General Comments

The things that I liked best about Firefly were the deep character interactions of the ensemble cast and the slow revelations of thickly entertwined secrets and identities. A two-hour movie simply doesn't have the time to do either of those things justice.

To top it off, Joss is usually brilliant about balancing tragedy and comedy: the bitterly sarcastic but dead-on side comment, the dramatic revenge speech followed by a perfectly-timed pratfall. Alas, the primary plot of Serenity needed to be really, really dark to carry weight, and, again, there just wasn't enough time to include enough of the happy times, humor and camaraderie of the series to balance it.


******

Here there be SPOILERS

• One of the things I was really looking forward to was finding out more about Shepherd Book's past. I can understand that there wasn't enough time to go off on a tangent in the movie, but by killing him off, there's no chance of ever doing that (although the movie clearly isn't doing enough box office to warrant a big-screen sequel, I could well see Joss continuing in, say, comics.)
  
  
• What was the deal with killing off Wash?!? It was way too JK Rowling for my liking. I mean, what was the point? It sucked big time.
  
  
• I've read all this stuff about how Firefly was the first series to deliberately try to make CG look hand-held, and, in its place, it can be effective. But the major space battle sequence gave me a headache and I couldn't tell what was going on. Not enjoyable.
  
  
• I absolutely loved, loved, loved River's massacre of the Reavers. That was one of the most beautifully choreographed and executed fight sequences I have ever seen. Wow. Gorgeous.
  

Basically, I was very disappointed in the movie on a purely personal level. I loved the process of the series as much as the content, and the movie not only didn't have that process, but it took away the momentum, closing enough doors and giving enough away that I'm honestly no longer interested in getting the series on DVD (we'd borrowed a friend's to watch before the movie).

But that's just me.