You guys always bring me the best violence.

There's really two Serenitys, and I'm afraid I can only review one of them. The first Serenity is what you would see if you had never watched the show, didn't know there was a show, didn't care about these characters. If this is you, I went with several friends who saw this film and said they enjoyed it. Go see*.

The second Serenity, the one I saw, is what you'd see if already watched the show, enjoyed the show, loved the characters and the setting. In which case, you've already seen the film and you really loved it.

Just to recap, Serenity is the film continuation of the very witty, bleak, excellent short-lived series Firefly, which was cancelled, tragically, after eleven episodes. If you want a brief summary of the show, it is:

Serenity = Millennium Falcon
Malcolm Reynolds = Han Solo

That's really all you need to know to watch the film, but the joy you get out of this film will be heavily dependant on how much you know and care about the characters, and you can really only get to do this by watching the series. Which I have done. About four times. In fact, I watched every episode back-to-back on Sunday. It was great.

And the film (and I say this as both a compliment and an insult) really is just like a barnstorming, two-hour finale episode of the TV show- which is to say that it's better than most films, if not quite having the enormous budget of one.

The opening is a little strained as the script tries to get the audience up-to-speed with all the characters- this means they are hopping from planet-to-planet in the first half-hour and to be honest I could have lived with them dropping one or two of the extraneous characters in order to make the script seem less clunky. However once the story got underway it all flowed seamlessly from scene-to-scene and I realized that even earlier scenes which I initially found to be a bit pointless fall into place. Again, there are at least two scenes which, while meaningful to me, must surely have little or no impact to people unfamiliar with the show- I really couldn't say.

Once it's underway, it's really underway, space battles, gun battles, hand-to-hand battles, it's action-o-rama. Apart from the clunky opening, the script is corkin', with more chuckles than most 'comedies' I've seen in a while ("You wanna run this ship?"
"Yes."
"Well .... you can't."), somehow melded with action, horror and sci-fi. Oh! And a little bit of romance. Quite a feat, really- think all the good stuff about The Empire Strikes Back, without all the bad stuff from the rest of the Star Wars movies.

It's a good thing the script doesn't rely on the effect, which are sometimes patchy- for the most part they are pretty solid, following on from the 'steady-cam' feel of the series, but there are a couple of shots- notably the landing/crashing scenes, where the CGI is painfully noticable. The other place where the budget occasionally shows through is the sets- the bridge of the Alliance Warship in particular looked like it was slapped together in a fanboy's garage five minutes earlier. Yet on the other hand some of the cities they visit look great- maybe they ran out of money later in the filming, tee hee. The Reavers, also, after being built up throughout the entire series, were a little bit of a let-down.

The acting was pretty solid, particularly between Mal and the main bad guy (no-one else really gets much to act about beyond reaction shots and the occassional witty quip), which is to be expected given how long each actor had to inhabit their characters. I don't want to put any spoilers out there but I will say that one of the best, and worst, parts of the film is that no-one is safe. It's not like the show, where you can be assured that everyone is getting out alive and the reset button will make everything okay by next week. Everyone in under threat. Which made for some pretty teary fans at the end of the film (while the rest of the audience went "Huh?")

The theme of the film is (funnily enough given the discussion we've been having this week on the `blog) is that life comes from (or is) conflict. That's a pretty big (although perfectly appropriate) idea for a romping action film to try and tackle, and it does so with understated, subtle success (although there is a wee bit o' speechifying).

I suppose it's a pretty bittersweet film for me, because on the one hand it's so good that it makes me mourn all the more that the TV series never got a proper shot. But on the other, at least I got to see two more hours of these characters that I enjoy so much, and that's really awesome. So I'd recommend it highly- but if you don't know the characters, I'd recommend the DVD boxset of the series a lot more.