Serenity Screenings Sell Out

DizzyEllie writes "Last Wednesday, Universal offered fans of Joss Whedon's Serenity the unique opportunity to screen an unfinished version of the movie in ten cities. This was originally intended to pull both fans and non-fans into the fold, but the screenings sold out so quickly (less than a day for all cities to sell-out, but reportably just a few minutes in a couple of locations), it is clear that only the hard-core fanbase will make it in. This seemed to be completely unexpected by Universal, as ads were appearing in newspapers after the sell out, and incentives for the fans to promote the screenings were removed. The screenings will be held in 10 cities on May 5. Serenity: The Official Movie Website" Definitely a unique promo thing. Shows serious stones too- I mean, if the movie sucked, they wouldn't dare do something like this. Hopefully someone will post a review for us on wednesday. And the rest of us suckers have to wait until September. Bah.

Comments

Joss Whedon....Who???

[smack-pot]

Just who is this Joss Whedon by the way? I plead ignorance!!! and incidently ignorance is bliss! ;-)

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[dtm789]

He is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and apparently the show Firefly which has a huge fan base yet I never even heard of it until it was cancelled and they announced they were making a movie out of it.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[Taladar]

It was cancelled almost immediately after airing the first episodes.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[geminidomino]

Nah, it's actually pretty good.

They gave it a Friday night, 8pm slot.
They seriously under-promoed it.
Then they showed the episodes out of order.
Then they pre-empted it several times for baseball.
Then they decided to pull it.

And, lest you think this is just fanboy BS:
They released the DVD set. It reached amazon's top 5(10? something like that) in a matter of days. That's selling like Star Wars.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[rijrunner]

It was 1 million pre-orders. It would have been higher, except that was the entire production run.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[jordand]

It was cancelled almost immediately after airing the first episodes.

...and yet The Simple Life is still running. Does that seem right to you?

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[J. J. Ramsey]

Another problem was that the first couple episodes were a little off. The pacing was slow, and the tension wasn't *quite* right. They weren't that bad, but a certain "oomph" was missing. The episodes that came along after they rejiggered the intro were much better. I think what happened it that someone cracked a whip and got the writers to give their 100%.

Unfortunately, those who formed their opinion of the whole series from those first couple episodes probably got turned off by it.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[fugu13]

Oh, very nice with the Jubal Early reference. (for those non-shiny people reading, Jubal Early is a particularly interesting empathic bounty hunter who appeared on firefly, and liked making observations that end in "Does that seem right to you?") IOW, mod this guy up funny even more.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[jfengel]

At their best, Buffy and Angel were filled with smart, funny writing. The shows presented interesting challenges: they could be funny, sad, scary, and romantic by turns, between episodes and within episodes. The performances were often quirky and interesting, and they liked to take chances: one episode of Buffy was done as a musical, another as a silent movie.

They did long story arcs. Not quite as long as on Babylon 5, but long enough to make each episode potentially fun to watch both on its own and as part of a contribution to a bigger story. For those who like such things, cool fight scenes and scary monster special effects. And it had a smart, independent but deeply flawed heroine who really could be a good role model for girls.

That's at their best, which was usually when Joss was in the driver's seat. They didn't always achieve that. Sometimes they'd be stupid. Sometimes the acting was terrible. Too often, they were just so-so: not bad as part of a longer story arc but not enough to make somebody dropping in for a single episode care very much.

As much as Joss loved his actors, and they do seem to be good people, most of them simply weren't very talented. But they were game to try whatever he threw at them, and that was often good enough for me.

So it's a little hard for me to say, "Here, see episode X and you'll understand." I'd say that too much of the first three seans of Angel were simply lame, and yet it got interesting just in time to get cancelled. Buffy was pretty hit-and-miss as well. I'd say that if you got friends to loan you the first couple of seasons of Buffy you might enjoy them.

That said, if you really want it boiled down to a single episode, try "Once More With Feeling", the famous musical episode. It's hardly representative, but it gives you a good view of the things that they were trying to accomplish on the show. It's late in the series, and there's a good deal of background it would take to know everything that's going on, but it might hook you.

