SERENITY
I went into this film a blank slate. I never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not once. I never watched Angel. And I never watched Firefly, the UPN cult series that more or less gave birth to Serenity. So I was not a member of the Joss Whedon cult. I have never attended a Comic Con in my life.
So I went into Serenity only knowing what I read in the synopsis and what I could see on the film's web site. Based on the grungy post-industrial design, and based on the more than serious tone of the web site, I expected a sci-fi film that would take itself far too seriously, that would try to paper over the holes in its story with ponderous dialogue and clumsy character development, and that would make up for its lack of intelligence and soul with liberal doses of ghastly violence or huge digitally created set piece battles. In other words, I expected quite a lot of what has gone wrong with the Star Wars franchise. But I went to the screening tonight anyway, expecting to hate the film.
And I've never been more wrong. Short version: I came away very entertained. Serenity is far better than I expected. It opens on the 30th. It captures a lot of the heart, fun and swagger of the original Star Wars without any of the pretension that has plagued most other sci-films of the past few years. It has a little bit of everything--humor, thrills, chills, big explosions and one of the most ingenious uses of silence in a battle I've ever seen. The villain is perfectly evil and the story has a Dostoyevskyesque touch. And Morena Baccarin is in it. Padme Amidala, eat your heart out.