Courtesy of the Serenity Blogger Preview, Paul and I saw Serenity last night. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

The final cut of the movie is very well-polished, unlike the rough preview we saw way back in May. It really came together as a movie with the added visual effects, the music score, the soundtrack, and so on. With that final polish, the movie felt nothing like a two hour episode of Firefly. The characters were well-drawn within the movie itself, the cinematography was substantially different, and the plot was more intense. In fact, I would now say that the film is a perfect introduction to Mal’s universe — as good as the Firefly series itself.

The movie is very much Romantic fiction, in the sense that the whole plot revolves around a choice that Mal must make. It is a genuine and serious choice, certainly not portrayed as his only option given the situation and his character. (The theme wasn’t as clear as I might have liked, but it certainly can be uncovered.) Also, even though I knew the basic plot, I still found the events of the movie very emotionally gripping.

Like many, I’m very, very interested to see how the movie does at the box office. It’ll also be interesting to see what happens to the sales of the Firefly DVDs. (They’re already around #7 yesterday / #8 today in Amazon’s DVD sales.)

One final thought: Although I’ve loved many of the characters of Star Trek, I would find life in that universe utterly stifling. It’s unbearably sterile, not to mention altruistic and socialistic, with some faith, collectivism, and multiculturalism thrown in as supposed goods too. In contrast, I could live in the rough, chaotic, and violent world of Serenity. It’s a world of real and often noble human beings. Perhaps that says more about me than about Serenity, but so be it!