Serenity

Serenity is a sci-fi western from Buffy and Angel mastermind Joss Whedon, who got to continue his cancelled TV series Firefly on the big screen thanks to the devoted fans who bought the series on DVD and made it a huge success. This is really all because of them, thanks.

A little backstory for those who've never seen Firefly: the story is set 500 years in the future, Serenity is the name of Captain Mal Reynolds' (Nathan Fillion) ship, named like that after the Battle of Serenity Valley, which he fought along his second in command, the fierce Zoe (Gina Torres). They were rebels, and they fought the Alliance. They lost that fight, and became fugitive criminals. They got themselves the ship and a crew, including ace pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk), who later married Zoe; the always happy, delightful and sex hungry Kaylee (Jewel Staite), though she never has sex during the series except when we first met her; and tough guy though not always trustworthy Jayne (Adam Baldwin).
They also rent one of the ship's shuttles to Inara (Morena Baccarin), a companion (which translates into a high society prostitute); a Shepherd named Book (Ron Glass); and siblings Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau), he's a doctor, she was kidnapped when she was young and Simon had just rescued her from the Alliance when they aboard Serenity. The Alliance is now looking for them.

And so during the series' 14 episodes we have the Serenity crew pulling jobs for money, escaping the Alliance and trying to find out what happened with River while she was captured since she's now kind of a zombie at times.
There's also romance, as Kaylee likes Simon, but he's too busy with his sister, and Inara likes Mal, and he likes her, but it never worked. They never tried either.
Oh yeah, apparently our world as we know it today is gone. The United States and China got to dominate everything and so everybody speaks English and Chinese (without subtitles).

I always tried to watch Firefly, but I didn't find the time so I never did while it was on TV, but I did get the DVD, and I loved it. Everything about it. I'm even in love with Kaylee, and I think it was really a shame that the series got cancelled, because the main ongoing story, River's, never got explained. But don't worry, Serenity got us fans covered, giving us a resolution to River's problems, as well as some other character's stories I was not expecting to know about. I loved it.

The movie starts with River's rescue by her brother Simon. This was never shown in the series, and it's an awesome sequence. Kind of weird though, because Serenity was never part of that originally since they hadn't met yet. But here it works fine, and it's a kickass way to start the movie. Simon is more macho than in the series, and he pulls it off great.
After the rescue we meet Chiwetel Ejiofor's character, who doesn't have a name so I'm calling him Chiwetel. He's in charge of finding River at any cost, and we don't know why, and I won't reveal it because I wasn't expecting it and it was excellent. Chiwetel (the actor) had played a villain the series' last episode, but the one he plays here is a different one. Still, he does a great job, really inspiring fear, specially when he uses his sword.
After that we jump 8 months in the future, and the crew is pulling a job robbing a bank. Mal, Zoe and Jayne take River too, because she has mind reading abilities. Now, we viewers knew this from Firefly, but this was never addressed in the series between the characters, and Joss doesn't bother telling us how they discovered it. I didn't mind.

Now in the movie Book is not on Serenity. He's living in one of the friendly planets the crew met during the series. We don't know why he left. Inara is not there either. She had tried to leave at the end of Firefly, and here she is in charge of some kind of companionship facility. Now, we fans know that she is a companion and what that is, but if you haven't seen Firefly and you watch this then you probably won't know. It's not that important for the big story, but at the same time it sucks because we never get to know her character in the movie. And that happens with the other's too. Like we see here that Kaylee probably likes Simon, but we don't know much. Still, she has a few great little scenes. Jayne, Zoe and Wash get nothing to do here other than their usual jobs, but almost nothing in the big story. I don't think it's even mentioned that Wash and Zoe are married.

Mal I think it's better here than in the series. He's tough, funny, heroic, a leader, and he also has a soft side. Fillion does a great job mixing the dramatic parts with all the comedy, and there's a lot of it. He also has one great fist fight at the end of the movie with Chiwetel that is awesome.
The secret weapon that is River gets the better transition from TV to movie. We get to know her truth, and she kicks a lot of ass in the process. She's super cool. There's a massive fights between her and everybody in a bar, and then again when she protects the Serenity crew against the Reavers. She also talks a lot more than in the series.
Now what are the Reavers? They were normal people, but something happened to them and they are now cannibals. They drive around the universe looking for unprotected ships and planets to attack. Everybody is afraid of them, as they will kill you, but first they take your skin off and rape you. Pretty nasty.

The icing in the cake in the movie is a huge spaceships battle towards the end. It may look out of Star Wars, but is better than anything happened in any of the prequels. An excellent space battle with ships of all shapes and sizes. That single scene is what makes the movie excellent, better than anything I was expecting and better than we probably deserve to get.

With the great score from the series behind it, Serenity maintains that feeling I loved in Firefly, with those great comedy pieces all throughout the movie, great scenes to cheer, and a few to cry.
I think the movie works a lot better if you see Firefly before, but my brother didn't and he loved the movie anyway.
Joss Whedon has created a science fiction masterpiece in Serenity. I don't know if sequels would work, they never got to explain the Hands of Blue and it's not mentioned here, so I guess they could go that way. But what I am sure of is that I want more of these characters, a lot more. And if you are a fan, stay until the very end of the credits for our beloved theme...

Take my love. Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me.