Randy invited and Margie kindly offered to watch after Kitten, who was feeling slightly under the weather. So … I went.
Not much I can add to my review from the preview in May. The movie has gotten a high buff and polish — the music is perfect, the post-processing on some of the scenes has lent them appropriately interesting tones, etc. Nothing much was changed — there might have been a few little bits tossed in, though the scene adds in the Visual Guide were not present. But it all feels cleaner, grittier, and more exciting and fun, even knowing what was coming.
The movie starts out a bit rough — it feels a bit too much like a TV movie on the big screen, in tone and presentation (and, occasionally, in effects and set pieces). But eventually things really get rolling, and it all comes together, and other cliches like that.
If I have one objection to Serenity, is that it does seem like a movie that wraps up plot points that ought to have been spread out over five years or so. It reminds me a bit of Season 4 of Babylon 5 — rushing to get to the good parts, which both gets you the good parts and gets you that rushed feeling.
That said, I can see some things that could be done with a sequel. And, heck, if I can see them, heaven knows what skulduggery Joss can see …
Go see it. So we can see the next one.
I saw “Serenity” last night. The efx are kind of cheesy, especially by comparison to those in the trailers for Narnia and the next Harry Potter movie. Some of the plot was pretty predictable. I suspect there’s a bunch of stuff that viewers of the TV series understood but about which newbies like me were mystified or that newbies didn’t even notice. The dialog is pretty creative: the scriptwriter has a way with words and wasn’t afraid to use it, by contrast with most movies these days, in which the characters all seem to talk the same. The stuff before the credits seemed really long to me, by comparison to any other movie I’ve seen recently. It was good enough that I’d like to see it again, and if the Firefly series is available on DVD, I’d kind of like to see it sometime.
Dude…where are you.
We can hook you up with the Series DVD’s no problems.
Next time as you’re down our way, Dave, we’d be quite happy to loan you the set.
I’ll agree that the sfx were, well, yeah, only a tick or two above TV-class, esp. compared to the CG extravaganza of Harry Potter (which made even Narnia look a bit anemic — seriously jonesed to see both of those, tbw).
Thanks to both of you for offering to lend me Firefly. I’ve been meaning to try to get down to Denver sometime soon (I live in Fort Collins), so I’ll put the Hills’ house on the list of places to go in the next trip.
Two questions: is Serenity a prequel to Firefly or a sequel, and is Mr. Universe a recurring character in Firefly?
Serenity takes place X months after the end of the series. Mr. Universe’s only appearance was in the movie.
Though there’s actually some backstory to him in the novelization (one of the few bits of “new” material in the novel) — he was an old classmate’s of Wash’s back in Alliance Pilot School or something.