.... Anyhow, picking up where we left off. Joss tossed a animated picture frame of Inara's departure from the ship while talking to kaylee to introduce that whole history in a nutshell before having them go into the trap. Very well placed.

My bad, I forgot the introduction of Shepard. After they get simon and river out of there the lays low in shepards haven community. We get the majority of the five minutes that shepard has of the film here. His past is again hinted at and Mal even asks him if he's ever going to tell him how he knows so much about the alliance and other things non shepard related. We are left hanging and this is one of the let downs I had with the film for reasons I will explain later. After the trip they get a message from Inara and it does hint at the whole shy relationship and Mal figures it's a trap. Leads to a witty remark about how he knew it was a trap based on the fact that they didn't fight in the conversation.

Back to the trap. Mal shows up to Inara's place sneaking in under the nose of the assasin by dressing up as a women. He gives a little Mal style comment towards Inara, who is praying for Mal. Assasin comes in and they pace around in a circle as the assasin. The assasin comes off as a man of honor and attempts to make an offer for River. They get into a fight and Mal is getting destroyed in hand to hand. Inara jumps into the mix and doesn't really offer much other than exploding incense that leaves Inara and Mal time to get away.

Back on the ship they are trying to figure out what Rivers secret is and slowly they start to discover it. Eventually it's worked out that River's memory of Miranda. This leads to more problem solving as to whole is Miranda. We later realize that it's not so much a whole, but a where. Miranda sits outside of the blackness of space. Deleted from the archieves it doesn't exist on any maps and is well beyond Reaver infested space. They go back to the Haven only to find that it has been attacked. Many people dead or left to die after an attack by the assasins men. Shepard is there with a gapping hole in his chest. He has time to talk to Mal and leave him some final words. I really think that this will pretty much piss away any potential of finding out why Book was so informative when it came to other subjects. While I understand that Joss couldn't have time to fit in all the characters into the film, Books backstory was one of the main reasons why I wanted to see a film come out of this franchise. For the potential for those unanswered questions to surface. Oh well. Joss really stressed that this may very well be the only time to tell a firefly story on the screen or in any format, so he did what he could and I'm pretty sure that these instances will grow to stronger moments because of the deaths.

At this point Mal pretty much snaps. Trying to figure out what is it that the alliance is trying to keep secret so badly that they would destroy anyone who is connected to Mal to stop him and his crew and get River back. Mal makes the choice to go head on through Reaver air space and into Miranda. They fix up Serenity to have corpses on the outside and look battered up beyond recognition so they can squeeze by them. Before going into the zone, Mal and Assasin guy have a brief conversation via the ships monitor system as the Assasin attempts to track down the ship. Mal turns it off and then they enter the edge of the universe and right into Reaver turf.

Shoot over back to the Assasins flag ship where they mention that serenity has disappeared. We go back to the ship where it's just crawling along through endless amounts of Reaver ships squeezing through the cracks in most cases. The eventually make it to Miranda, which is one of the planets that didn't need any terraforming at all, and has large amounts of cities. All of which are completely empty. This confusses the crew as they walk around. The only thing they discover is dead bodies that looked pretty much like they just fell down and died. Some more perserved than others.

The crew eventuallys comes across a video recording of the last minutes of this place. In it they find out that Miranda was one of the alliances first cities that they conducted experiments in to make the people happy and accepting of whatever came their way. They did this by pumping calming chemicals into the air system. This made everyone so laid back that they eventually stopped doing everything, including living and breathing. The big shocker to this realization is that they also explained the reavers and connected it all. The calming chemicals had the reverse effect on some of the percentage of residents. It actually made them rageful and insane. So the big secret that the alliance doesn't want River to keep is that they are responsible for the Reavers because of this test planet.

Mal gets this recording and decides that the best way to spread this is by taking it to Mr. Universe, who can easily broadcast the tape to as many galaxy systems as possible. The call ahead and he is more than happy to. Though we find out that he is more than happy to because the assasin is there with a lot of guards expecting Mal to call ahead. So the Assasin calls for all his ships to stand by and wait for Serenity to get out of the dead zone to attack. Pretty much has a lot of alliance ships sitting there in wave after wave waiting for the first sign of serenity to blow it.

At this point Serenity is floating along back through the maze of Reaver ships hanging around and one of the ships catches serenity's eye and follows. The ship, with the upgrades from Haven's construction now has a canon mounted ontop of the ship. So before the Reaver ship can attack, they shoot that down and it gets all the rest of the Reaver ships attention.

