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Serenity (Widescreen Edition)
: I just got back from the first showing in my area on opening day. I am proud to report that Serenity is a pretty good movie - not great, just pretty good. It gives the audience a reason to like the characters and care about what happens to them, which is something that all 14 episodes of Firefly completely failed to do. However, it tries to do so by playing the same few cards over and over, and constantly hearing the same old things being said gets tiresome. The story is very tightly told and has many very clever plot points. It also has some noticeable gaps and contrivances for the sake of convenience. The humor, of course, is very much Joss Whedon's uniquely brilliant brand, but as with Firefly, it's not abundant. The action sequences, though cool, aren't very original; one scene felt like a ripoff of the opening space battle in Revenge of the Sith, while the scene where River fights a horde of Reavers was too much like the Smith-Neo brawl in The Matrix Reloaded. Though flawed and sometimes a bit weak, Serenity is never boring, and overall the good things about it outweigh the bad.
 The movie picks up only months after the last chapter of the series, which helps to maintain the continuity of the story arc. Some of the crew have left; Shepherd Book is now running a commune, Inara is teaching at the "Companion" training school. But the major plot is that the Alliance wants River Tam in the worse way, and has sent an assassin to find her. He will stop at nothing to obtain his prize. I won't give away too much, but I will put it this way, River does possess some serious skills when threatened.
To fully appreciate the last 1/3 of the movie, you should watch ALL of the series. You will understand.
Contrary to what other reviewers have stated, this isn't the end. Joss Whedon wants to make more big-screen chapters of Firefly. He is busy right now working on Wonder Woman, but plans on returning to the good ship Serenity.
I've had the privilege of seeing Serenity with my husband not just once, but TWICE -- once at a sneak preview several weeks ago, and again at a special midnight showing for the Browncoats in the Denver area prior to the movie's premiere here.
Having said that, I can't begin to tell everyone how highly I recommend this movie. Set in the future, Serenity picks up about where its predecessor (the short-lived, but much-loved, sci-fi/Western series Firefly) left off, weaving a tale that is rich and complex, bound to snare both fans and non-fans alike. Written and directed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel series creator Joss Whedon, Serenity brings back the entire cast of regulars from Firefly: Nathan Fillion as Capt. Mal Reynolds; Gina Torres as Zoe; Alan Tudyk as Zoe's husband, Wash; Morena Baccarin as Inara; Jewel Staite as ship's mechanic Kaylee; Sean Maher as doctor-turned-fugitive Simon Tam; Summer Glau as Simon's sister, River; Adam Baldwin as Jayne; and Barney Miller's Ron Glass as Shepherd Book. I am pleased to know that all of the Firefly regulars chose to come back for Serenity; had they declined, the film would have been nowhere as good as the series, and I would have been even less inclined to watch it.
All in all, I have to say that Joss did a wonderful job with Serenity. It's one of the best genre films I've seen since Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it's going to be one of those that anyone will want to see again and again.
One of the best movies I have ever seen. I am a 41 year old house wife. I love it and so does my 10 year old and my 14 year old. As does my husband. We hope the sales stay strong and that there is either an other movie or the series will come back. Funny, Sad, Exciting, Brilliant etc. Bring her back folks
As the Fall 2005 television season rolls around, fans of Joss Whedon's critically acclaimed hit series Firefly are eagerly awaiting the fourth season premiere. If only that were true. Back in 2002, Whedon, the creator of cult hits Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off series Angel, brought a new science fiction show to FOX that was unlike nearly every other sci-fi show ever seen (parallels have been drawn to Cowboy Bebop and the original Battlestar Galactica, but we'll ignore those for now). Firefly mixed two television genres that one would think could never mesh: sci-fi and the western. And yet Joss pulled it off. The show had great writing, amazing character development (and with nine principal characters, that isn't easy), and compelling stories. But, with all that going for it, the show was cancelled after only 11 episodes aired. Ratings were low, and FOX did very little to help the struggling series. Things should have ended there.
