Most of the movie-going public doesn’t realize “Serenity” is based on a TV series.
Ya gotta understand; almost nobody noticed “Firefly” was ever on. That’s why it got cancelled. “Serenity” is pretty much a standalone project as far as most of the potential viewers are concerned.
I don’t think it’s explicitly mentioned in the series. It comes up during one of the commentary tracks (I think during the commentary for “Shindig,” since the costume designer was among the people on the track). In an rather unfortunate note for this quasi-canon fact, I believe Zoe is wearing the necklace during the Wash introduction scene in “Out of Gas.” Whoops.
That’s not being shallow, it’s having an opinion which anyone with functioning eyes would agree with. Thin or slightly more filled out, Jewel Staite is gorgeous.
I just think she’s even more attractive with the extra curves.
Maybe, maybe not. Between the decline of ticket sales and it being released in September, a dumping ground for movies, I don’t expect it to be a huge success in the theatres. It’s a niche movie in a niche genre… we won by simply getting it in the first place.
I think it’ll turn a tidy profit even if it’s only from DVD’s. One of the benefits of a low budget :).
Here’s an interesting thought - Book is no longer with us. He was possibly an Operative for the alliance who believed deeply in the wrong thing, then became a Shepherd to atone.
Now we have The Operative, who believed strongly in the Alliance and who is now clearly ridden with guilt.
What if he came back in a sequel as a shepherd?
And it looks like in a future sequel River may actually become the pilot. If you think about it, that kind of explains Wash’s fate - River was the only member of the crew who didn’t have a job of some sort - the only real fifth wheel. So now she’s a pilot, Wash is gone, and there’s a full crew complement.
Simon knew that they had muddled with her brain and what “somewhat” she could maybe do. What he didn’t know and was trying to figure out was how they did it and how he could fix it. Also, yes he was an idiot in Canton…he had 5 minutes to pretend to be interested in buying mud. He’d had both of his previous plans in place for a long time and was comfortable with them.
And the Reavers were quite capable of flying ships and not attacking each other…they’re like sharks. They probably won’t chomp you, but if they smell blood…I liked how you still never got a good look at them.
RickJay, any plans on naming the kid Jayne? Good pick, boy or girl. 
Sengkelat, your humility is refreshing, and I salute you for your willingness to debate. You’re a Cicero among men.
Even though you’re wrong. 
“Miranda” had nothing to do with River’s “trigger.” That was just a subliminal code the Alliance had been slipping into all sorts of broadcasts to set her off. Either she’d fight until someone was lucky enough to kill her, or she’d do so much damage that it couldn’t help but come to the attention of the authorities. Miranda was entirely seperate: she’d picked it out of the minds of one of the members of parliament when they’d come into view her. The association between the two was strictly in her mind: when her assassin programing was triggered, the Miranda memories got knocked loose.
Hey, the Google ad is for the Firefly soundtrack! That’s actually useful!
Yeah, the IMDB entry is in the goofs section, noting just this. IMHO if it’s not on-screen it’s not canon and a mention of the intention in a commentary track doesn’t count.
I don’t agree that the Alliance was broadcasting “Miranda.” If the big fear is that River knows about Miranda, then why broadcast anything in relation to it? What seems more likely is that the “Miranda” memories were locked up with that part of her persona that was activated by the code and they were released inadvertantly.
Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to say. Guess I must have really garbled that last post.
I thought that might be what you meant; I was about 50/50 as to which interpretation was correct.
Here’s my quickie spoiler-free review that I posted in my LJ:
Some thoughts about Serenity:
Wow.
That was a total adrenaline rush.
Very different from the TV series. Darker. Figuratively and literally.
3a) The literal darkness is particularly noticeable in the places inside Serenity. In the TV series, the inside of the ship was more or less the spaceship equivalent of a comfortable old house. The kitchen/dining area especially was a warm, inviting place, one where you’d love to sip coffee and hang out with old friends. Even the cargo bay was a pleasant place to play basketball and the like, and the catwalks above it were a good place to sit and talk. (Remember Mal and Inara at the end of “Shindig”?) None of that was true of the movie version of the ship. Everything was darker, and when there was light, the light was harsher.
3b) The figurative darkness: in the past, Mal and his crew have had some incidental attention from the Alliance as a whole, and some more serious attention from the ‘hands of blue’ guys; most of their problems in the TV series are those that arise naturally from their lifestyle - making a living on smuggling and petty crime. Inevitably, they’ve got to ramp this sort of thing up for a movie, and they did: the Alliance is after them big-time now, the issues are bigger than their just wanting River back, petty crime gets pushed aside, and a lot more bad shit goes down before the end.
3c) If you’ve never seen any of the Firefly series, and you’ve just watched Serenity and loved it (or not), you still haven’t seen what it was that we Firefly fans fell in love with.
I saw the movie with one non-fan of the TV series (saw one ep and was underwhelmed), and with one semi-fan (my wife, who’s lately started watching the TV eps with me, and after six episodes, has admitted that the characters are starting to grow on her) and they both loved it. So add two more data points to the pile of evidence that you don’t have to be a fan of the TV show to like the movie.
Jewel Staite really shoulda gained those 20 pounds back in order to play Kaylee in the movie. The sweet roundness of Kaylee’s face was all gone; she looked practically drawn. I hate hate hate that Hollywood more or less demands that actresses be skinny to the point of emaciatedness.
