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Serenity (2005) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2025-03-28 00:30:26
Edited:
2025-05-21 17:06:00
Imported:
2026-08
Tags:

Content

And the journey is complete. 😢 Impressed with this movie. The Firefly vibe, but with more appeal from a visual perspective. I hope you enjoy the reaction! Looking forward to all of your comments. [Direct link here.]

✦ KL

Files

Serenity (2005) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction

Comments

William

Oh dang! I totally forgot that this was coming up after Firefly; it just never occurred to me. *head slap* 🤦🏼‍♂️ LOVE this flick. Love.

Sean Ellingham

What's impressive about how the movie looks is that all of the sets had to be rebuilt from scratch, and I *think* the CGI model for Serenity might have had to be rebuilt from scratch as well (TBF it would definitely have been rebuilt to some extent anyway to up the detail/resolution). There are a few differences that can be seen, but on the whole it's impressive how close it is given a five year gap

Steve Mercier

Fucking coooooooool...love this movie. It's definitely a movie with a limited audience--if you haven't seen the show, it's easy to get lost. But if you've seen it...well, honestly, it pisses me off, because can you imagine if this had been built up and developed over a few more seasons? But...love this movie. Going to watch this tomorrow after work.

Tyler Foster

There are Blu-rays of the show "Firefly" and even a 4K UHD of the movie Serenity. I get the impression that the PQ of the TV show leaves something to be desired, so it may not look that much better than what you have. With a show like "Firefly" it may have required a complicated "rebuild" (recompositing digital effects) to fully remaster the show in HD, and thus, "HD" means a master that was technically never meant to be seen, but rather used as a version from which to downscale the masters that would've been seen mostly on SD television back in 2002. I believe the idea was that maybe Serenity would've been such a big hit (what with the growing fan cult around the show after it was released on DVD) that they could've continued things into movie sequels and maybe even back to television, but the movie too failed to find an audience, merely breaking even at the box office with about $41m versus a $39m budget.

Sean Ellingham

The Blu-ray quality is good - Firefly was shot in 16:9 HD from the off (though Fox insisted it had to be 4:3 safe, which is why some shots aren't spaced as they would be if made today), and would have been shot on film, so the necessary resolution for 1080p was there. The CGI however was likely rendered at 720p and upscaled 720p - that's how CGI for Star Trek: Enterprise was handled on broadcast and on the Blu-rays, and that was shot contemporaneously to Firefly.

BubblyRainbows

You're right about this movie being perfectly fine without seeing the show. I'm pretty sure I said it in a comment near the start of your watch of the "Firefly" season, but I saw this movie before I ever saw the series. My dad was so offended by the fact that he threatened to ground me if I didn't watch the show immediately. IIRC, this movie was made in part because of fan efforts to get more of the show, and if the movie had done better, I like to think they had plans for either sequels or rebooting the show. It's too bad it didn't work out that way. But I feel like they clearly left it open for a sequel. I think you're the first person I've seen in reactions whose favorite character is Simon, but I've seen every character now with their own fanbase. Mine is Kaylee. I love her sweetness and her positivity. I loved her by the end of the movie, before I even saw the episodes. But that's the beauty of this show. The characters are so varied and interesting that everyone can find a character they love and/or identify with. It's been fun to watch along with you. Looking forward to everything that's upcoming on your channel. Have a good vacation! ✌️🤓

Jason Irwin

Absolutely love this film. (Great reaction, btw.) Just in case the wiki didn't tell you, the story of our Firefly crew is continued in graphic novels and now actual books. So, if you want to learn more about Shepard Book's past and/or Zoe post-Wash, they are there for you. You gave us the impossible task of ranking this movie with the episodes of the show. I haven't thought about this as much as I have the episode ranking, but if held to the fire, I would say I rate it #4 right below my holy three. The holy three are (#1) EP 6 Our Mrs. Reynolds, (#2) EP 8 Out Of Gas, and (#3) EP 7 Jaynestown. Stay Shiny.