Firefly, in my opinion, represented the best of Joss' work, with significantly better actors.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[steve_bryan]

Firefly was so badly mishandled by FOX that I'd like to add at least one more piece of information for those who are not familiar with it. When you hear mainly that it is from the creator of Buffy and Angel you might get the idea that you would only be interested if you enjoyed one of those. I've tried watching both of those series off and on but without success.

I only bothered to do so because having seen Firefly in the intended order from the DVD's I'm sold on the idea that it is the best sci fi series ever made for TV. I can't say I have a similar opinion of Mr Whedon's other series but Firefly has such superior writing and characters that I can't imagine even trying to make a comparison to the other franchises that I enjoy but do not admire nearly as much.

If you haven't seen the series or only saw a few confusingly presented episodes from the FOX debacle (boy I hope some of the morons responsible for that were fired) rent the episodes in order from your local video store or NetFlix. I'm not saying I can't imagine a better series but when compared to its peers, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5, ... it comes out far ahead.

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[Shky]

Wouldn't Friday night be a good night for Sci-Fi? While everyone else is out at parties the sci-fi nerds weren't invited to, they'll be sitting at home watching TV. It seems ideal to me.

(Just kidding, not trolling)

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[bigbigbison]

I've just never been interested in any of the stuff Whedon's done. I gave Buffy a few chances, I watched 3 or so episodes of Firefly, I flipped through his isses of Amazing X-Men. I just don't get him. Of course that doesn't mean anything is wrong with people who do like him, but I just don't understand it and it seems so very unremarkable.

I mean all the things people mention about his work were also done by Xena, which I thought was a much better show than Buffy (and which had TWO musical episodes before the much talked about musical Buffy episode even aired!), and yet who even knows who created or wrote for that show?

Of course I can't understand why anyone watches baseball either, so what do I know?

Re:Joss Whedon....Who???

[seasleepy]

It's actually a bit more impressive than that even as far as the DVD sales go.

One of the fansites has an Amazon tracker. From it, we get:
-- The show sold out of preorders on Amazon in three days in July 2003, never falling out of the top ten the whole time.
-- When it came available again in September, it went straight to number 1.
-- Excepting two days, it didn't fall out of the top 100 through the next July.
-- It's never been below 400 in the rankings.

Not bad for a show which only got half a season.

Re:In other expected news

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seriously, if it were Joss Whedon's 'Grocery Store Trip' it'd sell out."

Don't hate. He does good grocery.

Common practice

[Aneurysm9]

It's fairly common for studios to show workprints to test audiences during the editing phase to get a sense for what works and what doesn't. I'm not so sure what makes this any different.

Re:Common practice

[rijrunner]

It is very unusual to show to a general purchasing audience. Usually test audiences are culled from standard test groups and are targetted demographics. They will be doing that also.

I suspect that this is a new interesting marketting attempt. They get paid to show the movie in advance to a small group. That will raise interest in the film and awareness a bit. It is not even free marketting as the fanbase will pay for this. I seem to recall a couple other instances of this sort of thing, but they are rare.

I seriously doubt they would do this if they did not think they had something though. A lot of the flamebait on here is blathering about the fanboy base and *nobody* flames a franchise more than an upset fanboy.

A test audience signs non-disclosure agreements. They *want* people to talk about this. Not quite viral marketting, but they definately think that word-of-mouth will sell this. Since their dvd sales were pretty much all word-of-mouth and sold about 5 million set to date, there is a certain logic to that.

Re:Common practice

[jordand]

My understanding is that the test screenings have already occurred. The forthcoming screenings I would imagine are basically a bone that Universal is throwing to the fans, since the movie was supposed to be released already. (It was pushed back to September, apparently so it wouldn't be swamped by some other prominent sci-fi releases.)

Great trailer

[fsck!]

I was skeptical that this would ever really happen. Having seen the trailer, I'm very glad I was wrong. It's been a while since I've rewatched the DVD so I don't remember some of the characters names, but these clips from the trailer were hilarious, and a kind of humor sadly absent from most movies:

pilot: (flying into a battle) This is about to get interesting.
captiain: Define "interesting."
pilot: "Interesting: Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?"

bad guy: This destruction, this is your fault.
pilot: No, *I* don't murder children.
bad guy: [smiling] Oh, well I do.

