Avengers shatters all boxoffice opening weekend records.

You aren't comparing like with like. Avengers has an almost perfect score on "pure entertainment" but completely fails on the "makes you think" "carries a message" and "requires you to engage higher thought processes" scales.

And I would certainly put Serenity in the top 10 of Science Fiction movies of all time scale. Which is more impressive when you remember that there are far more science fiction movies in existence than there are Superhero movies. You would be pushed to compile a "top ten" of superhero movies and actually have 10 good movies in it.

Translation: We're not the ones to save the day, so we don't want anything to do with it.

Both Nolan Batman movies, Kick-***, the first two Spiderman movies, first two superman movies With Christopher Reeve, First two X-men movies and X-men first class. There's probably only another 10 that are actually good that I could name off hand though so I get your point.

Serenity didn't really make me think or engage higher thought processes (unless you count depression as part of higher thought processes). If there was a message there, I didn't care, as I was feeling pretty apathetic by the time the credits rolled.

I don't particularly wish to denigrate a movie I like (Serenity), but please. You are blowing it up to be far more than it was. It was a decent film. It did have a message, but deep? Let's be real here. I've seen it plenty of times. I quite like it, but 'requires you to engage higher thought processes'? I mean, oh what did someone mention earlier - if you're the family pet.

Serenity has too many flaws to even nudge the top 10 of science fiction.

Now I will admit that the superhero genre is much smaller, but then I think a case could be made that Avengers is one of the better action films out there for that matter. It really was a great movie in an absolute sense.

Apart from the two Batman* films and the first Superman, there are none which are comparable as films to a top ten (or top 20) of SF films.

Sure, the X-men films are okay as thowaway popcorn flicks, but they simply aren't in the same league as The Day the Earth Stood Still (original), Forbidden Planet, Avatar or Star Wars.

*Some would include Burton's Batman films, but they score higher with the non-fanbase (Burton's Batman Returns is a favourate of Mrs PRAF, who doesn't like the Nolan films). I might throw in the Hellboy films, personally.

Superman II suffers a bit as it's FX haven't aged as well as some of the other films mentioned.

Here is a hint: it's not in for the story, it's in for the world-building.

Star Wars also has a very simple and unoriginal story.

You make an excellent point the only super hero movies I would even think are comparable to Sci-fi top ten would be Kick-*** and the Second Batman movie.

my hate for it doesn't allow me to see past that, for now.

Agreed don't know what the whole hype was for I would never put Avatar in a top ten anything films except maybe top ten 3D films and I don't really care about 3D so that's how much I think of it.

Yes, because apparently the military working with giant robots from OUTER SPACE is entirely realistic.....

On the point of the gross takings so far, I had wondered why the movie premiered out here a good week before the US release and had it answered the other day on tv. The very short answer is that domestic gross in the US is so far down at the moment for any movie released in the country that the strategy has now shifted to releasing internationally as that's where the money lies.

Apparently this theory is based on the notion that American audiences are simply burnt out beyond any reasonable level to see a film, whereas international audiences are not. Of course, watching this and simply wondering out aloud that if the major studios didn't try and ram every second film down the moviegoers' throats from June onwards would help (thank you George Lucas for inadvertantly creating a monster) is purely just foolishness on my part.



S.

Or perhaps the U.S. Military prefers to help with films that are portraying the actual U.S. Military (no matter the context). As the article stated, they weren't quite sure what the heck SHIELD actually was. It's not like the movie defines it particularly well for that matter.

good! The pentagon has better crap to do than consulting on a movie.

This is it, pretty much. I'd be surprised if the US Military actively supported something as nebulous as a fictional UN(?) Military Operation inside US Borders. Just doesn't seem like their thing or worth their time.

Note withholding support doesn't mean the same thing as campaigning against it. So lets not overreact.

There's also Kick-*** (my favorite superhero film), V for Vendetta, The Incredibles, Megamind, Unbreakable, Watchmen, heck even the first half of Hancock was great. I'd rate any of those, well not Hancock, above any of the recent Marvel films or Serenity.

I also love how you try to pass your own completely arbitrary and biased view off as the one authority on what is "good" and what isn't.

Yes - bad shows spawn bad movies.

And now a thread about the financial success of Avengers becomes a thread where fans of 'X' troll fans of 'Y', and vice versa

It teaches us that only the good white people can save the the primitive but noble blueskins from the evil white people.

Well, with GG making more than a cameo appearance in the thread, troll infestation was an inevitability. The snark index is now heading off the charts. Well, it was a good thread while it lasted...

This is one point that I just can't agree on. To say this about any from of entertainment is just, I think, not a valid argument. How many bands/musicians don't get popular until 10 or more years into their career? Metallica is a pretty good example here; they have a decently sized, hardcore following, then they release an album more aimed at a mainstream audience, get radio and MTV/media coverage, and turn into one of the biggest bands on the planet. Look at how long it took Lord of the Rings to go from something "nerds" read in their parents' basement to being part of pop culture. Look at Family Guy, which got cancelled, and brought back through word of mouth and DVD sales. Star Trek. If any of these things had gotten the "1 and done" treatment that Firefly got, we wouldn't still be talking about them today.

And as for the order the episodes aired in not having an effect, I think that can relate directly to Avengers. If it had come out first, before the general, non comic book crowd, saw the individual movies, would it have been as successful? Would it have worked if the general viewing audience had no idea who these characters were? Personally, I think one of the reasons it worked so well was because it was built up the right way. Marvel took a chance giving each of those characters their own movies to set the stage, and it paid off in a big way.

I've introduced a lot (in relative terms) of people to Firefly, and it has almost unanimously been met with praise, even from friends who don't like sci-fi. I realize that's just anecdotal evidence, but I think that it does speak to the possibility that Ff could have been more successful given studio support and publicity. I'm not going to argue whether Serenity was better than Avengers or Star Wars, I like them all, and everybody is going to like different things, so that doesn't bother me. But some people () (not you, Oz) have reverse fanboy blinders on when it comes to Firefly.

Most threads devolve to petty arguments, semantics, and personal insults (usually carried over from older threads) by the time they get into about three or four pages into it. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Sometimes a LOT shorter. This seems to be human nature. In the end we're all just a bunch of clever apes that like to bicker constantly at each other.

If this board wasn't moderated, and you looked at the last few posts from each and every mile long thread, I'd wager they'd all read just about the same!

They also liked the Avengers - it scored higher with them too.

Wouldn't word of mouth have helped it, like it did with the first Star Wars movie? It was delayed from a Christmas release date, and launched in what was then the quiet time for movies - but word of mouth turned it into a global phenomenon.
Surely the "it's like Star Wars, only much better" enthusiasim from the Brownshirts would have been enough to at least get enough people out to let break even at the box office?
It's not like it even had a John Carter budget - it shouldn't have been that difficult to earn it back.

That's the whole point - there wasn't enough interest to get Firefly brought back, or to make a movie that'd even be able to earn back its budget at the box office.
Wouldn't the 3 years between the end of the series and the release of the movie have helped to build up a bigger fanbase like other "cult" seires?