Firefly

I posted about the panels I got to see, and Serenity was one. Easily the most crowded and excited panel I saw there. Here’s that post again:

— NOTHING matched this level of excitement. Seriously. Firefly fans are INSANE. I’d say this movie is bound to succeed even if only hardcore fans go, because there seem to be a lot of them, and they’ll go repeatedly. The place was packed. Joss got a standing O.

— I knew Joss was a funny bastard, but turns out several of the actors are too, especially Nathan Fillion. Someone asked Adam Bladwin what it was like to play a stupid character, he got mock-offended and responded "Well, it’s easier for a smart person to play stupid than vice versa" and everyone looked pointedly at Morena Baccarin. Big laugh.

— The pseudo-trailer (I don’t think you’ll see it in theaters...it uses the words "THEY’RE BACK!!!" which will probably cause 90% of the audience to go, "Who?") looked really, really neat, and NOTHING like the show. I remember the talk about them hiring a cinematographer who was quite famous, and it seems to have paid off. I thought the show was plenty cinematic, but the trailer was just plain slick. It’s not like later Star Trek where it’s sort of a pathetic attempt to transfer the show’s look to a movie; it IS a movie. Also, the backgrounds and environments looked more exotic and SFnal than the show.

— The cuts were really fast. We see Mal and Zoe holding up a ship (?) and opening a safe to reveal a pathetically small pile of cash; Zoe says, "Hurray, we can retire from our life of crime." The rest of the trailer was Jayne doing action-y things on a moving landspeeder of some kind, Inara in what looked like a Companion whorehouse, and River, River, River.

— Yep, lots of River. People who don’t like River are going to be disappointed. However, this appears to be River 2.0 who can do ninja crap like conceal herself on the ceiling. And there’s a shot of her narrowing her eyes that makes it look like she’s about to go "Scanners" on someone’s ass.

— Apparently there’s not much Blue Sun in this movie, just a more generic Alliance presence.

— Refreshingly, Joss seems a lot more focused on just making ONE good movie than worrying about an extended saga, though he did mention it would be nice to make a trilogy. Doesn’t sound like they’re going to push to get the show back.

— Ron Glass pwned the room the few times he spoke.

— Literally the only thing they had to show was the mock-trailer, and there were no special effects in it that I saw, including spaceship shots. The budget on this is like $50 million, low enough that the execs aren’t going to be screaming at them over every detail I think...

— There’s a shot where some guy asks Mal, "don’t you have a plan?" and Mal responds, "I am the plan." (Did they do that exchange in the show? It sounded familiar.) And then the final shot was River lying on the ground, freaking out, and whispering "...Reavers!" (I strongly suspect we’re going to finally get to see the Reavers in this movie.)