Can't stop the signal

I laughed, harder than I have in a long time. I cried, but I often do at good movies. I gasped - gasped! - caught completely off guard by something I never saw coming. I don't think I've ever gasped at the movies before.

In short, "Serenity" was everything I hoped it would be, a worthy addition to the "Firefly" saga and one of the best science fiction/adventure movies ever made. And as I predicted a few days ago, my all-time favorite list has been shaken up. I will have to watch "Serenity" a few more times to see where it fits; in terms of the emotional wallop of the first-time screening, this ranks right up there with the way I reacted to "It's a Wonderful Life" and "E.T." and "Casablanca."

There's been much discussion of how "Serenity" will be met by those who have never seen "Firefly," and I'm going to defer that question because I have devoured the DVD set. My feeling, though, is while you might be able to enjoy the film, you really can't fully appreciate "Serenity" out of context with "Firefly." I was blown away by the film in large part because of how it extended the story told in the previous 15 hours of the saga. I realize in hindsight that none of the three "Lord of the Rings" movies or the two "Star Wars" trilogies were on my list of 25 favorite movies - but taken as a whole, of course, those are great films that I have viewed repeatedly, more so than many on my list of 25. Similarly, the emotional wallop of "Serenity" is informed by the previous adventures where I grew to know and love these characters.

But some grumbling has emerged; some fans of the TV show are saying to writer/director Joss Whedon, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal." They don't like some of the sacrifices and shortcuts Whedon made in condensing what he had envisioned as a two-TV-season story arc into a two-hour movie. It would have been fun to see this story unfold over 30-40 episodes, but Fox TV stole that opportunity, and this is a light-years-beyond-adequate alternative.

Claire Wolfe mentions a key battle strategy that is reminiscent of another science fiction adventure. My companions and I immediately noticed that, too, but we were gleeful about the reference. Others complain that the emergence of River's character has echoes of Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Has Whedon gone to the kick-ass-teenage-girl well once too often? I can't say, I don't know "Buffy" and "Angel" very well, but in the context of this 17-hour saga - especially recalling the famous TV scene where River saves Kaylee from three assailants - what happens in the film makes sense.

And I am tickled that the underlying themes of the TV show are more in-your-face than ever. In a flashback a younger version of River argues with her teacher about whether it's such a good idea to have a central government that monitors and seeks to control the lives of its citizens. And in fact the plot turns on one of that central government's key initiatives gone terribly wrong.

In the end, though, "Serenity" is shiny because these nine actors were born to play these characters, and together they are one of the great ensemble casts in television and now cinema history. In the Sci Fi Channel preview show last week,
a fan at an advance screening said, "I wish it went on for five hours." Amen! And I hope and pray Whedon finds a way to keep this story going. Even if it's not to be, I am confident that "Firefly" and "Serenity" are well on their way to finding an honored place in the history of science fiction. Captain Nemo, John Carter, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, James T. Kirk, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jean-Luc Picard, meet Malcolm Reynolds.