Serenity and Firefly

The conventional wisdom among a lot of Firefly fans seems to be that Serenity isn't nearly as good. I find this immensely annoying.

I will happily concede that Firefly is a much better TV series than Serenity. As a TV series, Serenity is sorely lacking. By the same token, Serenity is a much better movie than Firefly, which has enormous flaws as a movie.

(While I haven't read the comic books, I would guess that they're a whole lot better than either Firefly or Serenity as comic books, but not much good as either movie or TV series. But I digress.)

The fact that the two share characters and mythos muddles things. It tempts one to make impossible comparisons between the two, as if they were works in the same medium, rather than judging each individually by the standards of its medium.

I think that as a movie--that is, considered on its own merits in its own medium, separate from any other works (either TV series or comic books) that employ the same characters and mythos--Serenity is a tremendous piece of work, two hours of exciting, funny, suspenseful, thought-provoking movie. Yes, there was more character development in the 15 hours of Firefly than in the 2 hours of Serenity; there was also more character development (of more interesting characters) in Serenity than in a dozen Hollywood blockbusters put together. I enjoyed Serenity more than nearly all of the recent movies I've seen, and that's the standard that matters.

This is why I've come to value the opinions of people who haven't seen Firefly (most recently Shakespeare's Sister) over those of a lot of Firefly fans. They evaluate the movie for what it is, without imposing their ideas about what it could have been on the small screen.

[That's all, folks]