(This review may contain spoilers).
I originally watched Firefly and thoroughly enjoyed the series, though I was quite disappointed that it was cancelled so quickly. Still, having a film made from the series was pretty cool and I was really happy when I was able to see the characters I recognised from the television series, as well as new characters.
I always found River Tam to be a really interesting character and it was good to see more of her in the film, though she seems quite a bit older than the character’s meant to be.
It was interesting to see more of the Reavers in this movie, even though they’re incredibly creepy and really terrifying. I also found the Alliance operative to be an intriguing character… though not a likable one. His moral compass was skewed a whole lot and I found his views on the ‘perfect world’ to be fairly interesting.
There were a lot of amusing moments in this film and it was cool to see the banter and relationships between the characters. I always felt that Simon was a bit too over-protective of River, but I felt she showed a lot of strength in this film.
Out of all of the characters, I probably dislike Jayne the most. I blame Star Wars on the reason for me liking Mal so much – Han Solo really made me like the roguish heroic characters.
There were some pretty good uses of technology and I felt that, although there was a lot of action in this film, the development of the storyline wasn’t left by the wayside to make room for the action.
I do have this film on DVD and do intend to watch it again at some point in the future. I don’t think it’s possible to watch this as a standalone, though – there are a lot of things that a viewer would miss if they didn’t have at least a passing knowledge of the television show.
Ink of Blood 