Serenity and Firefly, considered together as one giant miniseries, make for the most entertaining SciFi saga in a LONG time. An original and incredibly entertaining look into the future.
The thing about that particular 'saga' is, the fact that Wehdon very successfully managed to fit his whole 4 or 5 series plan into a two hour movie, tells me that this story did not really have enough there conceptually to sustain that kind of ambition. Because, when i was watching the tv show(b4 the movie was released), it seemed very flawed and flimsy conceptually, I would say that only two of the episodes(Out of gas and objects in space) measured up to his previous work on Buffy and Angel, while the others felt like they were treading water somewhat and were a bit boring as a result.
Yeah, the first series of Buffy was not that great, in comparison to the later seasons anyway, but it was still miles better than Firefly, and Whedon was jusy finding his television feet then.
I thought he put too many constraints on himself, while trying to be a smartass about things, y'know, being a little too smart for the show's own good.
Things like ruling out any contact with aliens whatsoever on the show and never using sound during space travel or battles.
You might think i am being 'lowbrow' in thinking a space/sci-fi show should leave itself open for those standard tropes, but he basically had them in the movie, which was much better than the show. He chickened out keeping to the 'no noises in space' credo for the movie, moving the big 'space' battle to the outer edge of the atmosphere so you could have laser and explosive sounds, I mean, c'mon, those sounds are fun, why try and be the first guy to make space scenes a little bit boring in that respect? and the Reavers took the role of the aliens essentially.
And as I said, the big plot of the series, concerning River, it did not feel like the kind of thing they could have touched on over 4 or 5 series substantially.
I did enjoy the movie a great deal when i saw it at the cinema, he did very well with the limited budget and managing to wrap up his story, i thought it was better than the series, or at least, as good as those two good episodes i cited.
I think they did him a big favour in cancelling the show, so he could distill the story into movie form. Also, y'know, it gave him some practice for the Avengers.