So now that Serenity gets back out of the black zone, the assasin is about to fire upon them to realize that following Serenity is a slew of Reaver ships. Serenity gets out of the way of the two opposing forces and all hell breaks loose. The Visual FX and the constant twist and turns in this plot really help give i the tv show feel aswell as provide good unexpected twists on items you thought you knew.

The Visuals of this space battle alone were just about done with a few exceptions, but it was pretty damn amazing. It had all sorts of choas going on in it and through it all you see one ship follow serenity's tail through the whole way through as you see alliance ships getting destroyed left and right and exchanging the fire with the Reaver ships.

Ok, were did we leave off? Ah yes, the pretty grand level battle between alliance forces and reavers with one tailing Serenity. We see the bad ass assasin jump into an escape pod before the reavers pretty much tear apart his ship. It's a pretty old cliche thing to do, you know, set up for that final battle which you can see a mile away. In anycase, so the reaver ship is still tailing Serenity while it is taking some damage on its wild ride down to Mr. Universe's main base of broadcasting and information gathering. It loses part of its engine and starts to really come down hard and fast and we see Wash navigate it directly into the hanger while it crashes into and loses plenty of its parts. The tension at the point in the film is pretty intense. The ship is now down and this is one of the more shocking and out of left field deaths. Wash is going on after landing the ship with a poem about leafs in the wind and then out of nowhere a reavers' ship spear jams through the cockpit of Serenity impaling and killing Wash. Zoe goes to him but Mal pushes her down in time to dodge two other giant spears that rip through the cockpit. Clear signs that Reavers are about to be there to rip them apart. The death is really pretty much out of no where and is another factor of pretty much telling the viewer that no one is safe. It really did make the film a bit more somber and sad at that point.

We see the crew get out of the ship and make way through the hallways of Mr. Universe's home. The close off one of the doors and make a sort of last stand at one of the passways between the elevator and a blast door that will serve as the final line of defense. Mal tells them all to hold out that area while he goes on and attempts to get the broadcast out about Mirenada. So the rest of the surviving crew is left there with a blocked door and their ammo ready to hold the reavers back. Think aliens with human crazed ripped apart ragefilled folks instead of xenomorphs.

Mal eventually works his way down only to find that Mr. Universe's base of operations has been destroyed by the Assasin and Mr. Universe dead next to his real doll. All hope isn't lost though since his Real Doll pretty much left Mal a message saying that he has a secondary broadcasting system in the lower floors. Not as strong of a signal, but still can get the job done. Mal makes his way down there and we see the assasin come out of one of the ventilation shafts after him only to hear the same message mal did about the back up system.

Up top where the rest of the crew is about to face the oncoming attack there is a sort of calm before the storm where River gets into a ball and starts getting flash backs. So their ultimate bad ass weapon is out of the fight. Well the first wave of Reavers breaks through the door way and Zoe goes wild on them. shooting and then eventually going full on with them. This is where we come to even more proof that this is a Joss creation. Zoe gets a pretty nasty slash in the back by a reaver around the shoulder area leaving Jayne to take up the mantle and shoot away at the reavers to hold them back while Simon tries to take care of Zoe. Now the vents seem to have Reavers in them getting in. Kaylee gets some nail device slammed at her neck/shoulder area taking her out of the fight forcing the group to go into the blast door area. Only problem is that the door doesn't close all the way leaving a small square area open in it.

Back with Mal, we find him just on the other side of the broadcasting equipment without a bridge to get over with and needing to go up on rafters to get to the other side. Bad Ass Assasin comes out of nowhere and gives Mal a little smart talk only to get fired upon by Mal taking a Mal style cheap shot and shooting to get himself over to the other side. Assasin dude jumps on and attacks him dropping him and making him swing by on chains to get to the other end. they both make it over to that side of the platform and start to have their fight.

cut back to the crew holding down the line. Yet another moment of pure Joss-ism, we see in slow motion Simon take a shot to the stomach by a reaver from that small square hole. He's been able to patch up some of the other crew, but he can't do anything for himself without his bag that he left on the other side. He apologizes to River for not taking care of her. She gets emotional and out of her ball of fear state and then decides to sacrifice herself to save them. She jumps through the square hole, tosses his bag over to him and closes up the blast shield doors. Now Simon can patch himself up and finish off the rest of the crew. But River is left in a sealed room full of reavers.

