Serenity DVD review *with pictures*

[Digital Leonardo]

Well, I went and rented Serenity today. I never buy a movie with out renting it first, to make sure its worth it.

Okay...

Commentary: I must say, since Joss' first commentary from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's
Welcome to the Hellmouth"/"The Harvest", he has gotten alot less pointless in the things he points out. He gave some really great insight to the movie, and the things that they did to it. He also pointed out almost every error he could think of, which was funny and kind of shows that he won't try to ignore them or blame them on other people.
I found he would ramble a bit on things, and completely ignored my favorite scenes with stuff I didn't care for. But hey, what ever.

Deleted Scenes: Nice selection they had, and the Inara ones I would have loved to see in the movie. I think alot of people will like them all, the last one is a bit dull, but the rest would have fit nicely into the movie.

Blooper Wheel: XD that cast has a dirty mouth on them! There are some pretty funny stuff, and it is much more enjoyable then the Buffy/Angel ones that I've seen.

Features: The features are all informative, but they are kind of lacking. I wasn't impressed with the ideas they came up with, and would have liked more of the Cast talking. We got alot of Joss and the crew, but I personally always like the cast, which again, lacked on the Buffy DVDs.

Menus: Well, the menus all look great. The gold coloring is really nice. The main menu moves, and every character has their face in it except the Sheperd and Kaylee... which sucks... The general effect is nice, spacey and fits for the movie. I think they should have made it consistant with the FireFly DVD, and if they did, then good on them, if not... boo.



Cover: The cover is slowly growing on me. But I still would have liked the desert one seen on the other DVDs. The shiny-trick they used makes it look to dark. The back is horrid... I do hope a special pack will be released. I wish they had based the cover art off the disk, which is a light blue, and very pretty.

Final: I say buy it, its a nice collectors piece for fans to go with Firefly, but I will wait before buying it, to see if a 2 disk anything comes out, or a joint deal with Firefly (which I have yet to buy). 7/10

I am upset to say I have not see any advertisments for its release, which is odd. Was one even made?

To Joss, good luck on sales. I wanna see a Serenity 2: Kaylee Forever!

[Browncoat]

Great review DL. So it's only Joss by his lonesome on the commentary?

I wonder why they deleted the Inara scenes? From what i've read in the serenity companion, it seems like they explained who-and what- she was really well. Without them in the movie i doubt any non-firefly fans had a clue who Inara was.

And you've GOT to get Firefly!!!


BTW-when you rented it, were all the copies there or had people rented them all? Just wondering how popular it is. I've still got my fingers crossed for another film.

[Digital Leonardo]

browncoat said:

Great review DL. So it's only Joss by his lonesome on the commentary?

I wonder why they deleted the Inara scenes? From what i've read in the serenity companion, it seems like they explained who-and what- she was really well. Without them in the movie i doubt any non-firefly fans had a clue who Inara was.

And you've GOT to get Firefly!!!


BTW-when you rented it, were all the copies there or had people rented them all? Just wondering how popular it is. I've still got my fingers crossed for another film.

Thanks^^

Sadly it is just Joss, I would have liked Mal or someone else to be with him, since he did side track alot. Plus, I love actor's opinons on themselves.

The Inara scene, I guess its not a spoiler, kind of gave us more back story on who she was, and what she did. Since in the movie, you didn't really get a purpose of what she does, as a oh, what was it, compainon? There was a second scene in which her and Mal escape, but it wasn't really needed.

I do need to get Firefly... I have yet to see all the episodes... guess I'll do that for x-mas, since nothing else has come out yet...

Well... I went to Rogers and BlockBusters, and well, both hadn't got the movie in yet, which shocked me. I went to the corner market, which rents out movies, they had 3 there and only 1 was left, so, I guess thats good.

At Wal Mart they seemed to be half sold, since the stand they had was half empty.

[Browncoat]

Yeah Nathan Fillion would have been good as co-commentator. He did 2 on the firefly set and was very good.

So are the special features long or only a few minutes in length?

[Digital Leonardo]

browncoat said:

Yeah Nathan Fillion would have been good as co-commentator. He did 2 on the firefly set and was very good.

So are the special features long or only a few minutes in length?

Yeah, I think they go around 5-8 minutes long, nothing to much like on Buffy Season 6 and 7. Though, I would have liked a walk through of the movie or an original script.

PS, pictures of the menus are up.

[Browncoat]

Cool pics DL!

There's quite a few deleted scenes- i was only expecting a couple for some reason.

Dammit! Now i want to watch the film!!

[Digital Leonardo]

browncoat said:

Cool pics DL!

There's quite a few deleted scenes- i was only expecting a couple for some reason.

Dammit! Now i want to watch the film!!

Me too, but as Joss said "Always film more then you need, just so you have it"

[Browncoat]

Just watched my 'serenity' dvd last night. I actually liked it more the second time.

This is what extras our version got (plus the ones DL already listed):


* A Filmmakers Journey - Journey with Joss from Script to Screen
Went for about 20 minutes. Pretty good. It had cast interviews and showed the cast on set and summer training and other stuff like that.


* Joss Whedon Q&A Session - Filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney
This went for almost an hour and was quite interesting. At one point Joss says that he wanted Morena to guest star in 'angel' but cos she was filming a show for fox at the time, they wouldn't let her go on his show! I hadn't heard that little bit of info before. I wonder who he wanted her to play??

* Extended Scenes
There were four extended scenes. Nothing major, just a few extra lines here and there. The only one i wished had been kept in was when they meet fanty and mingo. In the film you see zoe and wash go into the bar, and then suddenly they're going back up the stairs, but in the extended version you see them being sent away. It made more sense this version, so i'd wished they'd kept it.


* Take a Walk on Serenity - Cast and Crew take us on a special tour of the Serenity ship
This was fairly short. It was Joss, Nathan and Alan giving a quick tour of the ship


* The Green Clan - Expose on Cinematographer Jack Green and his team
This was also quite short, and i didn't really think it added anything special.



I really wished they'd kept the deleted scenes in. I think most of them would have added to the film. Plus the film was not that long, so it's not like they would have made it drag on.

And i got a little tin with the dvd. It's very cute! And universal were nice enough to print the cover on two sides (we got these really ugly classification markings last year that just totally wreck the dvd artwork. They're so bright and huge- if i ever meet the moron that designed them i'd like to slap him/her one. Or you know, swear alot).