Serenity Chronicles I, The: Firefly by MusicEd921

Not my exact title, but it works for this thread.

Many have tried, none have succeeded.....

Now is the time Serenity will fly again (I hope, there seems to be a curse whenever anyone attempts this).

Just like the other ideas posted, I am going the same route.

The trilogy will be called either: The Chronicles of Serenity OR The Firefly Saga

Part 1: Untitled at this point. This is the only one I haven't started work on yet. Like the airdate of the show, I am saving the Pilot episode for last. The idea was to use only the Pilot with the 2 deleted scenes, but Out of Gas had been suggested to me by BionicBob.

Part 2: War Stories. This was the first one I took a crack at and it seemed to go pretty well. I used The Train Job, Ariel, War Stories, and a few scenes from Objects in Space. Scattered about are all of the River Tam Sessions so we can see River's slow decline as the Alliance continued experimenting on her. BionicBob previewed it and said while it did feel episodic (I think we can all agree there really is no way around that), it worked pretty well! This edit clocks in at 2hr 15 mins without credits.

Part 3: (Untitled, but thought of The Journey to Miranda or The Secret of Miranda). This is an extended edition (that is nearing completion) inserting almost ALL of the extra and alternate footage. This edit clocks in at 2hr 9 mins with credits.

Would love to hear your thoughts! I would like to get some feedback on the shakiest one, which is War Stories since it is pretty much 3 episodes combined with little tweaks here and there.

One thing I am doing is I want to always play the Serenity theme during the title of all of the films to give it a unified feel.

The plan, if possible, is to release one at a time starting in July. Hopefully I can give you guys some summer movies to look forward to now!

I have a trailer for Serenity, but it will be attached to the end credits of War Stories. No other trailers have been worked on yet.

Anyway, thoughts/suggestions?

Shiny! :thumb:

How about THE SERENITY CHRONICLES... I think it flows a little nicer off the tongue... lol
or THE BROWNCOAT CHRONICLES?
or THE AGE OF SERNITY?

This sounds like a lot of fun! For one thing, the pilot did not feel like the rest of the show (in my opinion) and really, the film Serenity has its own feel too. This is why your idea rocks so much, I can see the progression just from your description. Each film in your trilogy has a different feel just based on source material! I'm excited to see what you do with it. Do you have any plans to remove material from the pilot or perhaps incorporate some footage from other films to show armies training or more battles? I don't know of any off the top of my head that would fit but i do know they reused costumes from other sci fi films and shows so something may fit if you care to go that direction. Good luck!

I'm a big Firefly fan and I was heartbroken when there was no season 2. The movie "Serenity" is nice but it doesn't replace a full season 2.

I'm looking forward to a Firefly edit. But after reading your description it's still not clear to me what you intend to do. Are you turning season 1 into movies?

Looking forward to this, while an ongoing series would have been nice, Firefly, in retrospect probably worked out for the best with it's short run, a simplified feature length mini-series format probably does suit it more

Great to see some interest! To answer some of your questions:

Bob: I had thought about using Serenity Chronicles, but I saw someone else had attempted this type of idea using that title and I was afraid of both stepping on their toes and jinxing my edit lol! It does have a nice ring though. We'll see.

Addiesin: You know what, I hadn't thought of that! I did hear uniforms from Starship Troopers were reused for the look of the Alliance. I'll take a look over at Troopers to see if anything inspires me.

NewSpock: My goal is to tell the overall story of the show and movie within a trilogy of films. This is in NO WAY to replace or better the show. You can't improve perfection! I just wanted to tell a more condensed version of the story. What I hope to portray are 2 things, obviously the story of River and the secret that made her lose her mind, and a take a subtle look at the ark Mal has when it comes to his faith. In the pilot, there is a cut scene following the aftermath of the battle at Serenity Valley where he indicates his disbelief in God. In the second movie of my trilogy, he tells Book that he has a place on his boat, not God. In Serenity, Book and Mal talk about belief in something and that Mal just needs to believe. With Mal having something to believe in, he makes the effort to get to Mr. Universe to broadcast the signal.

So yes, there will be 3 movies.

On a side note, while Serenity will be an extended edition, I did make ONE SMALL CUT. It was to the very last little joke tag at the end of the movie. After everything that had happened and the tone that was set at the ending, I felt a bit put off with watching the newly rebuilt ship fly off into space with the music making a nice crescendo and then whoops! A piece of the ship came off and Mal utters his opening lines again. What I did instead, was slightly slow down Serenity as it gets into space and replace the music from the score CD so that as Serenity is flying into space the film cuts right to black in sync with the music ending.

Here's the rundown of Part 2. This will be ready for previews very soon. Cut list will also come later.

War Stories

The film opens in a bar where Mal, Zoe and Jayne are playing Chinese Checkers and having a drink when an Alliance member wants to have a toast for Unification day and it has been 5 years since the war ended. A brawl ensues, but not before Mal gets information for a job. While en route to meet the man hiring for Mal's job, we learn that River has been having dreams of what happened to her at the Alliance camp. This is where I will be inserting one of the River Tam session clips. Mal's job involves working with Adelai Niska, a ruthless gangster that employs Mal and his crew to rob a train carrying Alliance goods. Due to a complication, Mal and team find that they have stolen medical supplies from a planet that is in desperate need of them and the Alliance will not restock them. Mal and team give the supplies back, but since they did not deliver to Niska, his men come looking for them to which Mal disperses one of them and sends the money back with the others.