Back to Mal we have him going at it with the assasin who seems to be playing with him for the most part. Eventually pulls out his sword and stabs it through mal. What part of his stomach? I really can't say. Mal pushes him out down while he is surprised that mal isn't dead and then mal simply pulls the knife out. They go at it for a short time more and then the assasin pulls out the move that he did on the scientist in the start of the film. Hitting a nerve at the back of the spin/stomach area making the person freeze so the assasin can simply put the sword under them to fall ontop of. The assasin goes on a little with his ego and then lays out the sword for Mal to fall onto. Only problem is Mal doesn't fall onto it, he attacks him some more as the assasin is surprised by the events and lays him out on the floor, takes a hand jab to his neck so he will stop talking and Mal pins him to the platforms rails so he can't move and can't talk while Mal sets up the broadcasting of the message. Mal then goes on to explain that he lost those nerves back during the war, so that is how he got out of the assasins trick and he then delivers the message and the assasin is left there looking at it in slight shock and horror of what the message is. He, for the whole time of the film didn't care what the folks who hired him are trying to protect. It was all about honor and fighting and hunting for him.

We are seen cut shots of River going crazy on the Reavers taking them out quickly with her moves. It really is a sight to see her go wild on them. It's not like any sort of Buffy type of fight or anything like that. There really is some nice camera angles to it and it does get you into it.

Mal meets up with the group again, who is still pretty much down for the count. They are all under the assumption that River got tore up. So when the blast doors finally open, they are expecting a wave of Reavers and all they see is River standing there in a shot that looks like Mila from Resident Evil simply because of the dress River is wearing. Out of nowhere the wall crumbles in back of River and we see a slew of the assasins soliders who are waiting for an order from the assasin to take them out. We then hear him tell them to stand down.

Cut to a shot of three graves. One for Mr. Universe, one for Shepard and one for Wash. All three have visual projected motion to them. We see the shot of the remaining crew at the graves and Zoe comes up with a sparkling candle to put it on her husbands grave.

The closing to the film is pretty much them rebuilding Serenity, getting it ready to go up into space again. Mal talking with the Assasin about how he will never see them again and that the Alliance may track them because of what they have caused. He tells them that many of the planets are not pleased about the alliances role in creating the reavers and wanting to control a population. So I assume that it's leading into a bigger "civil war" like before between the alliance and the Independent fractions. There is a bit more of interaction between Mal and Inara and we get a shot of Kaylee and Simon getting intimate before the ship is ready to take off. Mal is shown talking to someone in the cockpit of the ship and it turns out to be River as the new pilot. Mal is a little hesitant in letting her take off, but she is a natural when it comes to it. Mal goes on a little spill about how it's not knowning how to fly it that keeps a ship in the air, it's showing the ship love to keep it going. River reacts to the story in a positive way and we see Serenity fly away. The closing shot being a part of the ship flying off with Mal's voice over being "What was that"

The ending, while extremely depressing and full of despair comes off really well. It will leave a lot of fans shocked because of the number of members who died and those injured, but it will also be good to see serenity fly away. The ending really worked well in slamming it home how tight the group really has become and lived up to the hype. I especially liked the bookend ending from the introduction of Serenity with Wash and Mal discussing a part flying off to having River and Mal talk about a part flying off.

Do I think there will be Sequels? I really don't think so. It may do well during its theater run, but I think the depressing aspect to the film may hold it back from being rewatched by many or word of mouth to spread about it. While it does a great job at inviting new viewers into the world that is Firefly, a lot of folks need to be sold onto watching it in the first place. It will all depend on the marketing of the film.

As for the downer scenes. It does make a pretty big impact, but that is what Joss was going for and he nailed it perfectly. Maybe a little to perfect. You feel the loss of the crew members. Especially Wash's death. Shepard may not be to bad to take in for folks who are new to the franchise because of his lack of screen time. But the death of Wash is just really hard to handle with a split second.

In the end, Serenity is a great film that does open itself to new viewers and hopefully it will make a lot of them, while telling what seems like, at times, a simple back to back episode of Firefly. Mal is spot on with his character as pretty much everyone else is aswell. They really do make the world come to life, as hard as "a western in space" can really be taken seriously.

I would gladly suggest the film to both new viewers and old time fans. Though I will warn the fans that it may be a like a abusive relationship you just keep going back to. You may feel beaten by Joss through the film, but in the end it does make sense why he's beating you with the pain and misery of your favorite characters.