Re:Great trailer

[geminidomino]

Character Names:

Captain: Mal(Malcom) (Former rebel. Wants to nail the space hooker)
Pilot: Wash
Engineer: Kaylee
Space Hooker: Inara
Stupid Muscle: Jayne
Female Muscle: Zoe (Wash's Wife, served with Mal in the revolution)
Doctor: Simon (River's Brother)
Preacher: Book
Psycho Chick: River

Re:Great trailer

[NOLAChief]

I was rather fond of:

Bad Guy: I want to work this out like civilized men. I'm not threatening you. I'm unarmed.

Mal: Good. *BLAM*

Re:Great trailer

[NOLAChief]

Let's clarify things a little more:

Mal: Wants to nail Inara. Too much pride to admit it.

Wash: Ecstatic he gets to nail Zoe.

Kaylee: Wants to nail Simon. Annoyed he won't admit he wants her too.

Inara: Wants to nail Mal. Too "professional" to admit it.

Jayne: Wants to nail anything with boobs.

Zoe: Nails Wash regularly. May have nailed Mal in the past. Backstory hazy.

Simon: Wants to nail Kaylee. Too shy to admit it.

Book: Doesn't appear interested in nailing anybody.

River: Off in her own little world, so who knows?

Re:Great trailer

[Gudlyf]

Or, before George Lucas got hold of the movie:

Bad Guy: I want to work this out like civilized men. I'm not...
Mal: Good. *BLAM*
Bad Guy: ...threaten...uh...

Re:Great trailer

[TheoMurpse]

Actually, once Lucas got a hold of the movie, it would be:
Bad Guy: I want to work this out like civilized men. I'm not [SHOOTS FIRST]
Mal: Damn you Lucas!!

Re:Great trailer

[jnik]

Kaylee: Wants to nail Simon. Annoyed he won't admit he wants her too.

More importantly:
Every male Firefly fan: Wants to nail Kaylee. Thinks Simon is an idiot for not going for it.

Jewel Staite broke my "never attracted to anyone younger than my little sister" rule. Apparently Joss had her put some meat on for Firefly; she looks great.

Re:Great trailer

[NOLAChief]

First time you watch "Serenity" (TV pilot), you expect Mal to have a tense confrontation with the Alliance agent holding River hostage.

First time you watch "The Train Job", you expect Mal to wind up with Niska's tattooed goon as a continual nemesis.

He kills them both in cold (OK, they were bad guys, lukewarm) blood. It is entirely possible that's how that bad guy dies, not that him dying will be the end of the story since I guarantee he isn't the only bad guy.

That said, you're probably right, at least with point 1. The lack of kneecaps can be an effective interrogation tool.

Re:Great trailer

[ticklejw]

Zoe: Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?
Book: Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzy around the subject of kneecaps.

Re:Great trailer

[AJWM]

You left out the third possibility: the two (camera) shots were edited together like that just for the trailer, but in the movie there's more going on between those two shots.

It's not uncommon to splice together stuff for a trailer that never happens that way in the movie (or TV episode).

Re:Great trailer

[Anonymous Coward]

Three cheers for cliched hot chicks with dark secrets and KUNG-FU POWERS!

You realize Kaylee is the sweet, mild-mannered engineer who dresses badly and likes cutesy knicknacks, not the kung-fu chick, right? The kung-fu chick (who is an interesting study of mental illness and about as sexy as a rock) is actually Simon's sister.

I really hope they don't get together.

Re:Great trailer

[GeorgeMcBay]

If those three movies are successful, it might make Fox eager to order new seasons...


If the three movies are successful, the stars involved will have become "movie stars" and would be unlikely to agree to go back to doing a TV show. Granted, there are cases where "movie stars" have gone back and done TV, but they are few and far between (good luck getting the whole cast back) and usually don't happen until the "movie star" has had a string of high profile movie flops.

So, damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'll eat my hat if Firefly makes it back to tv as a regular series.

Links for the unitiated

[GregoryKJohnson]

IMDB has a plot summary and some biographic info:

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/plotsummary
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0923736/bio

This isn't news

[pcgamez]

Take any movie of any size and have screenings in 10 cities. It WILL sell out. With ~300M people and lets say 1000 seats, it is not hard to find a few people excited to see it.