Sean Ellingham

So, I'm one of those who saw Serenity before the show - Firefly didn't air terrestrially in the UK, only on Sky, so I wasn't able to watch it when it aired (and TBH, what little I knew of it didn't seem that interesting at the time). I came across the DVD on sale, and watching the movie was what made me want to watch the show. IMO, it holds up fine on it's own - everything you absolutely *need* to know about the crew, the ship and the backstory is covered in the first 15 minutes - and there's actually information in those first 15 minutes that explains things that *weren't* covered in the show. I really like the intro of the film - we start with the logo, that becomes a prologue, which is really a history lesson, which is really a flashback, which is really a nightmare, which is really a *different* flashback, which is really a security recording. Then the intro of The Operative, who is very quickly shown to be a serious threat, followed by that great long 'one-shot' walk-through of the ship - that sequence is actually *two* shots, one for each level of the ship, joined by the whip pan on the staircase The first 7 minutes were actually released on YT as a promo for the movie - one of many bits of unusual promotion they did for the film. Another promo they did was The River Tam Sessions, which is something that would be good for you to watch/react to - it's 8 minutes, and should be floating around on YT somewhere. The Operative is a fascinating character, in that he's aware he's a monster who isn't going to live in the world he's helping create - that's quite unusual. Joss Whedon explains in either the commentary or one of the extras that him not having a name is a deliberate choice - he was finding it difficult to name him, but then had a realisation that because he "doesn't exist" he's not 'worthy' of having a name. Something else Joss explains in the commentary is that in his original plan, the discovery of Miranda would have taken place around the end of S2 - so we can be sure that there would have been a much deeper exploration of River had they had the opportunity. There are canon comics that bridge the gap between the show and the movie, that explain Book's backstory, and that continue the story after the movie. The Blu-ray of Serenity has a base commentary track by Joss, and also has a visual commentary track of Joss, Nathan, Adam, Ron and Summer watching the movie. The Firefly Blu-rays also include commentaries for eight of the episodes

Nathan Jasper

The only two episodes that come close to the movie for me are "Out of Gas" and "Objects in Space". The movie is number one for me though because it was pretty River centric and she's been my favorite right along with Mal since the beginning. In the novelization of Serenity, Mr. Universe was revealed to have been in the same flight school as Wash and only passed by manipulating the school's software. So that's how they knew to reach out to Mr Universe. Wash knew Mr. U owed him one for keeping that secret all these years.

B.D. Green (art, reviews, and writings)

I saw the movie first, before the series, and I remember the first 30 minutes going "Why isn't this River character wearing shoes?" Although I grew to love that aspect of her character.

Paul Howard

It wasn't until watching "10 Things I Hate About You" earlier this week that I realised David Krumholtz was in both films. Summer did so well in the fight scenes (her background as a dancer really helped there with the choreography). Killing Wash and Book, while painful, served a couple of purposes. Both Alan Tudyk and Ron Glass couldn't commit to sequels (and Universal needed all the principle cast to commit in case they wanted to make some), so killing them removed that requirement. It also showed that "all bets are off". If they died, anyone could. It meant that "last stand" had real stakes to it. It's rare that a movie can/will do that. One thing that always hits me is that final conversation between Mal and Zoe. While on the surface the "You think she'll hold together?" with the reply of "She's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true" is talking about Serenity, the question and answer is really asking about Zoe herself.

