Customer Reviews

SERENITY: BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY BY JOSS WHEDON

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

A decent, but almost blandly faithful, rendition of the screenplay in novel form. For three-quarters of the book, the only differences between the two are the insertion here of scenes (from the TV show) of the Battle of Serenity Valley, and Simon trying to convince his parents that something is wrong with River, and even that is played with very straightforwardly.

The problem is, with an adaptation of a movie like this, what the fans (or even the interested) want is something that provides some extra depth, added details, background from Joss translated into novel form, whatever. Instead, we get something that neither adds to nor detracts from the movie -- the screenplay without the visuals, which ends up making it fairly ho-hum. Even in the last quarter, when we begin to get some perspective work, the book remains fairly unilluminating.

My recommendation? Purchase "Serenity: The Official Visual Guide" -- and get both the screenplay *and* copious photos *and* notes from Joss.

DeCandido ignores characters' depth from the series and makes their motivations seem juvenile. He takes us into River's mind only to tell us she's bored. Bored of what? Bored of the ever-present Alliance threat? Bored of the guilt that her brother gave up his life to save hers? River the bored school girl that's way ahead of her classmates is understandable. But, River the bored psychic fugitive privy to a secret that can change the 'Verse is not understandable. I flung the book when River repeatedly kept thinking that Simon is "too stupid to live."

He makes Inara seem like a school girl. Her decision to leave Serenity at the end of Firefly was something I would consider character defining; something she did despite of and because of her feelings for Mal. But, in the book, she just remembers leaving as doing something stupid -- there is no hint of WHY she left and what it meant for her. There is no depth.

To have a script that oozes personality with every word turned into a mind-numbing slog is a tragedy.

It's like reading a lazy adaptation of the script with some padding thrown in to make it long enough to be a novel. There is just no subtlety. Everything is either laid out bare or made dramatically mysterious. The script's stage directions offer more insight than this novel. I don't recommend purchasing it except to re-fuel your "holy crap, someone got paid to write this?" reserves.

Maybe it's not entirely his fault, though. Just as book-to-movie adaptations are usually bad, maybe the reverse is also true. The actors and the script really spoiled me.

By the way, if you want indepth essays on the series, lookup _Finding Serenity_.

Need to emphasize that I LOVE the Serenity/Firefly 'verse. One of the biggest tragedies of modern television is how a unique, fresh and special series got cancelled by Fox, and then (in my opinion) the movie gets launched with an unfounded belief that underground "buzz" would launch this movie to huge sales. So, with that said - what I didn't like about this book was the author's interpretations on how the characters on Firefly think and are perceived. For example, in the book everyone hates Jayne. But, being a fan, I don't think it's that straight-forward. Like this, there's something or the other that I just don't believe was Whedon's intent when he created the characters. All in all, this is a pretty good movie novelization, with great detail and nice job relating incidents in the movie with the TV series. But, really should have been co-written with Josh Whedon to be 5 stars.

How does one go about taking a fast-paced, character-driven story and turning it into a barely readable work that almost requires a mental four-wheel-drive setting to slog through?

I'm not exactly sure, either, but it seems that Keith R.A. DeCandido has mastered the technique. This novelization of Joss Whedon's Serenity falls far, far short of expectations. The characterization is poorly done, and becomes lost in DeCandido's attempts to cram every possible reference to Firefly around Whedon's brilliant script. It's like he obtained a copy of the script and spent an afternoon writing actions around the dialogue, all the while trying to emulate the tone of Whedon's script and get in the occasional "Look! I know Firefly!" or "See? I can be as clever as Whedon, too!" A good novelization should balance out the script with appropriate actions, not compete with it every step of the way.

I also recommend the Visual Companion instead of the novelization.

If you have not seen the movie Serenity, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK YET. If you have seen the movie, read this book several times.

Like the best novelizations, DeCandido's Serenity includes all the dialogue and action from the movie and then slides in the mustard; now we get to get inside the characters, see the motivations and histories, find out what River really thinks and what Jayne muses about when there's no one needs shootin' right off. Not that you'll find out all you'd like to, but there are a few more questions answered and some apparent inconsistencies smoothly explained. DeCandido clearly loves these characters and wears their voices well, and in this work he does exactly what Serenity fans want him to do: he makes the movie even better. And that's no small feat.

There's some good parts in here - I grew rather fond of the "verse-ish" language the author used here and there. On the whole though you're not getting you won't find the deleted scenes of the DVDs of the either the series or the movie. A couple paragraphs of backstory on Mr. Universe, maybe a line here or there... some of which was likely cut from the screenplay for a darn good reason.

The author's treatment of River was poor, as already noticed.. a very flat "bored schoolgirl" indeed. The blatant rip off from the old Trek movie's "created her own language without 'To be' which worked great until she translated 'Hamlet'" was just agonizing.

Putting the Operative on Haven was worse.

All in all.. if you must have "everything firefly" to get another glimpse it's okay.. but the suggestion of "just get the Visual Companion" is a good one.

The second star is only for the effort made with respect to backstory on some of the characters. Additionally, this adaptation includes many of the scenes cut from the movie. Nice, but it's not enough to make the time spent reading this book worth it.

Efforts aside, the result is awful. The battle of the crew holding the line against the Reavers was cringe-worthy to the level in which it misses the point, and it evokes no urgency or emotion whatsoever. Some characterization is so bad as to be insulting, Zoe's and Jayne's particularly. I've read better character analysis in fanfic.

I'm a huge fan of the series, the movie and Wheadon, and I feel this book does a disservice to them all. Get the Official Visual Companion instead.

This is a strange, schizophrenic novelization of a great screenplay. Joss Whedon's sparkling lines of dialog appear, unaltered, scattered like gems in the mud of a dull, pedestrian narrative style. And somehow, Whedon's extremely fast-paced plot gets reduced to a slog. I'd be hard-pressed to call the writing even "workmanlike," which is all I demand from a novelization.

As a big fan of the movie and "Firefly," I forced my way through this book. I give it two stars because it does contain some tidbits of backstory, and some missing scenes, that add a little depth to the whole "Serenity" experience for the focused fan. I don't know whether these are original with the novelizer or mandated by Whedon, but some of them are quite good--like the fact that Wash and Mr. Universe are old friends going way back to flight school. And that Fanty and Mingo's full real names are, well, hi-larious.

Far from not caring, the author, Keith R. A. DeCandido, posts regularly on Firefly and Serenity boards and seems to be a big fan of Joss Whedon's work himself. How he translated that enthusiasm into such plodding prose is a mystery.

Simply, a book that does not feel any need to provide any visual description of the characters or their setting is not worth reading. This one doesn't - it's simply a mechanical fleshing out of the screenplay. I feel cheated.

First of all, I'm a huge fan of all of Joss Whedon's work; especially the TV series "Firefly" and its motion picture finale "Serenity". I saw "Serenity" three times at the theater; and have watched it multiple times on DVD. So, I was really looking forward to reading the novelization of the movie.

I was hugely disappointed. Keith DeCandido's writing is so bad that I wasn't able to get very far into the book before I gave up in disgust and tossed it aside.

Trust me, you're better off just sticking with the "Serenity" DVD. Or, if you want to READ "Serenity", then you should get "Serenity: The Official Visual Companion" which contains the entire shooting script for the movie.

Don't waste your money on this second-rate novelization.