Review: Firefly and Serenity

Alright sci-fi geeks, listen up.

Joss Whedon (of Buffy fame) made this kickass sci-fi TV show called Firefly back in 2003.

I finished watching the 15 episode series (before it was cancelled) and my thoughts on it are this:

Awesome.

The show revolves around smugglers out in space, but since it’s only 500 years in the future, the customs of Earth are still there such as guns and dialect, but then you couple it with the new customs of the world (such as America and China being the supreme super power which rules the galaxy, hence the reason why everyone seems to know how to speak Chinese and English).

There’s a crew of 9 people and the main storyline revolves around two stowaways, River and Simon, River being a special girl who was in Alliance (the big superpower, think THE GALACTIC EMPIRE) custody and Simon broke her out of there because they were doing some crazy mind experiments on her.

So, like any good TV show, not every episode revolves around the MAIN storyline…you have your humour filled episodes in which the crew of the Firefly class ship Serenity has to deliver cattle to other planets, or when they show up to one town and the slave workers workship one of the crew who had an encounter with them in the past…

All in all, I highly recommend this series. Vero even gave the thumbs up after watching one episode and she doesn’t even like sci-fi. She thought the story was good and even if the setting was in space, it really had nothing to do with space.

Alas, the series was cancelled, but there was such a major fan following that a movie studio allowed them to come back and make a major motion picture out of it to tie up some loose plot points (and to give what the fans wanted).

Hence, the movie Serenity came out.

I watched this on Saturday and I was blown away. It follows the crew of Serenity being chased by the Alliance who are trying to take River back because of some secrets she knows.

All in all, I would have definitely loved this movie even if I hadn’t seen the series. It was a great movie, great acting, great effects, great STORY!!! I will probably pick this movie up myself seeing at how good it was. It was strange to see the settings a little difference (such as the entire ship of Serenity all dark and mysterious) as opposed to the TV show where it was bright. Also, some characters have moved onto other planets but you still get to see them during the movie.

All in all, two thumbs up for both the series and the movie.