New Serenity trailer

Not for me, I've tickets to see it in Edinburgh at the end of August. Its a 500 mile round trip but I'm *confident* its worth it.

Ive been converting browncoats for years :D
 
John Reynolds said:
The actress who plays the 'companion' is beautiful. Go to IMDB.com and look at a few of her pictures.

so i guess its not the same as in show? ... is she better?

(YES, i AM lazy);)
 
I just started watching this series, caught the first episode a few weeks ago on sci-fi. The next day I went out and bought the DVD collection and watched it all that day.

The series was unbelievably good, one of the best sci-fi shows I've ever seen.

I just hope that the movie does really well, which is looking like a distinct possiblity from the screenings they've had in various cities. All of the screenings were sold out in under 10 minutes with tickets going on ebay for over $200. If the movie does well, there will be a sequel (the actors are contracted for 3 total).
 
Favorite worldcon T-shirt: "Joss Whedon is my master now."

Have reports from several people at worldcon that have seen Serenity "almost complete" previews in various cities (Pittsburgh was mentioned) in the last few months. Universal reports that it is very, very good.
 
Serenity has been reviewed in The Scotsman newspaper:

Serenity

ALISTAIR HARKNESS
Directed by: Joss Whedon
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau

WATCHING the first big action set-piece in Serenity, I found myself trying to work out why I found the scene - which features a band of grungy space pirates escaping from a gang of vicious cannibalistic creatures known as Reavers - almost intolerably exciting. It took a few minutes before the answer hit me.

It wasn't just that the effects work was great, or that the editing was tight or that the score and the sound design were dramatic. It was something about the characters: they were actually interacting with each other and their environment.
It seems like such a simple thing to point out but, in an age of over-detailed CGI worlds full of digital characters and actors reacting against nothing, watching a chase sequence shot in a physically real location, featuring honest-to-god real live trees, and actors talking to each other, actually feels revolutionary.

But that's Serenity all over. The film is the big-screen directorial debut of Joss Whedon, who brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and its spin-off, Angel), and he obviously has such a pure belief in the value of storytelling, characterisation and witty dialogue that he makes concepts and ideas that we've seen a million times before feel fresh and new.

Serenity is a science fiction adventure that riffs heavily on the Western and, inevitably, owes a few debts to the original Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Alien movies. But rather than making you pine for those films, it makes you thankful that someone has learned the right lessons from them.

This is the type of filmmaking that knows how to keep us entertained from first frame to the last. It's a fantastically layered film, with a dense structure, but it's not overloaded with mythological significance, nor does it try to pound us into submission with an inflated sense of its own importance. The plot is tightly constructed, but there's enough room for the actors to manoeuvre and let us get to know their characters. And the script is smart and funny, which keep the atmosphere light when it needs to be, but ensures that dramatic and emotional moments are pretty toothsome, too.

Serenity is based on the short-lived TV show Firefly that Whedon created in 2002. Running for only 13 episodes, it was cancelled mid-season by Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, presumably because it wasn't Buffy the Vampire Slayer in space. Nevertheless, the show's fervent fanbase kept it alive online and with massive DVD sales. What's great about this film version is that it doesn't require you to be a fan to enjoy and understand it. I went in knowing nothing and was hooked almost immediately.

As the film opens, though, you might groan because it does look like a science-fiction TV show - and a really bad one at that. We find ourselves in one of those yawn-inducing antiseptic worlds full of fascistic looking people talking in artificially calming tones.

A teacher is telling a group of pupils about the recent galactic civil war in which a vast coalition known as the Alliance have emerged victorious against a band of rabble-rousing freedom fighters called the Independents. They, we learn, objected to the Alliance's attempts to civilise them with subtle mind-control devices.

The film looks in danger of becoming a boring, humourless, exposition-heavy science fiction melodrama - but then Whedon pulls the rug out from under us, plunging us into a whole new darker environment.

Then he does the same trick again a few minutes later and we realise that we've just been brought up to speed on all the background that we really needed to know from the TV show. It's an audacious move, and as breathtakingly proficient a start to a movie as you could hope for.
Our heroes are the rag-tag crew of the titular Serenity, a hunk-of-junk space ship captained by Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a wily Han Solo-type who fought on the losing side of the war and now scratches out a living robbing government institutions.

Among his crew is River (Summer Glau), a mysterious psychic girl rescued from an Alliance research lab that was conducting experiments on her to turn her into a weapon. She has a secret locked in her memories and the Alliance, desperate to prevent this getting out, have dispatched a cold, logical assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor - superb) to bring her back.

The film kicks in hard as an action film, with Mal and his crew engaging in some surprisingly ruthless behaviour, and it follows through in spectacular style with a fight scene that will have Buffy fans going apoplectic. But Whedon and his hugely likeable cast nail the dramatic stuff, too.

As the normally self-serving crew find themselves caught in a fight with a higher purpose to it, Serenity becomes that great thing: a blockbuster with a heart and soul.
 
Hey! Wasn't ad verbatim quoting of whole articles frowned upon? Oh well: You're the boss... ;) Thanks for the heads up, by the way. That was high praise indeed. I really look forward to seeing it. Sadly, due to the infinite wisdom of those in charge of scheduling where I live, that won't be before 2. December. With my luck I'll probably stumble across a major spoiler way before then...

Edit: Spelling.
 
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Im glad that someone went to the movie without seeing the show and had a great time. This is good news, if a high enough box office can be had, its quite likely that the show can be resurrected. So, do not pirate this movie. Go see it at a theater. Seriously, ill track you down and kick you through a jet engine if you download it and watch it that way. ;)

Ohh, take lots of friends to see it at the theater. :)

epic
 
Well that is good news. I just started to watch firefly and I have loved every esposiode. Almost cancled the rest of the disk from netflix so I could run out and by the all of them so I did not have to wait :)

Anyways really really really like what I have seen so far. I will buy these on DVDs soon and that great news about the movie!
 
"A blockbuster with a heart and soul" is the kind of quote (suitably gussied up with caps, fonts, and exclamations) that tends to find itself on newspaper advertisements and television commercials.
 
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