One word: Wow.

Advice if you have seen Firefly: Go see this movie.

Advice if you have not seen Firefly: Go buy 40 tickets to this movie to help boost the gross, throw them away, go buy the DVD set of Firefly, watch it, and then go see this movie later. You can watch the movie without knowing the show, but it’ll be so much better if you do that I can’t imagine wasting it in the pre-DVD state.

Spoilers

So basically, I was fine throughout most of the movie, but when the spike scene occurred, well, that was it for me. I was able to walk out of the theater, but not able to talk for a while afterward. I am not exaggerating this; I haven’t been this affected by a movie since, geez, E.T. And I was like nine then. That’s pretty impressive, Joss.

I’d been expecting basically a double-length episode, with the same sort of story and plot as the TV show, but no — Joss absolutely 100% kicked it up many notches going from TV to movie, and darkened it JUST A WEE BIT.

Also: It would have been interesting to have seen this same plot develop over a season or two, as semi-background seasonal arc to the per-episode plots. (Of course that basically boils down to “I’d prefer 26 * 44 minutes of Joss to 120 minutes of Joss.”)

Also: Where’d this Mr. Universe guy come from? He’s the one guy that I think works better for new viewers than for Firefly watchers, because new viewers go, “Oh, they have a history,” and we’re like, “Why did we never see him before?”

Also: Simon’s rescue of River was totally retconned — he so never knew about her being a psychic assassin in the TV show. It’s mostly a successful retcon, but still a retcon.

I’ll buy this movie as soon as it’s out on DVD, of course, but boy, it’s going to be hard to rewatch…