In need of work and following a violent outburst from River, Simon offers the crew a job since they will be on the planet Ariel to drop off Inara for her annual companion checkup. The job is to sneak Simon and River into the hospital so they can examine River's brain while Mal and Zoe steal medical supplies that are worth a small fortune. Complications arise as Jayne tries to turn in Simon and River, but after the Alliance betrays him, he breaks them out and they all escape, but not before Mal shows Jayne not only that he knows he got greedy, but they he himself felt betrayed by what Jayne did.

Now that the crew is living comfortably with the money they are making off of selling the medical supplies, a marital dispute causes Wash to go on a run with Mal instead of Zoe. During the exchange, the buyers are killed and Mal and Wash are taken by Niska and his men. After finding out they were taken, Zoe organizes to bring money to Niska to buy back the 2 kidnapped crew, but Niska will only release one. Zoe brings Wash back and Wash rallies the crew to go back and rescue Mal. While storming Niska's space station, Kayleigh is pinned down under gunfire as Niska's men are about to board Serenity. River shows up next to Kayleigh, grabs her gun and after memorizing where the men are, closes her eyes and fires killing all of them to which she replies "no power in the 'verse can stop me."

After the rescue of Mal and some time has passed, River has a brief episode where she is feeling guilt and imagining what people are thinking about her and then she picks up a twig which in actuality was a gun. After the situation is diffused, people are calmed thinking River has never held a gun before, but Kayleigh tells everyone what happened during Mal's rescue. Mal isn't sure what he wants to do since he feels that he isn't sure whether she really is a danger or just a peculiar and odd little girl. He has everyone go to bed while he mulls it over. As he goes to bed, we see the final River Tam session where we see that River takes the pen from the interviewer and kills him with it. Film cuts to black with the chilling image of River and her bloodied hands looking at the screen saying "I see you."

Zarius said:

Looking forward to this, while an ongoing series would have been nice, Firefly, in retrospect probably worked out for the best with it's short run, a simplified feature length mini-series format probably does suit it more

Click to expand...

Hey there! You posted as I was writing that long novel before, so don't want you to think I missed your post. I agree that while I would love to see more and more Firefly, that fact that we got just a little taste was enough to make it never go stale. I love love love Buffy, but it grew a little tiresome during season 4 and then again during season 6 for me. Firefly never got a chance to let up!

Again, I'm not trying to improve what I consider perfection. I just want to give fans an alternate viewing of a great story. Now you can REALLY marathon the story!

Interesting idea. I'm curious to see how this plays out.

bionicbob said:

How about THE SERENITY CHRONICLES... I think it flows a little nicer off the tongue... lol
or THE BROWNCOAT CHRONICLES?
or THE AGE OF SERNITY?

Click to expand...

Just tossing another idea in because I love the idea of using the term Browncoat:

The Browncoat Trilogy

Although I really like the Serenity Chronicles, and honestly, I really like the thread title as the edit title too.

agree with The Browncoat Trilogy or Firefly: The Big Gorram Trilogy.

So, should each movie just have a standalone title as opposed to a blanket title. What I mean is, like for Chronicles of Narnia it is Chronicles of Narnia: Lion, Witch etc. and then Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian etc.

or or should Firefly: The Big Gorram Trilogy serve as an all encompassing title like Lord of the Rings? We refer to each of those by their own little title but we refer to the whole trilogy as The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Wow that got complicated. Sorry.

I like the second idea, more like Lord of the Rings.

You can have a title for the overall trilogy arc if you want, like The Serernity Chronicles or whatever...

But keep each individual movie title to the point:

FIREFLY
FIREFLY: WAR STORIES
FIREFLY: SERENITY

oh! Just thought of a title for the first one.... From the Ashes of Serenity. Get it? Rising from the aftermath of the Battle of Serenity?

How about "THE GENESIS TRILOGY" !!! :lol:

That's...disturbing.

I think GORRAM is spelt with only one "R".

GORAM

Firefly.wikia.com has it with 2 r's, but some other places have it with 1. Maybe I should just use 3 to be safe.

GORRRAM!

I like the From the Ashes of Serenity title a lot!

What did you think of the Journey to Miranda or The Search for Miranda for part 3?

I feel like Firefly: Serenity just sounds like 2 titles in one and if I end up using From the Ashes of Serenity as the title for the pilot, I want to have something a little catchier for the finale of the story.

How about REVELATIONS for the finale?

or The Miranda Revelation.

Works on two levels... Mal's struggle with his faith and the truth about the Reavers.

Neat idea!

musiced921 said:

Part 3: (Untitled, but thought of The Journey to Miranda or The Secret of Miranda). This is an extended edition (that is nearing completion) inserting almost ALL of the extra and alternate footage. This edit clocks in at 2hr 9 mins with credits.

Click to expand...

I assume you mean an extended version of the Serenity theatrical movie? You don't actually say that, but it sounds like you're referring to that rather than the TV episodes.

I like Bionic Bob's suggestion regarding the titles. It's fine to use semi-colons if the title is otherwise kept short. I always thought the Chronicles of Narnia film titles were way too long and unwieldy.

Of course, I would really be excited if you could edit Serenity to undo my two least favorite character deaths ever (you know who I mean). If you could keep those characters alive, I would be thrilled! I'm not sure there's a way to do that and make the rest of the story make sense, though.

TomH1138 said:

Of course, I would really be excited if you could edit Serenity to undo my two least favorite character deaths ever (you know who I mean). If you could keep those characters alive, I would be thrilled!

Click to expand...

Hell no! That was one of the great things about the movie. Stakes raised, no one is safe. In fact, near the end, I thought Joss was gonna kill them all off.