i can’t even formulate a post about the movie. i can’t tell you how amazing it was without coming off like the comic book guy, and i can’t talk about specifics of the plot without giving away how much joss whedon messes with you in this movie.
suffice it to say that where most movies disappoint compared to the version in your head that is created by the trailer, serenity is a hundred times better than that. there is so much going on in this movie that even a trailer that gives away more than i’d like doesn’t spoil the show.
i don’t want to compare it to other recent scifi movies, really the only comparison worth making is with firefly. it IS firefly. it doesn’t feel like a movie adaptation, it doesn’t feel like an alternate universe version of the story, and it doesn’t feel like a standalone story in the same universe. this is the endcap to the plot arcs from the series, the payoff that we didn’t get from fox. this is the rest of the season boiled down to it’s best elements. this is is joss finishing the story he started, in such a way that you don’t have to have seen the beginning to appreciate it’s scope. he opens by giving you exactly as much introduction as you need to get by, and the movie does the rest.
and because whedon had a gigantic budget compared to any of his shows, this movie is simply on fire with energy. the scope of it is epic, the concepts are intense, and it’s incredibly dark. this is not a movie where it slots in between two episodes of the series, such that by films end we’ve returned to the status quo. this is a movie where our much beloved crew goes on an incredibly dangerous run and returns significantly worse for the wear. a return to form for them will be much like sam and frodo returning to their simply idyllic life in the shire after a year tromping around in mordor. they’ll soldier on but it will never be quite the same.
serenity is unrelenting. which is amazing since it’s pg-13 and just under two hours. i wanted to avoid the obvious comparisons, but star wars doesn’t even come close to having this much depth. the only current science fiction on the same level is the new battlestar galactica series.
it’s so good that jill, who didn’t like firefly, loved it, and is going to give the series another chance.
Hear, hear! I agree with you 100%, and I especially like your point about other TV movies returning to the status quo.
Joss Whedon is my Master now.
October 1st, 2005 at 5:04 pm
[...] Unfortunately, as Sean noted in his review, I can’t say much about the movie without giving away any story. Suffice to say that Sean is absolutely right when he says that this isn’t an interlude or filled with fluff material that just resets the show’s status quo at the end. This movie is hardcore, and picks up right where the show left off. This is the endcap for the series, allowing Joss to show us the conclusion to the first epic storyline he had going, before he can move onto new ground. Things blow up. People Die. Conspiracies are unearthed. Witty dialogue is bantered. This movie is 100% Joss Whedon, and whatever you like about the show, you’ll find it in the movie. [...]
October 1st, 2005 at 6:53 pm
As one who never watched the show, I had no problem following, though I do have two questions that fans like you may have answers to.
1. Why does River don goggles for the first mission when no one else does?
2. Given how animalistic the reavers are, how exactly do they manage to maintain and fly spaceships?
October 2nd, 2005 at 11:47 pm
1) Because she’s a strange little girl. Seriously, no reason, she probably just saw them and wanted to wear them. River does her own thing, and the rest of the crew pretty much lets her, as long as it’s not hurting anyone. The show has lots more examples of River acting oddly, including ripping labels off cans, waving guns around, cutting Jayne with a knife, and just generally talking nonsense all the time.
2) This is never explained. Before the movie, we never had any hints as to the origins of the Reavers, so now that I’ve seen the movie, this actually makes more sense to me now. I’m picturing them as sort of the ultimate Klingons or Romulans, or even Orcs. They’re still capable of building/modifying/hacking technology, but they’re savage and angry all the time. Notice they also use guns, not just knives and swords, which again shows they’re not just animals, but still have some human functionality.
October 3rd, 2005 at 7:11 am
the reavers are hyper-aggro, but they’re not feral. cross the klingons with the cenobites and you’ve got a better analogy.
and they’re clearly not stupid either, given that one ship stalking the serenity.
October 3rd, 2005 at 8:31 pm
the vision of the reavers from the series, as outlined at the start of the movie, was spacers who went out too far and went mad. they haven’t forgotten how to run their ships, but they’re not as careful with them anymore. notice as well that the reaver ships were modified, equipped with grapples, harpoons, claws, and etc.
in the pilot they run across a reaver ship, which they identify because the engine core is cracked or damaged, which would cause radiation leaks that would kill an ordinary crew. the implication being the reavers either tough it out or just don’t care.
October 3rd, 2005 at 8:36 pm
I got the impression that they were “running without containment” because it let their ships go faster, as well.
October 4th, 2005 at 8:44 am
That was the impression from the pilot of the show. They run across a ship floating across their course, and they scan it and find it’s running “without containment”. Someone (I think Simon) says that that’s crazy, that that’s suicide.
This starts the conversation about Reavers, where the crew just look at each other with fear in their eyes and wait it out. As they describe it to Simon, however, the Reavers were spacers who reached the edge of space and went mad, lost touch with their humanity (referring, I presume, to their morals and compassion), and started raiding everybody else they ran across. Hence the crew’s deer-in-headlights at the very mention of Reavers.
I thought it was a well-played little moment, and the payoff in the movie was excellent.
October 11th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
[...] as Sean noted in his review, I can’t say much about the movie without giving away any story. Suffice to say that Sean is [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 8:25 pm