I've just come from a press screening of Josh Whedon's Serenity and let me just say that I am mightily impressed. Fans who've waited and waited for more of the crew of the dilapidated Firefly will find this film almost everything they've been hoping for - almost, but not quite. The scuttlebutt amongst the fans in the line, told me by a couple who heard it during a session with some of the cast at Dragoncon, is that the studio needs to see this film make ~US$80 million. If it does, there's a good chance we'll get the next two the producers signed on for. Thus, a good opening weekend is essential. If there's any justice in the world, that question will be settled within a couple/three weeks; this is a very good movie. So go see it when it's officially released Friday!

For those who have not seen the Firefly TV series, rest assured you can most definitely enjoy this movie without the benefit of having watched the show. Those who did will be richly rewarded with in-jokes and other minor plot elements the neophytes won't get. Either way, the first rule of enjoying Josh Whedon's work is, of course, to remember that he is an evil, evil man. Which is to say that you should leave your expectations at the door. In fact, leave them in the parking lot. This movie will answer a lot of the questions left open by the tragically foreshortened series, but not all of them. And the some of those it does answer may not have been ones you even realized were questions.

I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but if you want to enjoy the movie totally unspoilt (which I did and, frankly, recommend; I hadn't even seen a preview so pretty much everything was a surprise), you should stop reading now.

Six months have passed since the series finale - a period of time covered by three comic books released during production - and both Inara and Shepherd Book have left the ship. Inara announced she was doing so in the last episode, Book also did so in the comics. Whedon apparently believed that it would be too large a task to 'introduce' the full crew to moviegoers unfamiliar with the characters all at once, so those two are brought in later, after some pretty adept setup - almost all of which, I am delighted to say, is done in 'routine' dialogue and by showing us, rather than strained exposition (especially as concerns the long-standing, barely-suppressed love interest between Inara and Mal).

As the previews and print ads make fairly clear, the film centers on the Alliance's pursuit of River. Threads originating in the series finale "Objects In Space" are picked up and turned into the central conflict of the film. An 'operative' of considerable craftiness and skill is set to catch and kill her to preserve a secret the Alliance believes she knows. What this secret turns out to be will, I think, surprise even the most dedicated fans of the show.

River, to put it simply, has grown up a bit. Fans will recall her unexpected prowess with a firearm during the crew's rescue of Mal in "War Stories". Suffice it to say that was what we call foreshadowing. We learn that it was no fluke and see it demonstrated. Amply.

Hounded relentlessly by the operative, and cut off from all of their allies and lines of retreat, the crew are forced to plunge into the worst part of the galaxy - Reaver space - to find the truth about the secret the Alliance is so desperate to keep hidden. I'm not going to say what it is, but it's a doozy. If you ever wondered how Reavers came to be, well, that question will be answered. OTOH, if you wanted to know more about Book's history - like what it was about his ID card that entitled him to immediate and solicitous medical attention from formerly indifferent Alliance officers - be prepared for disappointment. That would, it seems, be too obvious for Whedon.

And, no, not all of the fractious crew survives their clash with the Alliance. One of the losses to the crew will, I expect, come as a very real - and jarring - surprise. By the same token, the movie is chock full o' laughs (not all of which require one to already be familiar with the characters and the plot to enjoy), providing plenty of comic relief to a film that, not to put too fine a point on it, clearly crams more or less an entire season of plot Whedon had planned into two hours. In fact, so much happens, it seems longer than its 119 minute runtime.

So, again, fan of the show or complete n00b to Josh Whedon's oeuvre, go see this film - preferably this coming weekend or next. I want to see what happens next!

Posted at 11:30 PM | Sound Off (0)

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL, and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family – squabbling, insubordinate, and undyingly loyal.

Posted at 01:29 PM | Sound Off (0)