Serenity 2005 Film Review

Film fans there are plenty of film in my DVD collection that i've not even thought of reviewing and one of those film,s is the film that i'm about to take a look at today. I would also like to say right now that i've never seen the show that this film is based off and so my thoughts will strictly be based on the movie and not how it fits in to the comics or show and so film fans here is my review of the 2005 film "Serenity" enjoy.

Plot wise I feel that the film is pretty weak not with the storyline being weak far from it but rather with there being to much going on in terms of the story. For some reason the film makers chose to have alot of things regarding the plot which in case you didn't know is that someone is hunting down the crew of the spaceship Serenity since of their crew is a psychic and might have seen secrets from several high end officials. However while that could very easily support an entire film the film makers also chose to add in this plot about a planet for some reason and it just makes things hard to follow.

Now i'm not going to say that the cast are reprising their roles because that would be obvious at this point. So instead i'll just say starring in this film is Nathan Fillion as Captain Mal , Gina Torres as Zoe , Alan Tudyk as Wash , Morena Baccarin as Inara , Adam Baldwin as Jayne , Jewel Staite as Kaylee , Sean Maher as Simon , In her feature film debut Summer Glau as River , Ron Glass as Shepherd Book , David Krumholtz as Mr. Universe and Chiwetel Ejiofor as The Operative.

Now again i've not seen the show and so I have no idea what the acting is like on there but in terms of this movie the acting from the returning actors was honestly really good. As you'd expect they have alot of chemistry together and are able to bounce of each other really well. The acting from the newer cast members is actually really good and like with the returning cast they have great chemistry together.

Now in a shocking twist the film is not based of a hit TV show it's instead based of a show that didn't make it past it's first season that being Firefly. Now the show didn't do bad with either ratings of reviews FOX the network airing the show at the time decided to pull the plug on the show after just eleven episodes had aired but the show has a massive fanbase which I believe is still strong to this very day.

I do no envy Joss Wheadon at all since it's always difficult turning a show into a movie anyways but most shows have the advantage of being on for a really long time this film didn't have that advantage. So he had to basically introduce the characters and the world all over again as well as set up the plot for the movie which for anyone would be overwhelming let alone someone who's never made a film before.

The CGI for the film was handled by several companies including Zoic Studios who also did the effects for Firefly , Rhythm & Hues Studios who i'm not making this up did the effects for all four Alvin & The Chipmunks live action movies and Perpetual Motion Pictures. I'm trying to be kind for the CGI here since this film came out in the mid 2000's and alot of CGI was terrible then anyways but even so the CGI in this film can at times be pretty good.

However it can also be pretty bad as well like for example whenever we see the Serenity in a chase scene it looks pretty bad but when we see it in space where it's almost at a standstill it looks fairly decent. Granted this film only had a very small budget and so you shouldn't expect high quality CGI but even the worst 2005 films had pretty decent or at least consistent CGI here tho that's not even close to being the case.

Not only did Firefly spawn a feature film but it also spawned several comic books which are still being published to this very day. The earliest one that I could find is called Serenity: Those Left Behind which serves as a prequel to the movie and based of what i've read of the comic's Wikipedia page it does connect to the movie really well even answering why some of the crew from the show left before the movie started which was interesting and it's only three issues long so if you wanted to read it it wouldn't take you that long.

Now I would talk about the characters however since this is a movie that's based on a show that I didn't watch I don't really feel like I could the characters any kind of justice since I don't really know them that well. That being said the film does a good job of making sure that people who didn't watch the show will know who the characters are since it doesn't really reference things that happened in the show so if your someone who didn't watch the show then you could very easily watch this movie and get a fairly decent idea as to who the characters are and what they would normally act like in certain situations.

I can't believe it's taken me this long to mention this but this film was the feature film directorial debut for show creator and the writer of the film Joss Wheadon. He honestly does a good job at directing this movie especially since it was his first time directing a feature film I would go as far to say that it's one of his best films just because it has that typical Joss Wheadon flare to it and that really does work in the film's favour.

This is technically an action film even tho the Wikipedia page doesn't list it as such for some reason and so that means we have to discuss the action in the film. To say that the action in this film was pretty bada*s would be a huge understatement because there are alot of bada*s moments in the action scenes which i'm not going to lie I liked simply because they were cool and having cool things for no reason isn't always a bad thing infact in action scenes it's a really good thing.

Overall this is a really entertaining film that has the traditional Joss Wheadon wit and it's that wit that helps make the movie entertaining to watch. If your wondering if you need to be a fan of Firefly in order to watch this movie i'd say no but at the same time it would help since the film does resolve some things from the show but that's really it you can basically view this as a standalone adventure , as such films fans this film gets a 7 out of 10 from me.