Serenity Advanced Screening
Thursday night, I had the chance to go see the advanced screening of "Serenity," Joss Whedon's upcoming movie based on the Firefly TV series. The long and short of it is this: I loved it!

I have never been to an advanced screening of a major motion picture before. We got to the theater about 45 minutes before the show was supposed to begin, but by that time the only halfway decent seats were singles. In order to sit together, we had to sit third-row-back and on-the-far-left. The audience was mostly fans or guests. We found ourself sitting next to a group of people who had travelled all the way from Reno, Nevada to watch the showing in Salt Lake. The atmosphere was "charged," I guess is the best way to describe it, as we waited for the movie to begin. People sang the Firefly theme song (Can you GET much geekier? And YES my wife and I joined in! Why not? It was all in good fun). People chatted about Firefly. The folks from Reno explained how they brought friends who'd never seen the show before, who watched on DVD on the way up to see the movie.

We had some studio representatives there, but none of the cast or principle crew. They explained that the film was about 90% complete. It wasn't the final edit, nor were all the special effects done. The music was still mainly stand-in stuff. They finished their explanation, told us they had swag to give out after the film, pointed out a representative from the fan site in the audience who'd be getting interviews from people later, and then sat down.

We were first treated to a five-minute pre-recorded introductory video by Joss Whedon. He introduced the movie with his usual sense of humor. The show was about a group of folks who lost the war but continued to keep the dream alive - the browncoats - and Joss drew the parallels to the real-life story of Firefly and the making of Serenity. He explained how the show was produced by a dedicated group of people who fell in love with the show, and was watched by dedicated fans (roughly the same number of people), and how it really started taking off AFTER it had been cancelled. The sales of the Firefly DVD have been amazing, and that and the fan support has been why this movie was able to be made. "So," he explained, "in a very real way this is YOUR movie. So if it sucks, it's all YOUR fault, and you really let me down!"

He went on to explain why they were doing these advanced screenings. Mainly, it's for publicity. Joss Whedon explained that he's doing his blogging and other stuff to promote the movie, and Universal will of course be doing their thing this year to promote it. But Firefly's success was based on fan support, so he encouraged everyone who enjoyed the movie to tell everyone about it. "If you don't enjoy the movie," he quipped, "then this should be a time of QUIET reflection and SILENT contemplation..."

Anyway - I really hope the intro makes it as a special feature on the DVD of Serenity next year. I commented to my wife that the humorous intro was almost worth the price of admission.

Onto the movie. I won't go into spoilerific details, but I will cover some basics (so cover your eyes now if you want to know NOTHING about the movie at ALL and have even been avoiding the trailer!)

Basically, the movie is a rogue - versus - the - Samurai story. Malcom Reynolds is very much the same character as he was in the TV show - except a little bit more hardened. He's a down-on-his-luck starship captain with a small crew trying to find work on the outer rim of civilized space. He's a former rebel who lost the war against the Alliance, so went to the frontier where the Alliance has only minimal control. He harbors two fugitives of the Alliance - a girl named River who was subject to horrible experimentation by Alliance scientists, and her brother (who spent his entire, considerable fortune rescuing her and becoming an outlaw). Malcom and his crew takes whatever jobs they can to keep their ship flying and keep food on the table - and not all of those jobs are legal. But freedom from the Alliance, and the ability to make one's own way in the universe are far more important to Mal. Even when committing crimes, he goes out of his way to try to prevent innocent people from getting hurt - but ultimately his focus is on his crew (his family) - and nothing comes between him and their well-being.

"The Operative" is an Alliance super-agent, and represents the Alliance ideal. He is fiercely loyal to the government and its professed ideals, freely admitting that his loyalty is blind, because he simply doesn't need to know the reasons why. He is devastatingly competent and ruthless in his exercise of his orders. His greatest dream is to see the Utopia that the Alliance promises - even though he knows that like Moses, he can only lead the people to the promised land, but cannot have a place within it. He knows that the girl - River - possesses Alliance secrets that must remain hidden, and he will stop at nothing to make sure she is forever silenced.

As anyone who watched the TV series knows, River is brilliant, insane, and extremely dangerous as well. And we learn during the movie that she's even more dangerous than she was during the show. (Remember when she slashed Jayne with the knife, or scared Kaylee half to death by killing three men with her eyes closed? "Don't look, don't look!")

The movie seemed to be pretty fast-action, with lots of violence (though not particularly gruesome - there was a lot more implied violence that occurs off-camera: I think they are aiming for a PG-13 rating), chase scenes, and a climactic "last stand" that is reminiscent of Aliens. Malcom and Zoe (his second-in-command) end up going into full-on wartime mode, and Mal finds something else worth sacrificing not only himself, but his entire "family" (crew) for. There's also plenty of trademark Whedon humor --- and Whedon's willingness to take the gloves completely off when dealing punishment onto his characters.

The film needed a bit tighter editing and some polishing of "rough edges", which I hope will be there for the final version. I didn't notice any clearly missing special effects, but there was a bit of "telling" instead of "showing" in the story, which I *hope* will be resolved in the final version with additional footage or special effects. It's mostly just references to things that the characters see but the audience doesn't (or at least can't notice).

A flaw in the movie that probably won't be resolved in the final version: Inarra. I mean, she's beautiful as ever, and she's Mal's greatest foil. She's able to bring out a different aspect of his character. But aside from that, she really doesn' t have much of a purpose in the film. She was mainly there for completeness for the sake of the fans, I guess. We would have complained if she WASN'T in the show. And Joss is definitely playing for the fans. But aside from occasionally exchanging banter with Mal, she doesn't have much to do.

The exposition at the beginning of the film was pretty lame, too. They managed to wrap it into a dramatic scene in a flashback, but it's still about two minutes of exposition explaining how the Firefly / Serenity universe works, and the role of the Alliance. I doubt that will be fixed - that's a tough one.

However, those flaws aside, it was a great movie, and a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to seeing the final version. Perhaps multiple times. And I really hope this isn't the final voyage of Serenity - while they answer a few of the long-standing questions (like the origin of the Reavers), there are still plenty of plot threads left from the TV series that have yet to be resolved, and plenty of stories about these characters left to tell.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:48 AM (Permalink)