It might’ve been just the lighting, but Nathan’s and Alan’s faces (Mal and Wash) looked like they’d lost a few pounds too.
The new set for the inside of Serenity is a lot more detailed than the TV set was. I’m looking forward to getting the DVD so I can pause and see things close up.
If you’ve seen both of the trailers, you’ve heard most of the funny lines. Not all of them, but most, Most of the ones you’ve heard are still funny, though.
Chronologically, the movie takes place not too long after the end of the TV series - a few months later at most.
Simon’s a lot stronger a character than in the TV series, so much so that it’s a bit of a discontinuity. The geekiness and unsureness is all gone.
Anyone else hope for the TV theme? (unless I’m mistaken- did Jayne start to play it?)
Brian
It (well, an instrumental version of it) was the last song played over the end credits. Yeah, I got teary.
It’s that hollywood standard that guys have to be anorexic to get any screen time 
There’s something amusing about half the audience saying, in perfect unison “Oh God Oh God we’re all gonna die?”
The uniform shirt was from the security outpost they robbed in the beginning.
IIRC there’s a line to the effect that Simon and River have been with the ship for eight months. Assuming something approximating real time for the series, that puts Serenity about six months after “Objects in Space.”
Nobody’s mentioned my one quibble, so maybe I’m just not understanding the movie.
The way I see it, when they’re heading to Mr. Universe’s hideout, there’s two possibilities:
If #1, then why on earth do they lead the entire population of Reavers toward Mr. Universe’s planet? That’s suicide!
If #2, then why on earth do they even bother to go there? Surely if the Alliance gets there before they do, Mr. Universe is going to be dead and the facility is going to be destroyed.
It seems like the logical thing for them to do would be to make the appointment with Mr. Universe, then go somewhere completely different and upload the video to a couple dozen messageboards. Or, I dunno, do something not suicidal, something that has a miniscule chance of success. (It seems to me that the only way they could predict their plan’s success would be if Mr. Universe had a backup facility and a Buffybot to inform Mal of the facility’s existence).
Other than that, I thought it was the best SF movie I’ve seen since Gattaca, and ties with that movie for the best SF I’ve ever seen.
Daniel
I also like my Kaylee a little more cushiony.
Posted by me:
Posted by Aesiron:
I must disagree. That would have seemed truly contrived and cheap. On the other hand, Wash being abruptly killed by Reivers after a successful crash landing serves the additional purpose of driving home how dangerous the Reivers are. We’ve seen how much they scare everybody, but so far they haven’t taken any of our guys. Wash’s death made it clear that the Reivers can and will kill our favorite characters; the rest of the sequence is much more tense and grim because of that.
Posted by Raguleader:
I really don’t think so. Don’t forget about convection. The hot gas that propels the bullet would then expand rapidly in vacuum, evacuating the barrel; that might provide a lot of cooling. (I wonder if the question has ever been answered empirically, by firing a rifle in a vacuum chamber?)
Joss Whedon has admitted he doesn’t understand science; much as I like “Firefly” and the new movie, it would be nice if they employed somebody who did. Wouldn’t even have to be a Ph.D.; I’d do it for a very reasonable fee. And it’s hard to figure out the solar system they live in. From the schematic we see at the beginning of the movie, it looks like humans live on planets in a pretty wide range of orbits; there should only be a narrow range in which the amount of sunlight is right. If I had to write around that, I’d say that the terraforming of the various worlds included some kind of amazing high tech: either a force field (and I hate to even write the words “force field”, since there’s really nothing in physics corresponding to what that term means in popular science fiction) around the planet that concentrates or occludes sunlight, or some treatment of the atmosphere. The latter seems more likely; some kind of atmospheric effect that either reflects excessive solar energy or creates a greenhouse effect to trap energy. Of course, the atmosphere at ground level still has to be breathable, which means you can’t put just any chemical into it; maybe there’s a special layer in the upper atmosphere. They just ignore the question of different gravities. (And apparently terraforming makes every planet look like California.)
Well, you can always nitpick that stuff. Compared to something like the Star Wars movies, it’s a science textbook.
Note: I assume the name “Miranda” wasn’t chosen randomly for the planet full of corpses. Miranda was Prospero’s daughter in Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest”. Toward the end, astonished by the shipwrecked male visitors, she says, “O Brave new world, that has such people in’t!” From that, Aldous Huxley took the title for his seminal novel Brave New World, in which, as you’ll recall, the government controls people using a drug called Soma.
Actually, i think Mal makes a comment about Miranda having “Earth-like gravity” so maybe that’s part of the work the Terraforming Wizard did. I figure you could do something to the planet’s core to make it warm enough to support life, but yeah, that wouldn’t make everything look as sunny as Southern California.
Isn’t “Miranda” also more or less Spanish for “Watching”? ie: Estoy miranda Serenity (I am watching Serenity). I can’t think of how it’s remotely relevant to the planet itself, but that’s my random train of thought.
I thought about that, but I don’t think so for 2 reasons. 1)If she was pregnant, there should’ve been a scene where she and Wash talk about it. 2)She seemed a bit too suicidal in the fight against the Reavers. If she was pregnant, shouldn’t she have been thinking about staying alive for the sake of Wash’s kid?