Re:This isn't news

[johnpaul191]

i think the point was that it sold out before the ads were even out. it spread by word of mouth, or online. not shocking to us, but the fact that there were so many people that watched the show (or the DVDs) that still were keeping up to the minute with news.

makes you wonder how the show failed so fast. was it because it was on friday nights, or because it was shown out of sequence (the pilot being shown last) or is the TV rating system flawed enough that they may miss a whole demographic of people that use VCRs/TiVo to catch shows.

focus grouping

[astrashe]

Doesn't this suggest (I didn't say prove, just suggest) that they're making the movie by committee with focus group data?

I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Most good movies are more organic -- they're the result of someone's vision, expressed with comparatively small amounts of interference.

But then again, I'm already planning on not going to the last Star Wars movie, so I'm out of step.

Re:focus grouping

[ewg]

I hope they're not going to let the hardcore fans write the Serenity movie--I watched the Firefly show on DVD and did not end up liking at much as many of my friends did.

For me, the Serenity movie is a chance for the Firefly team to show me something different.

Serenity trailer - direct download

[Anonymous Coward]

Quicktime 40 megs here:
http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/serenity/ serenity_ifs2.mov

Pent Up Demand

[DumbSwede]

I rarely re-watch episodes of even my most favorite shows, but Battlestar Galactica is showing on the HDTV Universal Channel and it is glorious in HiDef. Hopefully Universal will re-air the Firefly series. I suspect that if more of the content on the HD channels were Sci-Fi and Fantasy there would be faster buy-in for HD. When you look at DVDs it's always the Sci-Fi and Fantasy stuff that are Mega sellers.

The networks really seem to have a love hate relationship with Sci-Fi Fantasy fans. They are not content to cater to a smaller demographic. While that same demographic will none the less be loyal and unwavering for a good show, and support said show with DVD purchases and Fan sites, proving while maybe a 1/2 to 1/3 the normal demographic for other fair, the long term property value is much Higher. Sci-Fi fans should let advertisers know that they are major consumers and will well reward brands that support our hunger for good alternate fair on TV.

I will probably hear some boos on this, but I find it ironic that Enterprise has been exceptional the last few episodes. I liked it in general, though it could have been better. I was not obsessive about its departure, but now they've decided to go out with a bang and have plots that are not retellings of TOS I am vexed. It would seem we will never get a third Evil-Universe story, it seemed like a cliffhanger. Granted the Evil-Universe thing was used kind of gimmicky in the DS9 series, but Enterprise has it right by leaving the main universe out. Probably just get tired of seeing all the PC hand ringing our characters do, and enjoying seeing people give into some raw animal emotions.

check out that sneaky affiliate link in the post!

[Anonymous Coward]

ha, I figured out why they wanted this posted:

See the u=dizzyellie in the article link?
That's to get them credits when you sign up for the site to browse! SNEAKY! (wish I thought of it)

(credits let them get free t-shirts and posters and such)

Wait till September?

[AndroidCat]

That depends. After the screenings, a screener on p2p seems inevitable. (Now there's a conflict of /. ethics!)

Reviews

[affeking]

Actually, there are already a few reviews out there from an Australian screening. Here's one...
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=20089

Its by a big Whedon fan, so probably a little biast.

there are already reviews

[LuxFX]

There's already been a couple of reviews to hit the net. Here is one of them based on a screening in Australia.

I got my tickets!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

With an announcement by Joss Whedon at the Serenity official web site, the tickets to this event went on sale at just after midnight Wednesday morning. By dawn, most of the cities were sold out. By 9 a.m., all of the cities were sold out.

I happened to trip over the announcement at 1 a.m, woke the wife, and scored our tickets. We're very excited about it!!!

What's it about? One good quote that I read was, "Imagine if Star Wars had been about Han instead of Luke." (but with much, much better writing and no damned cutsie aliens).

There have been several test screenings in the past to tune the movie. Almost always, the word leaked and these turned into flash mob events for Firefly/Whedon fans. This 10 city screening is a little different. The movie is nearly the finished product, but the purpose is to incite the fan base into a word-of-mouth guerilla marketing machine.

Universal apparently thought that there was going to be trouble getting butts into seats, and created a marketing campaign and ads just for this screening. With 30,000+ registered fans at the official Serenity website, they need not have worried about that. A couple of folks have even put their tickets on eBay with bidding now at absurd levels.

This promises to be big! Check out the trailer!

Re:If the movied sucked...

[angrist]

If the movie sucks, then this is early enough that they can change it.

