I am a leaf on the wind.

Well, I got to go see the screener of Serenity last night in KC. First off, let me say that there were some aspects of the movie that I was VERY disappointed in. The one character's story that I want to hear does NOT get told and there's no chance that it can get told now either. After the movie has been out a few days I'll say more on this but I don't want to post any spoilers for those who plan on going.

Now that I've gotten that unpleasantness out of the way I will say that the movie was overall very good. The writers and actors stayed true to the original characters/story very well. They do a great job of explaining what the issue with River was and why the Alliance was so intent on getting her back.

The villain was a kind of evil that we see far too much of these days. He was a believer. A zealot. He wasn't a psychopath or a money-hungry megalomaniac. He was just a man doing what he thought he had to do in order to "make a better world." Someone easy to identify with in many ways but at the same time someone easy to hate given his actions.

And, of course we have the rest of the crew. Captain Reynolds, Zoe, Wash, Kaylee, Jayne, and Simon(River's brother). Reynolds is still the conflicted anti-hero that seems to be all the rage these days. Kaylee still wants Simon. Simon, still focused on caring for his sister, is oblivious. Jayne is still a moron with an itchy trigger finger. Zoe and Wash are still the happily married couple.

For fans of the show you're now asking, "You forgot Inarra and Shepherd." No, I didn't. They're not on the ship at the beginning of the movie. There's some back story between the series and the movie that we don't get much of. It's not necessary to the overall story of the movie but it would be nice to know what happened. Supposedly there's a comic series out there that covers it but as yet I've been unable to find it.

Overall the movie was very good but I still need to find Joss Whedon and have a little 'chat' with him about why certain characters got treated as they did. The way those people got handled in the story pretty much makes it next to impossible for anyone to pick up Firefly and run it as a series in a way that I'd be happy with. The movie almost felt like Joss didn't want to hand Firefly over to the TV exec's again so he wrapped the movie up in such a way as to make it very doubtful that we'll see Firefly again. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing Sci-Fi try. Bottom line, if you were a fan of the series you HAVE to see this movie. If you weren't a fan it's still a damn good flick and would be worth the ticket price.