I have to be biased and say that Serenity is probably one of the best movies I’ve watched in a while.

The opening sequence was cool, with the camera starting off from the cockpit of the ship and introducing the characters slowly. It’s all taken in one mouthful as you are led through the internals of the ship, oozing every little detail of what it’s like to live in space. The movie is quite fast paced, cramming a lot of detail into 2 hours worth of action with comedy injected every now and then. It explained a lot of the storyline that was introduced in the series and you’d be satisfied with most of it at the end of the movie. The relatively high production values (it is a cinema movie) make it a lot more realistic and they’ve finally included sound in the space scenes (they were nonexistent in the series to give it a believable feel, afterall, no one can hear you scream in space,heh.)

The movie keeps you on edge right to the very end and I’d say the transition of the story was handled quite well. I felt compelled to compare this to Star Wars Episode III at the very end. Star Wars’ biggest failing was that it tried to cater to everyone, even little kids. The battles were grandious but you felt detached from it because you could not connect to clones or droids on the battle field. The characters and people in Serenity were not indestructible, and had a very human fragility to them. Both Obiwan and Anakin were indestructible, so you were never worried about them at the slightest. Then there’s the colour scheme for Star Wars, all bright and multivaried. It was George Lucas who introduced the worn and torn look that made his original Star Wars trilogy so believable and endearing. In Serenity, the ship itself was falling apart, just like the original Millenium Falcon, so you can see the contrast in styles there. Episode III was like playing one of them real time strategy PC games. Lose a unit, just replace it with another one. Old ‘junk’ like the Milennium Falcon and Serenity captivated people because even with their shortcomings of not being the meanest and baddest, they managed to pull off miracles to save the crew at the very last bit. The last thing of note would be the characters.

Think I just blurted all that out in one breath. Heh, watch the movie. It’s really worth it. It’s science fiction without all the technobabble and you would most likely relate very closely with the characters. Highly recommended.