Serenity

On Friday & Sunday I went to see Serentiy. The Friday night late show was tons of fun, the crowd was very responsive. They laughed at the jokes, cheered the battles & gasped at plot twists. I highly suspect it was mostly fans of the tv series Firefly. On Sunday I saw it again with friends who couldn't go on Friday. I think our group were the only ones to laugh at all through the whole movie, the rest of the crowd didn't catch the set-ups from the tv series. I didn't hear any great reactions or any bad ones, so I don't know how the general public likes Serenity.

The movie stuck to the character development of the tv show, no changes in personality or behavior is good. They did a great job of setting up a little explanation at the beginning so a viewer would know what is going on without having seen the tv series, although not everything was covered. Of course that could be bad too if the plot was dragged down by setting up more background that is necessary to move it along. Without giving too much away, the focus was on the history of River rather than the battle of serentiy valley or how the crew all met each other or what exactly is a Companion. Plenty left for a sequel or another tv series.

Hanzi Smatter found a mistake in the Hanzi characters used in the movie, but I'd say that's pretty good to only have one language mistake (and at least it's just a reversal, not a completely wrong translation) in the set design. I would be more embarassed for the film makers for that MS Windows screen.

Fans should check out Browncoats: the official Serenity Fansite.
If you missed the tv show Firefly and want to catch up, it is available on DVD.