Serenity Review
I was treated to an advanced showing of Serenity, the continuation of the story that was begun in the ill-fated Firefly television series. This review will NOT HAVE ANY SPOILERS. Because of the lack of spoilers, I will have to be quite general, and as such this review will likely be short.


The general quality of the movie was roughly that of the television show. The scale was a bit more grand (which is expected) but I saw nothing that would have surprised me to see in the show, special-effects wise. Some of the scenes seemed a bit poorly-delivered, especially the first "in the ship" scene which was more a tour of the ship than an introduction to the crew. That scene was filmed all in one long part, without editing any scenes together, and traversed much of the ship from the cabin to the engine room down past the medical bay and into the hangar. I know this was one long, unedited scene not because I had any insider information about the movie, but because the acting was so forced and wooden that, had they spliced it together, they would have been able to pick better scenes. I figure they, after about 10 failed runs through, said "To hell with it, let's use that last one, they only screwed up 3 times." Don't get me wrong, that scene was a one-shot thing and the rest of the movie, in total, was much better acted and filmed, but as the introduction to the characters that you're supposed to care about, that scene bothered me.

The characters were, for the most part, well done. Yes, for those of you who wonder, they're ALL in it. No, I'm not going to say anything else because the characters and what happens to them falls VERY WELL into spoiler territory. In fact, saying that it'd be a spoiler is itself falling into spoiler territory, as is saying that. But I digress. I will say no more about the characters, except this: I felt that they were far more cardboard than they were in the show. The pilot of the television series had far more character development than the movie did, which is kind of sad (Though, to be honest, the pilot had more character development than most 2-hour spans of entertainment available to mankind).

Now, for the part that's nearly impossible to do with no spoilers: The plot. The plot was... Good. Not bad. Not great. Good. Several questions about "the verse" were answered, and I did not find the answers very palatable. A couple new characters were both not explained very well, nor did they act in ways that I thought they ever would. Perhaps if their personalities were a bit more fleshed out, I would feel differently. In particular, a character named "Mister Universe" was never, ever, explained at all. He seemed pretty important and powerful, but really he wasn't. He seemed like he knew the crew of Serenity quite well, but really, he had no reason to. He had a big cloud of... Something... Around him, but anything could get through it (We see ships fly through it, and he's got a billion TVs that he can watch anything on, so you can send signals through it). Yes, that's almost a spoiler, but as I kept expecting to find out more about him, and may have missed something important thinking about him during the movie, so I figured I'd let you in on that little bit of info.

All in all, I liked the movie. Due to some plot twists (that I will not be discussing in this review) the movie has left quite a bad taste in my mouth. But that's in a good way, really. Because if things always happen exactly the way you figure they will, then movies won't be worth watching.

Cryptic enough? Good.