Firefly
, creator/director
Joss Whedon
's hip and eclectic
sci-fi
series, may have tanked on the small screen, but it garnered the kind of devoted fan base that takes other similarly cultish programs years to muster. One of the many things that made the show so unique was its adherence to
Western
themes (as in cowboys), an element that not only informed the program's language and attitude, but its music as well. While composer
David Newman
-- he has a famous composer brother named
Thomas
(
Shawshank Redemption
,
Six Feet Under
) and even more famous cousin named
Randy
-- retains little of
Greg Edmonson
and
Whedon
's original music on the series' big-screen adaptation,
Serenity
is still occasionally kissed by a flurry of guitar and banjo, percussion, and pan-Asian flute motifs.
Newman
has taken some of the quirkiness out -- to many a fan's dismay -- and replaced it with chilly and bombastic action cues that scream mediocrity, but for the most part no great injustice has been done. In fact,
has more in common with
Joby Talbot
's eclectic score for
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
than it does
Krull
. ~ James Christopher Monger