of Farscape started a letter-writing campaign and got that show put back on the air. Like Firefly, I barely knew such a series existed.

Fox had good sense, which is the reason they cancelled the series so soon. They realized that it was unlikely to hit big with a major audience, and decided to cut their losses. They don?t care that it has a cult following (there?s a reason they call it a ?cult following,? by the way); that doesn?t sell commercial products on television. Entertainment becomes ?cult? for a reason: it has a small, but devoted fan base (key word: small). Most cult movies and TV shows don?t last long or do very well at the box office. Mainstream audiences don?t want ?niche? programming; all they desire are paintings in very broad strokes.

I wouldn?t care too much that Serenity is a bad movie if it weren?t for the incessantly rabid fans writing into this site saying how brilliant and incredible it is. Keep in mind that most of these people made such comments without even having seen the film yet. That puts all those folks in the same category as super-uptight politicians and religious groups who love to condemn ?obscene? entertainment without even taking a look at it.

Browncoats are just the reverse of that, clamoring to praise anything Whedonesque; they say that anyone who doesn?t like the Firefly universe ?just doesn?t get it.? Well, they?re right: I don?t get it. I don?t get why certain people are so obsessed with this TV show, and why these same people say the movie is great. I really don?t get the very positive critical reaction that Serenity produced; surely there are some professional movie-watchers out there who recognize how throwaway this flick is. Well, even if the moronic critical community has thrown their lot in with something undeserving, at least the general audience has recognized Serenity as being forgettable; the lack of sales and lack of excitement prove it. Forget about a sequel, or a trilogy. Forget about another TV series. ?You can?t stop the signal?? Oh yeah? The signal has been stopped.