But they didn't. About a year later, FOX released the entire series (including three unaired episodes) on DVD, which turned out to be a very wise decision. The set sold millions of copies. Many people who had never seen the show at all before buying the set (myself included) bought it anyway due to positive publicity and admiration for Whedon's other work. We bought the set. We showed it to our friends. Our friends bought the set. Eventually, Universal Studios took notice of the success of this cancelled series, and so they bought the movie rights to the series. They got Joss to write and direct the movie, and they even got all nine actors to reprise their roles for the film. How's that for fan support?
Six months after the events of the Firefly finale, "Objects In Space", a few things have changed aboard the firefly class transport Serenity. Inara (Morena Baccarin) and Shepard Deria Book (Ron Glass) have left the ship. River (Summer Glau) has begun going on missions with Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), Jayne (Adam Baldwin) and Zoe (Gina Torres), much to her brother Simon's (Sean Maher) chagrin. River is a "reader" as Mal calls her; she can read others thoughts and sense danger, which makes her a powerful asset for thieves like Mal and his crew. Apparently, things haven't been going well for the crew of Serenity. Pieces of the ship are falling off, making flying it tough, even for an experienced pilot such as Wash (Alan Tudyk), and Kaylee (Jewel Staite), Serenity's engineer, is having trouble keeping the ship in working order.
What's worse, Simon and River are still fugitives on the run from the Alliance, and it seems like the Alliance is getting desperate to get the pair back. They have enlisted the aid of an Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a nameless agent of the Alliance who is used for the most important and classified missions. He is a perfect agent; he does not let emotion get in the way of his objectives, he is skilled in martial arts, fencing, and marksmanship, and will stop at nothing to accomplish his mission.
If it wasn't bad enough that Mal and the crew had an enemy hunting them from the outside, River continues to become more and more unstable and dangerous. Out of nowhere, she goes on a rampage in a bar, beating anyone who came near her into unconcisousness, even her friends from Serenity. Finally, the Reavers, which are a group of people driven insane from being in space for too long without human contact, are becoming more and more visible. Once the stuff of legends, they are making their existence apparent to the citizens of the solar system.
Serenity displays Whedon's trademark wit and knack for storytelling. The film successfully answers many questions left in the air from the end of the series (while leaving many others to be addressed in future films). Not only that, but the answers make perfect sense (from what I've heard, Joss planned out seven seasons of Firefly before the first even aired, and the movie takes us through the end of the second season). Furthermore, the Operative is one of the best villains I've seen in a long time. He is smart, dangerous, and ruthless. Yet he has no delusions as to what he does, a trait very rare in film and television villains.
As to Whedon's wit, while this movie is definitely a drama, there are many hilarious lines throughout the movie, as well as a few things that poke fun at the science fiction genre.
It has been a grueling year and a half waiting for this movie to be released, but the wait has been worth it. This is without a doubt the best movie I've seen this year. While 2005 hasn't had a lot a great films, the few amazing ones have been just that, amazing. Serenity is definitely the best on a short list of great films this year, and while it isn't the most hyped movie of the year, it is the best, and I truly think that is has potential to be the sleeper hit of the year. Fans will love this movie because, while we would much rather have waited three months for the fourth season as opposed to one and a half years for this film, this movie is worth every penny paid for theater admission. It will remind us why we fell in love with these characters and the universe they live in. It will give us answers to questions we have been dying to hear, and it's just plain fun. Non-fans will be drawn in by the quality of writing, acting, and effects. Now that Star Wars is over, people will be looking for the "next big thing", and this could possibly be it (I feel that is superior to Star Wars in pretty much every way, especially the new trilogy).
Even people who aren't sci-fi fans should see this movie, because believe me when I say that it is that good.
It's kind of strange; the theme of the show was about people trying to get by in life without restraint. In reality, this show was unjustly killed way before its time, yet its fans are now getting to experience it again due to their own actions. The theme song was right, they can't take the skies from us.
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