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We saw Serenity...
Spoilers follow. Believe me, if you haven't seen the movie and plan to see it, you REALLY don't want to read ahead.
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Overall I enjoyed it very nearly as much as the series, although I really wasn't expecting such, er, character slaughter as took place. Orion pointed out, as we walked out of the theatre, that the Buffy TV show was the same way ... Whedon killed off characters right and left in that one, right up to and including Buffy. He's right, but for some reason I went into the movie with the TV-show-style expectation that the same number of characters will walk off the screen at the end as walked onto it at the beginning, which of course turned out not to be the case. And one of them was my favorite character, so I am bummed out about that, especially since, unlike Book, he didn't really HAVE to die for the plot to progress. (However, as soon as the dust began to settle after the crash landing and they had their little "Hey, all of us are OK!" moment, I knew he was doomed, before he even turned to Mal and opened his mouth.)
Perhaps more glaring than the character deaths is the way that this felt like an *ending* to the series. I don't know if Whedon & co. meant it this way, but it really felt like it all wrapped up with a bow -- it made me think of the sort of fiction-novel ending where you can tell that the characters' lives continue after the book's over, but you don't feel any real pressing need to SEE the rest of their lives, because everything that needed to be said has been said. That's how this felt. They revealed the major mysteries -- River's origins and the nature of the Reavers -- although granted, not *everything* about River has been revealed yet, unless Whedon just decided to drop the Blue Hand subplot entirely. The UST between Simon & Kaylee was resolved, and while Mal & Inara are still considerably more open, they were forced to confront their feelings to an extent that seems to indicate things are pointing in that direction for them too. The only other character with major unresolved issues was Book (the whole question of who he used to be before becoming a priest), and obviously that's one mystery that's never gonna be explored. River found her place in the crew -- and actually, now that she's mostly sane, she's a little TOO powerful to really function as anything other than a deus ex machina story device: she's psychic, she's insanely smart, she fought off a whole Reaver army by herself, and she can fly a spaceship. (She's like Buffy squared!) Anything they do with River after this could only be a letdown.
After watching the last episode of the TV series, I felt cheated -- as if something fun and wonderful has been dangled in front of my eyes and then snatched away. I felt very aware that there was a whole unexplored universe of stories and character possibilities. The funny thing is, even though I enjoyed the movie, I don't really feel that way now. I feel like it was wrapped up and I'm content to leave it there and consider that "the end".
On an unrelated note, I will be out of town until Thursday (work related). Kismet will update as usual, but generally I will not be responding to comments/message board/email etc.
.
.
.
.
Overall I enjoyed it very nearly as much as the series, although I really wasn't expecting such, er, character slaughter as took place. Orion pointed out, as we walked out of the theatre, that the Buffy TV show was the same way ... Whedon killed off characters right and left in that one, right up to and including Buffy. He's right, but for some reason I went into the movie with the TV-show-style expectation that the same number of characters will walk off the screen at the end as walked onto it at the beginning, which of course turned out not to be the case. And one of them was my favorite character, so I am bummed out about that, especially since, unlike Book, he didn't really HAVE to die for the plot to progress. (However, as soon as the dust began to settle after the crash landing and they had their little "Hey, all of us are OK!" moment, I knew he was doomed, before he even turned to Mal and opened his mouth.)
Perhaps more glaring than the character deaths is the way that this felt like an *ending* to the series. I don't know if Whedon & co. meant it this way, but it really felt like it all wrapped up with a bow -- it made me think of the sort of fiction-novel ending where you can tell that the characters' lives continue after the book's over, but you don't feel any real pressing need to SEE the rest of their lives, because everything that needed to be said has been said. That's how this felt. They revealed the major mysteries -- River's origins and the nature of the Reavers -- although granted, not *everything* about River has been revealed yet, unless Whedon just decided to drop the Blue Hand subplot entirely. The UST between Simon & Kaylee was resolved, and while Mal & Inara are still considerably more open, they were forced to confront their feelings to an extent that seems to indicate things are pointing in that direction for them too. The only other character with major unresolved issues was Book (the whole question of who he used to be before becoming a priest), and obviously that's one mystery that's never gonna be explored. River found her place in the crew -- and actually, now that she's mostly sane, she's a little TOO powerful to really function as anything other than a deus ex machina story device: she's psychic, she's insanely smart, she fought off a whole Reaver army by herself, and she can fly a spaceship. (She's like Buffy squared!) Anything they do with River after this could only be a letdown.
After watching the last episode of the TV series, I felt cheated -- as if something fun and wonderful has been dangled in front of my eyes and then snatched away. I felt very aware that there was a whole unexplored universe of stories and character possibilities. The funny thing is, even though I enjoyed the movie, I don't really feel that way now. I feel like it was wrapped up and I'm content to leave it there and consider that "the end".
On an unrelated note, I will be out of town until Thursday (work related). Kismet will update as usual, but generally I will not be responding to comments/message board/email etc.
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(Anonymous) 2005-10-03 05:36 pm (UTC)(link)I knew Whedon was planning to wrap up the whole storyline with this movie (I'd been reading the official movie website), but what I wasn't really expecting was for the tone to be so dark. In a way I think it was necessary, but it made it very different from the TV series. I definitely give the movie a thumbs-up, but in a quiet and slightly wistful sort of way.
-SarahD in CA
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And I'm still sulky about the death. He had so much to live for! Ships to fly! Dinosaurs to collect! Babies to father! --eheh. Well, eventually...I need to find some nice happy fic that someone finds a semi-plausible way (or at least well-written impossibility) to bring him back. Screw canon. I want my fluff! *goes to bury head in Egyptian sand like an ostrich*
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In fact, while the movie was very good and I enjoyed it a lot, it doesn't quite seem to line up with the canon from the series in little ways. Like ... Simon's a lot more hard-edged than he was in the series. I can't see TV!Simon (at least not the one from the first few episodes ... the Serenity crew started affecting him as time went on) busting River out of a high-security testing facility the way it was shown in the movie. And some of the ongoing hints from the series (like the Blue Hands) seem to have completely vanished in the movie. I was expecting changes; you can't take a plot that's designed to be spread over a couple of seasons and compress it into two hours without losing stuff. But it still makes the movie feel like a slightly different beast than the series. Like when they take a movie and make a TV series out of it ... different actors (which at least wasn't true in THIS case), canonical changes from the movie ... it can easily be seen as taking place in a slightly different fannish universe than the movie.