Ah, it’s finally arrived: Serenity.

Must. Go. See.

The review I linked to above is probably the best one that captures how fans of the series, like me, are looking at this film. It’s (finally) the next bit of the story we’ve desperately wanted to continue. I really want someone to pick up the series because it was just an awesome little show. Though, I’m a bit concerned about the movie:

So if “Serenity” is this good — and as a piece of filmmaking, I’m hard-pressed to find much fault with it — why am I still feeling the strong pull of those “Firefly” episodes? Whedon knows what he’s doing here: When he puts lines like “I got no rudder. Wind blows northerly, I go north” in Mal’s mouth, he does so for a reason. Everything in “Serenity,” including the delicate shorthand used to delineate the relationship between Wash and Zoe, who are husband and wife, is part of a meticulously worked-out plan, a way of cluing us in to the hearts and minds of these characters, fast.

But some “Firefly” characters, most notably Shepherd Book, are accounted for but get lost by the wayside. And when certain characters die, those deaths are likely to hit “Firefly” fans much harder than they do “Firefly” novices.

That’s understandable, but I still feel some anxiety that “Serenity” will be viewed by audiences unfamiliar with Whedon’s work as just another sci-fi-geek enthusiasm. My problem, I think, is that “Serenity” dredges up some of the same feelings I have when a movie adaptation of a book I love just doesn’t measure up. I’m so used to “reading” Whedon in the long form — so used to riding the rhythms of his television series, rhythms he sustains beautifully week after week, season after season — that “Serenity,” as carefully worked out as it is, feels a bit too compact, truncated. That’s less a failing on Whedon’s part than a recognition of the way TV, done right, can re-create for us the luxury of sinking into a good, long novel. I hope Whedon makes many more movies (and there’s the enticing possibility that “Serenity,” if it does well, will be the beginning of a franchise). Faced with a big screen, Whedon knows exactly what to do with it. But the small one needs him, too. Of all the pleasures TV watching has to offer, he has perhaps tapped the greatest one: that of waiting on the docks, anxious to find out what happens next.

We need the series back.