And now I know why
It wasnt as good as I was hoping, Taken on its own the film is great, however, when compared to firefly it was lacking in many ways. The first and most obvious is the space shots, firefly always used the very realistic silence in space for all the external space shots, the only sounds you ever heard where sounds that would be heard within the ship (like if something hit them). In serenity, they must have decided the audience would get too bored so now we have your typical starwars/startek/every other scifi whooshing and blasting around in space style movie.
The whole western theme had been played down a lot, it was still there but deffinatley pushed to the background.
I cant believe that they changed the alliance cruisers aswel, I thought the whole flying city was quite cool, now they look a lot like the guillotine class heavy destroyers from I-War edge of Chaos on the PC.
Heres some of the things I didnt like about each character or thier story...
The River story, I was so hoping to see some elaboration on what she said in firefly "Also, I can kill you with my brain" I think I would have rather seen River Rupture all the reavers arteries with just her mind like how the men in blue gloves do to all the aliance officers in one episode of firefly. I wasnt really happy with the conditioned ninja assasin part (It may have worked well in conjunction with something else but on its own was poor IMO).
I'm also pretty sure that Simon didnt rescue River, In one of the early episodes of firefly he mentions how he spent large amounts of money financing a resistance cell who in turn smuggled river out for him. He certainly never mentioned anything about infiltration and a daring rescue (he also didnt seem capable when we first saw him in firefly).
Jayne, He was ok, didnt change much really from the series, allthough I was dissapointed that we didnt see 'veera' as we all know how much Jayne loves her
Wash, I was gutted when he died, I never would have guessed it so that was deffinatley a plus (I like supprises in films if they make sense) Allthough if they do make a new firefly series or another movie that does leave the cast without a good 50% of the comic relief.
Mal, is it me or is he just indestructable in this movie? The reason that paralysing move didnt work made sense Mal has been shot and stabbed in that general area quite a few times and those are just the times we have seen on screen.
Inara, Why was she even in this movie? did she actually do anything apart from helping Mal escape.
Kayleigh, she seemed the same as always so nothing really to say about her.
And the shepherd was clearly only in it so they could write him out of anything further down the line.
All these where only minor on thier own but alltogether did spoil the film a little for me, it also made it seem like maybe they where trying to rewrite the original firefly story for a sort of fresh start.
On its own I would give the film 9/10 but when compared to firefly I would give it about 7/10.