Lost in Translation 481 – Hypothetical Firefly Remake

For a work to be remade or rebooted, it needs to have two criteria. The first is age; there’s no use remaking a move made two years ago as it is still fresh in the audience’s minds. The sweet spot appears to be between twenty and thirty years. It is possible to remake an older film, but the risk is that the general audience won’t be aweare of the work. The second is popularity; an obscure work is unlikely to be recognized by the general audience. Popularity doesn’t have to be over a wide populace. Cult classics gain their audience over time as fans introduce friends and family to the work. Case in point, 1989’s UHF, which lasted a month in theatres despite starring “Weird Al” Yankovic. However, when the movie was first released on DVD in 2002, it was one of the top ten in sales. UHF gained an audience through being aired on TV and through word of mouth.

Let’s take a look at Firefly. The TV series first aired on Fox in the fall of 2002, placing it in the 20-30 year spread ideal for adaptations. The series ran for one season, getting cancelled after eleven episodes aired leaving three unaired. Fox didn’t do Firefly any favours; the series was aired out of order, with the pilot airing after the second episode and the big reveal spoiled in ads, along with pre-empting the series for sporting events, including events, like football games, running long. Despite Fox, the series gained a fanbase, leading to strong sales when the series was released on DVD. The success of the DVD led to creator Joss Whedon working with Universal to release Serenity in 2005, the film follow up to Firefly.

Firefly is definitely a cult classic, with word of mouth spreading awareness of the series. While not conventionally popular, fans of science fiction are well aware of the series. Time has passed for new fans to be brought into the fold. This makes Firefly ripe for a remake or reboot. Before getting into what that could look like, let’s examine what Firefly is.

The series was a space opera crossed with a Western, with the trappings of both. The focus was on the crew and passengers of a Firefly-class transport, Serenity. Her captain, Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Filion), and first mate, Zoe Alleyne Washburne (Gina Torres), both served in the same unit during the Unification War, where the inner worlds decided to impose an Alliance on all the colonies, whether they wanted to join or not. Mal and Zoe were at the Battle of Serenity Valley, a battle where the Independents gained the upper hand before Alliance forces carpet bombed the valley, ending the war.

Joining Mal and Zoe as crew of Serenity are Hoban “Wash” Washburne (Alan Tudyk), the ship’s pilot and Zoe’s husband; Kaylee Frye, the ship`s engineer; and Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), the muscle for Mal’s less-than-legal shenanigans. Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) rents one of the ship’s shuttles for her work as a registered Companion, lending Serenity and Mal an air of legitimacy. Three passengers picked up in the pilot that continued with the ship are Shepherd Derrial Book (Ron Glass), an itinerant pastor with a shady background; Simon Tam (Sean Maher), a trauma surgeon who left his former life to take care of his sister; and River Tam (Summer Glau), Simon’s younger, smarter sister who has been experimented on and is being hunted by an unknown organization.

The episodes “The Train Job” and “Arial” shows the difference between the core worlds and the outer colonies. In “The Train Job”, Mal is hired by a crime lord to rob a maglev train on a colony world. The world is arid, the towns dusty. The train cars included first class passengers, steerage with standing room only, and troop car, and a box car. The local law carries revolvers and bolt-action rifles, weapons easy to maintain with the limited technology available. The cargo Mal is hired to steal turns out to be needed medicine to counteract local contaminants. Mal returns the cargo, leaving the crime lord as a dangling threat.

“Arial”, by contrast, is set on one of the core worlds. The job is to break into a hospital to steal medicine that the hospital can easily replace. Ariel is a world fully terraformed, with skyscrapers and a proper hospital with the latest medical technology. Simon, who hired Mal for the job, needs to get in to access an imaging scanner to find out what happened to River, something that he couldn’t think of doing in the outer colonies due to the lack of equipment. The risks are greater on Ariel; there is more surveillance, better communications, and Alliance police not far away. The police use stunners instead of pistols, non-lethal and not suitable for other purposes. Lasers are available, but not in use by the general public. Even the trash is in better condition than living conditions on the fringe.

The question is what form should a hypothetical Firefly reboot or remake take? There are three possibilities. The first is to bring back the original cast of the characters that survived Serenity and see where they are twenty years on. The events of the movie should be the cause of an upheaval in the Alliance and Mal may be seen as either the hero exposing crimes against humanity or the villain shaking up the established order; both would be accurate. Provided the cast wants to return, this would be the largest draw for audiences. The catch would be to work out what the crew would be doing and if Serenity, the ship, would still be around.

The next possibility is a “Next Generation” approach. A new crew trying to eke out a living using Serenity, with hints about what happened to the previous crew. The fate of Mal’s crew could become the focus of a season, if a TV series is the goal, or a further exploration of the fallout from the events of Serenity if a movie is desired. This leaves room for cameos by the original cast but allows for a new direction, exploring other aspects of the setting. Audiences might complain, but quality of writing and acting may win them over.

Finally, a full remake of the original TV series, exploring plot points that got lost when Fox cancelled Firefly. Some questions were left unanswered, even after Serenity. While the origins of the Reavers, a ravenous fleet of butchers in space, was exposed in Serenity, the reason for the experimentation on River and the organization hunting her are still unrevealed. Audiences may revolt out of hand before the first episode airs. In this case, it may be easier and better to just create a new work and forge a new path and series.

The medium will depend on which of the above is chosen. A reunion movie will allow for one last hurrah with Mal and his crew. A TV series will require up front costs to recreate Serenity, but that cost can be ameliorated over the run of the season. Science fiction is more expensive than police procedurals and legal dramas; in SF, there’s no just using an existing city, though a space western can use existing sets and sites used by Westerns. There’s no need to create a new space station every episode when on the fringe; old towns and ramshackle buildings are easy to find and/or build.

This is all hypothetical. There is no telling what a reboot or remake of Firefly would look like. Ultimately, the question is whether there is an audience for a Firefly remake or reboot. It’ll take a studio to take the risk, no matter what approach is taken.