It's Firefly's universe and characters, but it's not the same format as the TV show. The TV show was about them being the underdogs, the people who never got anywhere except shit on and didn't have a hope in hell of changing that any time soon. Reavers were never seen and feared to fuck. Kaylee, River and Inara are all best friends. Serenity, Reavers are everywhere, River's killing them without much fuss, Mal's the hero taking down the Alliance -- all in the space of what would have been 3 episodes of Firefly. Kaylee, River and Inara don't even look at each other during the whole movie. Or speak to each other.

I think, in reality, in Firefly the characters took the forefront. Yes, stories were broken, but they appeared to be broken around the basis of how they'd effect the characters. Serenity seemed more of an attempt to shoe horn the Firefly characters into an action movie plot.

That said? I still love Serenity, despite it's flaws. And I mean, lurve. The core messsages speak to me in many ways (my favourite song of last few years? Joss Stone's Right to Be Wrong). But I keep it in a very different place in my mind to the show.

Hm. I agree with both Tamara and Kevin. Interesting.

A movie is such a different storytelling format and Joss had such a BIG story to tell that some things got short shrift. They may not have been on the screen, but all the little family-like things we saw on TV still happened in the movie (or the version that played in my head).

I realize that only makes sense to me.

I need coffee.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but if anyone has a High Def tv, Firefly is going to be on Universal HD, starting with the pilot. They'll be showing the entire series (from what I can tell).

They were playing that when I was home over Christmas, where my parents have all the necessary satellite/HDTV hardware (grad-student-me has bunny ears), and dayum I didn't think our crew could get any prettier, but they can!!

My local cable co. declines to carry UHD. I think I'll go whomp on them some more.

shakes fist at Bev's cable company

Damn you! Cable company! Damn you!

We had Universal HD for about a week, and then kerblooey. I've called them a couple of times to request it, but they seem less than eager to acquiesce to my request.

I have to say that as pretty as it is in High Def, they aren't showing it widescreen. What's the point in showing something in High Def if they are going to butcher it?

I have to say that as pretty as it is in High Def, they aren't showing it widescreen.

Yes, they are. It's widescreen, just like the DVDs. It sounds like a configuration problem on your end.