 Mmm, you just can't take this tea away from me. Serenity was a film that released back in 2005, it starred Nathan Fillian and then everyone else from Firefly. Now the funny thing about this movie is this is the first one that I've seen of the Digital Film Festival, which was awesome, it was great to see it on the big screen again. I saw this movie not having any idea what the television show was, so it was actually quite cool when I saw it the first time, and then after I saw the Firefly series years later I rewatched it and I was like, oh this all makes sense now. The film Serenity is about a ship called Serenity, a Firefly-class transport ship that is captained by Malcolm Reynolds, excellently played by Nathan Fillian and his crew, and it's about them basically kind of making their way in the world and then all of a sudden something triggers Willow, this girl who is an experiment of the Alliance, the big, heavy corporate guys of the entire universe, and she basically uncovers something that has to do with the Alliance's dark secrets and it's about them exposing it. So the film itself, the film is pretty good, it stands up, of course there is a bit of limited budget and you can tell with some of the ships, especially in the beginning, but the final space fight above the Mystery Universes planet at the end of the film is amazing. The thing I like about this film is it has two amazing opening parts, the first is when we're introduced to the assassin character. Now the assassin character is one of the coolest villains I've ever seen. He's a person who has no emotion, no real connection, he does what he's meant to do. He acknowledges what he is and he knows the aspects of humanity and basically emotions, but he doesn't clue into that. He actually has a very specific honor system, also he has this really cool thing where you're like in your back, you're like in and then you fall on a sword. He has a sword on his back, but when he pulls it out, it's a realistic length to what he would be able to have on his back. Even Blade Sword was a little bit too long to actually fit in a sheath in his back. Don't get me started on fucking Braveheart. But his character, we see so much in this opening scene. We see that he's talented, we see that he's smart, we see that he's tactical, we see that he's willing to do whatever he has to do, but we see that he's not completely a dumbass, jackass, stereotype weirdo. He's actually very cool and methodical with what he does. Then we get this next opening, which is an entire take, a single take of them coming in to... excuse me, we might have some turbulence followed by exploding. I love the opening of this film, both of those openings, because we get to see all the characters, we get to see the crew of Serenity, we get to see the ship, and we get to see how Malcolm works. Malcolm has so many interesting curves in this film, there's so many moments that I'd love to talk about, but I would go on forever if I did. As, of course, of Joss Whedon, especially in this time, he definitely brings in this different and interesting world, the idea of putting Western culture, Western dialogue, Western costumes into space. Malcolm's dialogue, everyone's dialogue, is a mix of Western dialogue and what would be a futuristic dialogue. It's so grammatically wrong, as my girlfriend tells me, but it's so good at the same time. I love how Malcolm actually uses old terminology for the ship. He actually, like, about past way anchor and all this stuff. I love that he uses that dialogue, because you don't see anything like that in this sort of idea of future space age. The film itself has a great story to it. It has a pretty cool tie-in to the show, and especially after having watched the show and watched the movie again, I was like, wow, that really tied up a lot of things. I have exactly three problems with this movie, though. Only three. They're all very minor. The first one being after Willow's awesome self-sacrifice, but actually kicking all the Reavers' ass. That was awesome. The only problem is who opens up the door. She goes to the door, hits the button, goes back, and then goes into that awesome pose. As awesome as that scene is, that always niggles me a little bit. Like, who opened the door? The other part is actually when the doc gets shot. When he gets shot, who the hell was in the doorway? We saw that there was no one there. You'd just blown off a grenade. And that was the part... That shot, at first, I didn't mind. But then when I thought about it, I was like, how on earth did Jane not shoot the person before? They literally just went like, around the corner. And... Wash his death. Wash his death is great until you think about it. Because it has as amazingly hard-hitting as it is and out of nowhere as it is, how on earth did none of them see the freaking Reavers' ships that were right in front of them? He gets stabbed by the giant fucking spear thing. They look out the window and there's three Reavers' ships. Why didn't anyone do anything? Other than that, though, I still really enjoy this movie. The budget is obvious. It's really noticeable now. But that's unfortunate and the fact that he was made off of a $40 million budget was pretty good considering what it was. Another thing that I kind of like that's a little bit not so much talked about in this film is the photography. Especially with the fight scenes and also does the dialogue. A lot of shadow work is done very well. A little bit overused, mind you, but I do like it considering, as I said, it's using a limited budget and they did what they could. Sure, they use a little bit of kind of shadow cliches, but the fight scenes, like especially when Jane hits the guy in the head, he flips over, he grabs his legs and then knocks him into the ground. That's completely unblossable, but it's so out of nowhere and so cool. I love that scene. And then I love the ending because the thing that I like most about the ending is we've been shown that Malcolm can't beat this guy with his fists. This guy, the assassin, is way too good and he's basically, at the end, he becomes prideful himself. Remember when he kills the guy at the beginning, he says, you know what your sin is, is pride. He, in the sense, actually becomes prideful himself. When he does his thing to Malcolm, he's like, yeah, I've beaten you. So he gets prideful. When he goes to stab him, Malcolm gets and whacks him in the face and then breaks his shoulders or breaks his neck. I thought he dislocated his shoulders. Oh, and that's another thing too. Malcolm gets stabbed and he kind of just passes it off. These characters are superheroes. So in the end, what is my rating for? Serenity, it is a six out of seven. It is a very enjoyable film. It is a very unique and interesting idea of space. The only problem is, we didn't yield, released it too early because after Netflix went on this big with the streaming idea, then it got huge, like it got way more big, the idea of firefly and it's basically just what it is. And the problem was you've released your movie too early. You just did this show too early, dude. That's the only problem, and also you had Fox. They're idiots. Actually, wait a minute, how did you get from Universal to produce the film? Apologies if for the noises, that's the people working on our house or deck is being remade apparently. But either way, Sean and I are going to do our super trooper. I can't even tell you how many movies we're gonna watch today. We got Ghostbusters, we got The Thing, we got Mad Max 2, we've got Mad Max Fury Road. It's gonna be a sweet and awesome day. So I hope to see you guys for those reviews. See you later.