Beta movies good enough for production sale

[spideyct]

Reminds me of this past post:
MS: Beta Software Good Enough for Production Use

(Only, this time they're charging.)

The people that are interested don't care that it is still beta. The people that do not want to consume an unfinished product will stay away.

It's a good thing

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Don't believe that stuff about someone's vision. I think directors work best when faced with difficult constraints and with constant reminders that they're making movies for other people, not just to please themselves. For example look at what has happened with Star Wars now that Lucas has total control. Or look at what happened when the Wachowskis earned enough trust from the studio to make the movie they really wanted to. (And look how good they were on a tiny budget like with Bound.) Whenever I hear a director say "now I can finally make the movie I have always dreamed of" I cringe.

A few years back I worked at a company that did visual effects. The director of a highly succesful movie had come in to make the movie that he really wanted to make and we were going to do the effects. This was story that he really believed in and he told people this. The succesful movie: Mask. The director: Chuck Russell. The movie he truly wanted to make: er...um...Bless the Child.

When a director has freedom to make what they want, it's time to run.

Serenity trailer in HDTV format, here

[Gossi]

Especially for CmdrTaco:
80mb ultra high res XVID trailer

It's 80mb. Well above DVD quality.

Needs Xvid. In linux, use mplayer -framedrop (you may also need "-vo x11" in linux if your graphics card doesn't handle very mad resolutions).

Also, whilst I've got your attention: I've seen the movie in London last month with the UK distributors (UIP), and it was freakin' brilliant.

-1 Wrong

[Gerad]

I hope you didn't mean that there are about ~300M people in 10 major cities combined, because that's the impression I got from reading your post. The USA* itself only has ~281M people, and Chicago (the largest city that the preview is being shown in) has only about ~3M in the city itself.

Furthermore, I'd be curious to hear where you got your "1000 seats" number, as there is no actual article linking any solid information, other than the official website, which only lists the cities being shown.

*And before anyone accuses me of being a excessively US-centric, the website lists the 10 cities, and they're all here in the USA.

Re:CGI cities

[MayonakaHa]

One thing I really liked about the show and that I hope they do in the movie too is the camera movements when showing something in space. It had all the feel of a guy looking out the window with a handheld camera. Nothing was perfectly centered in frame, zoom was used liberally, and there was a delayed focus when something was zoomed in on. It gave it more of a 'real' feel to me.

Re:In other expected news

[Badfysh]

"Seriously, if it were Joss Whedon's 'Grocery Store Trip' it'd sell out."

Wow, when does that come out?

Re:check out that sneaky affiliate link in the pos

[Cruciform]

Then kudos to them.

Slashdot is a "link site", not really a news site. Journalistic integrity is neither its strong point, nor a requirement.

If the submitter gets free goodies for being the first to send in the link, more power to them.

But back on topic:

As for whether the movie is good or not... if it's as good as any of the episodes were, but with a bigger effects budget, then it's already more than worth the money that many people spend to go see utter crap in the theatre. Joss is getting my money, it's already a given.

Re:The movie will still bomb

[Gossi]

Here's something you forgot to type: In your opinion.

Given that a lot of the Firefly episodes were written/directed by Joss, I'm not sure how he was trying to do an impression of himself.

Re:OT: Goodbye karma.

[Mac Degger]

You might think it sucks...good for you. Buit as for thsi:

"Where is his science?"

Well, Firefly is just about the only sci-fi series to actually /not have sound in space/! You know, just like in real life? And the reason for using oldfashioned six-shooter type guns is pretty decently explained in the series itself.

So whilst you might not like Firefly (I do, because it doesn't resemble Buffy much at all: Firefly is funny and has well thought out, rounded characters instead of the buffy-characiture), you can't say the show's science is bad.

Schedule Change

[Adrilla]

Whedon's Grocery List will be shown at 12:07am so that we may show baseball. Sorry for the inconvience.

Re:ripoff

[Cordath]

Star Wars itself lifted concepts and even entire scenes, right down to the wipes, from "The Hidden Fortress" as well as numerous other sources. You'd be surprised at just how good Lucas was at ripping things off. Go watch some old republic serials sometime. In any case, who cares? Star Wars combined what it ripped off in new ways and it was good. Damned good.

