This is mostly spoiler free, but still read with caution if you
don't
want to know:


From AIn it Cool News:

SHINY!! Whedon's SERENITY Screenplay Reviewed


After reading the New York Times article in which Joss Whedon
compared the spoiler junkie websites to bullies who beat him up and
stole his lunch money, you sort of had to ask yourself: who's the
asshole that's going to run out and write a review of Serenity
before
they've even had a chance to finish shooting the damn thing? After
receiving a script for the Firefly movie from a buddy of mine who
works "in the industry," as it were, the answer becomes clear: that
asshole would be I.

But considering that the good folks on the Serenity set have only
just now started filming, and considering that the film doesn't come
out for almost a year, and most of all considering that the movie
will be way, way cooler if you know as little about it as possible,
I'm going to give as close to an entirely spoiler-free review as I
can. I won't mention any plot points or characters not already
widely
reported in the trades and the more respectable internet sites, and
frankly I hope that the rest of the Firefly fanbase will do likewise
should they have a chance to get their mitts on the script (was Joss
Whedon joking when he said that Mal dies? Do you wish you knew for
sure? Wouldn't it be cooler to actually find out in the theater?).

I'm not sure how recent a draft of the screenplay I have – there's
no
proper title page to it, and the Serenity title is only listed some
thirteen pages in (for security reasons, I presume), with nary a
written-by credit or a draft date anywhere to be found. There are a
couple of scenes that seem in need of a polish here and there, but
for the most part it reads like a pretty complete and close to shoot-
ready script.

First off, to allay some fears: every member of the original cast is
back, and for the most part none of the characters seem short-
changed
in the screen time department. Though the central character is
clearly Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), there's plenty of
time
spent with the other crew members, and certain sub-plots from the
series have carried over very naturally to the big screen version.
Only one cast member has notably fewer scenes than the rest, and I
almost wonder if there wasn't a rather severe scheduling conflict
that necessitated that person's absence from much of the filming.

The first ten or so pages of Serenity are a lesson in graceful
screenwriting – Whedon manages to set up more or less the entire
Firefly universe, from Earth-That-Was to the Reavers to the War for
Unification to River and Simon and right on down to the ubiquity of
the Chinese language all in a concise, folding-flashback format that
should prove intriguing to new viewers even as it offers faithful
fans of the series some expanded information that hasn't been
explicitly covered before. Afterward we meet The Operative (recently
announced as being played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), and following a cool
little sequence in which we're given a compelling and heretofore
unheard reason for why the Alliance wants to track down River Tam
(Summer Glau) so badly, we get introduced to the film's titular ship
and her recently-truncated crew as they prepare for their latest
job.

And that's as much of a plot description as I'm gonna give.

Perhaps the single most impressive aspect of the script is how it
manages to maintain just the right balance between giving those
familiar with the T.V. series plenty of new material to chew on even
as it draws in complete newbies to its world. My buddy had never
seen
the show before he procured the script, but after reading it he
immediately went out and bought the DVD box set – and actually
thought that the movie played better without having seen the series
first. The script seems to err generally in favor of the new viewer,
which is as it should be, even while it reads like Firefly through
and through. Whedon resists the Star Trek temptation to put in a
bunch of distracting fan in-jokes, and the story is all the stronger
for it.

There aren't an over-abundance of set pieces to the film, but if
those that they do have play out right, Universal should have a
profitable little franchise on their hands with a very promising
direction for future films to take. The action sequences are unique
and engaging, and more so than in the series you really get the
sense
that Mal used to be a soldier, and a good one at that. There are
also
moments to Serenity that are supremely creepy, and I note with
interest that they're obviously looking at a PG-13 rating for the
film – some of these scenes are just going to be too gruesome for
anything else, and not all the swearing is in Chinese.

You also have to give Whedon props for not merely sticking with the
series' theme of losses of faith and how you deal with them, but on
going out of his way to expand upon it. The character arc that Mal
Reynolds began in the first Firefly episode doesn't quite reach its
climax here, but it certainly progresses further than it ever did on
the small screen.

And of course, there's the trademark Joss Whedon dialogue:


WASH: Yeah well if she doesn't give us some extra flow from the
engine room to offset the burnthrough the landing is gonna get
pretty
interesting.
MAL: Define "interesting."
WASH (calm suggestion): "Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die?"

As far as weaknesses in the script go, there are a couple: though
The
Operative is an interesting character with an intriguing worldview
that serves as a nice counterpoint to Mal's, he's still one good
Agent Smith human-beings-are-a-virus monologue from being the truly
memorable badass that I think Whedon wants him to be. Getting
Ejiofor
to play him is a stroke of brilliance – anyone who's seen Dirty
Pretty Things or Amistad can attest to the intensity and depth that
he can bring to a role, and it'll be nice to see him playing against
his good-guy type here – but you kind of end up wishing that the
script would give him a little more to work worth. Hopefully, this
problem was rectified before shooting commenced. The other (slightly
larger) problem is the film's mid-point confrontation, which read a
bit hokier to both my friend and I than it should have – it was the
only scene in the entire script that seemed like T.V. writing. At
exactly the moment that the tension should be ratcheted up, Mal is
cracking wise and dressing in an inappropriately comedic manner.
(Also, and just to be anal-retentive here, Whedon on occasion seems
to use the words "galaxy" and "solar system" interchangeably in some
of his descriptions, though I trust that's a problem that'll be
worked out by the f/x boys long before post-production time.)

One of the biggest criticisms of the Star Trek: The Next Generation
movie franchise that Paramount managed to run right into the ground
was the fact that they never really felt like movies – they were
just
over-glorified episodes of the series, in which nothing really
changed afterwards. Sure they blew up the Enterprise, but you knew
they'd have a new one next week. Sure they killed Data, but they set
up the means of his return so obviously that they needn't have
bothered. Sure they married Riker and Troi, but honestly – does
anyone give a fuck? The difference between those Star Trek movies
and
Serenity is that by the end of this script, you feel like things
have changed – both personally for the characters and in the
universe of
the story at large. If there's a sequel to this film it won't be
just another interchangeable episode of their lives. It will build
inevitably upon the foundation laid here, and I imagine it'll be a
much bumpier – and even more interesting – ride. Here's hoping.

I am a leaf on the wind,
Miranda

P.S. Isn't it about time that somebody leaked the Whedon version of
the X-Men movie script online? I mean, seriously