I saw Serenity last night. Finally.
More interesting for the neutral observer, I went with two friends who had never seen a single Firefly episode.
The cinema was full. The audience was somewhat geeky. The scene was set...
I absolutely loved it, but then you would probably guess that seeing as I love firefly. For the Firefly fan the movie has everything. The characters we love. The dialogue we love. The jokes. The action. The Chinese swearing. The movie reveals whole chunks of mysteries and vast swathes of the Firefly mythology previously unseen. It's really, very brilliant.
One downside for me, although it's not really a downside, is that it felt like a really cool end of season Firefly episode. At the end of it I wanted more. It wasn't a film I could watch and then leave. I can't examine the film objectively in isolation. It is intimately bound to Firefly. It's the same story. Another negative, looking back with supreme criticality, is that it was maybe a bit too action packed. I liked the somewhat laid back feel of Firefly episodes. Or perhaps that's just because they were shorter? The real problem is the brilliance of the dialogue, I could just watch the crew sitting around the table and talking forever.
So what did the two Firefly virgins think of it?
One really enjoyed it, he said "I really enjoyed it even though I don't really like that sort of thing, Science Fiction. [pause]. Well...actually I do like that sort of thing. I though it was brilliant" [paraphrasing you there Will!] The other, whom we shall call James (because that's his name), really enjoyed it too, but didn't think it was a classic, just good. Will said that it took him fifteen minutes to get what was going on but then it was fine. The emotional impact of some of the film's events was also lost on them compared to me, but that's what happens when you have a series to build up a relationship with a show.
So, all in all, go and see it (if you haven't seen it a week ago and already posted your spoiler-laden review (please note that I'm looking at all you irregular film reviewing personal blogs outside of the SF blog brethren tribe, and all of you newspaper/magazine reviews. Have some ettiquette please!))
Now please excuse me whilst I watch Firefly again....
