Etta Courum Nas Mehkh!*

Good, now that you’ve calmed down, it’s time to talk about Serenity. Once upon a time there was a little show called Firefly. It was conceived, written and directed by Joss Whedon, who you may remember had a similar relationship with another little multi-media franchise that included Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Angel spinoff. In the Fall of 2002, Joss brought one of the best shows ever written back to the same network that he had brought so much awesomeness to with the Buffy-verse. To show their appreciation, FOX executives in charge of television scheduling that year** did everything in their power to bury, bugger, and bomb this glorious show that was the best of all things Sci-Fi, Western, Action, and Comedy, and was simultaneously all heart.

Luckily, so was Joss, so were the cast, and so were the show’s fans: the Browncoats. Together they shopped this property, this world to every other network, every studio, every medium, and Universal answered the call and put together a film with Joss that would not only provide a vehicle to see more of “the ‘Verse” but to provide some satisfactory amount of closure to the dangling plot threads from the abortive TV series. No power in the ‘Verse could stop them.

Serenity begins with a flashback to before the series began, showing us just how Simon sprung his sister River from the Alliance. This quickly develops into one of the biggest driving plot points for the whole film, as an Alliance Operative comes for her to secure the government secrets. One of the biggest, before… “Reavers.”

Additional Features

U-Control

Being as though this is a Universal Blu-ray disc, you know you’re in for some great special features with their U-Control features. This time out, we’ve got:

-Visual Commentary – Watch Joss, Nathan, Adam, Ron, and Summer give a picture-in-picture video feature commentary.

-Picture-in-Picture – Includes cast interviews and behind the scenes clips.

-Digital Tour of Serenity

-Mr. Universe’s Compendium – ever wanted in-universe companion text data that you can browse through as the feature plays beneath it? Here it is.

Hi-Def Feature

-Alliance Database – This feature is a first for me. I’ve never found a special feature that wouldn’t work on my Playstation 3 with the latest firmware upgrade. All I got was a black screen, but I’m pretty sure it was in Hi-Def. Maybe it’s a database of “The Black.” If so, it seems rather complete.

Additional Features

While you may have seen some of these in some of the previous DVD releases of Serenity, they upconvert right shiny.

-Feature Commentary with Joss and Cast

-Deleted Scenes with optional Commentary by Joss

-Outtakes – Clearly they enjoyed making this film

-Future History – The Story of Earth That Was

-What’s in a Firefly

-Re-Lighting the Firefly

-Joss Whedon Introduction

-Extended Scenes

-Take a Walk on Serenity

-A Filmmaker’s Journey

-The Green Clan

-Session 416 – Want to see some psych evaluations with River Tam? You might want to take notes.

Blu-ray

This Blu-ray disc with its 1080p resolution and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround Sound represents the best presentation possible for Serenity in your home theatre***.

ComicsOnline gives Serenity on Blu-ray 5 out of 5 Best Sci-Fi movies ever made.
 

*”This is laughter for chickens.”

**I like to think that they all went into garbage collection after that.

***The only better way to watch this film anywhere else only comes around once a year. It’s called Can’t Stop The Serenity and it’s an annual event held on and around Joss Whedon’s birthday that raises money for the charity: Equality Now. Equality Now was founded in 1992 to address the gender disparity in the human rights movement, which had grown to dismiss violations as “cultural” or “private”. Equality Now confronts issues such as domestic violence, rape, female genital mutilation, trafficking, and reproductive rights were not part of the agendas of established human rights organizations. Click the link above to learn how you can help women worldwide by watching Serenity with a ton of other awesome fans at a theatre near you each May.

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