If you want to draw parallel's between Han Solo and Firefly's captain, who both happen to wear remarkably similar pants, might I point out that's a friggin' good thing. Firefly's captain isn't the digitally sanitized Han Solo of today, or any of the revoltingly bland characters from the new Star Wars series. He's not some up-tight stick in the mud like every Star Trek Captain since Picard. (Kirk was perhaps a little too loose I admit... He had serious issues keeping it in his pants!) We're talking about a died-in-the-wool loveable scoundrel. Sci-Fi hasn't had one in ages!

Re:wtf is serenity?

[pennyher0]

I agree that the trailer is formulaic. That was a marketing strategy to pull in the mainstream "i want to see shit explode" audience.

But the show itself is not formulaic. It subverts a lot of different "sci-fi" and even TV-series-in-general expectations. No vinyl-clad halloween-esque aliens with more make-up than my dead grandfather, no scantily clad crew members who have no real business being scantily clad (Inara's a Companion. Dressing beautifully is part of her job description. and she's never scantily clad anyway), the dialogue is FUNNY and entirely character driven... and the characters are complex rather than based on single opposing traits.

In the "literary" sense, the series really doesn't belong on mainstream tv at all because that's not the kind of thing that gets played on mainstream tv.

Buffy had a fanbase because it had pretty faces, yes. But this series has a fanbase (much bigger and with a higher average IQ than the buffy fanbase) because it's a GOOD series.

Re:check out that sneaky affiliate link in the pos

[Barry Woodward]

Important links for Joss Whedon's SERENITY!

Serenity: The Official Movie Website

FireFlyFans.net

http://forums.prospero.com/foxfirefly/start

Test Screening-Early Reviews

Another Serenity Review

WonderCon Clip 128k.mov

WonderCon Clip 300k.mov

WonderCon Clip 700k.mov

WonderCon Clip 128k_wmv.asx

WonderCon Clip 300k_wmv.asx

WonderCon Clip 700k_wmv.asx

Re:But why Firefly?

[batkiwi]

1. After the success of buffy and angel, Universal has "faith" in Joss's ability to draw people in.

2. The sales data for the DVDs are supporting evidence for #1 and #3

3. It didn't make it out of its first season due to internal Fox politics, nothing to do with the quality of the show itself.

If it was just the show, why is Fox refusing to sell the TV rights to Universal/UPN (like they did for angel AND buffy after canning them)? It's only through a contract oversight that Joss was allowed to have Universal make the movie; Fox has firefly (as well as the next 2-3 show ideas Joss has) "locked up" as far as TV series go for the next something like 5-6 years.

They talk about all of this in the extras on the DVD, but in an obtuse way to avoid lawsuits and the like. If you put that together with some Joss and co interviews, it paints a very specific picture.

Re:Watch the DVD sales not theatrical

[Barry Woodward]

I suspect the hardcore Whedon fans will love this, but others will be left cold. CHUD.com had an early review of a test screening, hardcore Whedon fans loved it, those who didn't know him from Adam (most of the universe) thought the movie was "Star Trek Motion Picture Bad."

Actually you're distorting the facts. The article in question at CHUD wasn't a review at all, just an article commenting on the test screening reviews showing up at Ain't It Cool News (FYI: all positive). It was never referred to as "Star Trek Motion Picture Bad". The author of the article, Devin Faraci, commented that he heard from a couple of people he knew in the industry that thought "it was more Star Trek: The Motion Picture than Wrath Of Khan". Prior to that he had been down on Serenity box office chances and conveniently, he never backed up those statements any further, even when pressed for more details on Chud's message boards. Bottom line is, Serenity has been getting killer reviews, yes, from fans but also quite a few people who are unfamiliar with Firefly. Hell, reportedly, even Kevin Smith attended one of the screenings and was impressed.

Test Screening-Early Reviews

Another Serenity Review

It's all about Han

[Syncdata]

What's it about? One good quote that I read was, "Imagine if Star Wars had been about Han instead of Luke." (but with much, much better writing and no damned cutsie aliens).

Surprisingly, I didn't catch this while firefly was on the air, nor after I watched the DVDs. I was describing the show to a friend of mine, and he says "So it's basically the adventures of Han Solo?" It's really the best synopsis I've heard, and he hadn't watched the show.

I wonder if that's what Whedon had in mind the whole time?