Tesh

so glad you got here, been eager for this one, and it didn't disappoint, great reaction and no worries for missing the river stuff it can be confusing haha. that shot with the door open, i have a shirt that says "there's some rivers you don't cross" it has a river from a different show (not important) and it has the silhouette of river with the axe and sword from that shot when the door opens, wore it today actually (by chance haha) man watching this its been a year or 2 since the last time i watched it, and there were a bunch of little things i didnt notice, every line from river checks out, once you know the secrets every seemingly random line she says is foreshadowing, even "bullet in the brain bang squish" it shows her doing the same action and facial expression as the woman in the video when she tries to do the same. she also does this after she failed to explain who Simon needed to ask, her answer is "ask her" she doesnt mean ask Miranda, she meant ask the women in the video, so many cool little details. and yea i love the reveal of the Reavers, if they only could cover one of the story threads they planned to cover, i think this was the right one, it solved the BIG questions, even if the little but still intriguing ones (Book) were not addressed which is a shame but this story was the right call. i was angry about wash when it happened, he was my favorite character in the show, but over the years ive come to see it was done well as you said, i was just sad it was him, but you're right it made the stakes real. i ADORE the villain in this, the Operative was my favorite kind of villain, fully committed and convinced hes doing the right thing, but menacing, i love that the fight with im an Mal (both of them) showed they both fight SO differently, Mal was holding his own but recklessly in ways that weakened him in the long run, but even so his tactics that would seen underhanded to the operative worked, but the Operative was so clean and efficient, but so overconfident, when he thinks he has Mal 'stunned' from the nerves, he looks away to gloat and do his speech, but in doing so he missed mal move his hand, revealing to us that he could still move, and that ultimately was his downfall. its a shame it all ends here, but im glad they got an ending, honestly knowing what kind of person Joss is now, im glad we got what we got and its amazing, than to have him ruin it over time. I hope one day we get more stories in this world, but i think Serenity's story is over and im ok with that. but this world is so unique id love to see a new crew in it, maybe a few cameos as a treat :P but thats a long shot wish, amazing reactions for the whole show as always, ive been enjoying shield (thank you for getting me to rewatch it with your reactions) anywho, stay awesome, sorry for the massive wall of text, but this is my second favourite movie of all time, so its special to me haha (first is How to Train your Dragon :P )

Thadman

Just finished the movie, but haven't gotten to your summation yet. Just wanted to say that I haven't watched this full movie in a while. I saw it, probably, about 4x in full and quite a few reactions, but there was stuff I understood more clearly, about how River perceives, specifically. You may have gotten to this in your review, but I only just understood that because of River's abilities, she was mixing up her memories with others. That could be in part why she may say confusing things, but it's definitely, in this movie, shown that her memories from childhood were overlapping with the memories/visuals of Miranda because when she was first asked about it, I think, from Simon, she said she didn't know who it was and that it's someone else's memory, not hers. I assume now that it was in the memory of one of the "Key Parliament" people that came to examine her. Dreams are usually jumbles of things from our memories anyway, but with River, it was that she was also plugging into her dreams, other peoples' memories along side her own. I always figured though that once she solved the riddle of Miranda, it was a like a missing puzzle piece finally found and things started clicking into place for her, mentally. She could understand now just WHERE to put things. It's why she said, "I'm alright" as if to say, "I understand."

Thadman

For me, binge-watching has the exact OPPOSITE effect like you said. I remember a lot less details later on if I binge. I tend to think of individual eps more when I have time between watching the episodes. Here, you were not expected to remember the details of all the episodes, like when you asked Jayne if he forgot something he said to Mal a couple of episodes ago. The movie came out, about, 5 years after the show ended, so no one was expected to remember those details. Also, the movie tried to make it so that watching the show was not necessary and from what I hear, it did a pretty good job of it from some people I've seen that never watched the show nor knew about it and they still enjoyed it. Basically, the TV show was an enhancement to the movie where you understood more automatically rather than having to be told/shown certain things. You can see a lot of exposition done in the movie if you've already seen the show, but from what I can tell, it didn't seem like that too much to people unfamiliar with the show. The movie, obviously, was also about giving those who'd seen the show, some closure, while leaving the door open.

Brian Leonard

Originally, I did things backwards and saw the movie first. I really needed the movie's introduction explaining what happened to Earth in order to get into the series.

Rhiannon

I realize I'm about a year late to this party - but I just wanted to say that I think you're the first reactor I've seen that's watched this and picked up on when Jayne checks everyone else's straps before strapping himself in. One other thing he does in the movie - when Mal is giving his "I aim to misbehave" speech, Jayne takes a swig of his bottle and then slides it across the table - to SIMON. Although he's not my favorite character, I do think his character arc is probably the most interesting in the series. Thanks for the GREAT reaction!!