Tickets for Serenity!

I got to see Serenity on Thursday night. Wow.

This post will be about the process of getting to see it; the next one will be about the actual event.

For those who don't know, this was a special screening: one late-night show on May 5 in 10 cities across the US. I found out about it when I checked my email on April 27. You see, last June a friend of mine told me about the browncoats fan site, and I signed up with them. (Note: the site gives points to people who get other people to sign up, and with enough points you can get neat swag. So if you want to sign up, please let me refer you. I'm not convinced I'll ever get enough points for anything useful, but I wouldn't mind trying.). I don't usually give my email address to movie studio sites, because I don't really want to get lots of mail about random other movies, but I did want to show support for Serenity, so I did it this time. And I'm very happy that I did, because otherwise I wouldn't have heard about the screening.

What I got was a very funny message from Joss (which you can see if you register at the above-mentioned site and then go to here), with some information about the sneak. I immediately noticed that one of the cities was Boston, and tried the link for buying tickets. It didn't work. (as in, it went to a real place and then the site said that I was trying to do an invalid action). Despair. I checked the forums at the browncoats site, which were composed of people complaining that there was no screening in their city, and people complaining that the screening in their city was sold out, and people complaining that the ticket-buying links didn't work. So at least I wasn't alone. I tried the link a few more times, and it kept not working, and then I called theodosia, who works downtown, to see if she wanted to go to the theater and buy tickets. (I work in Lexington, and could not take several hours off that day to go to the theater myself and try to buy tickets myself.) However, she wasn't at her desk, so I left a message. I despaired a little more, and then went back to work.

About an hour later (so it was about 11:30 AM) I tried the link again, and it was working! Yay! So I started working through the purchase process, and then theodosia called, and expressed total willingness to walk through fire for tickets (or just make her way to the theater), and I kept her on the phone for about 10 minutes while I bought the tickets, so that I'd know whether she had to buy tickets for me or not. I was successful. She tried again not long after I talked to her, and by then the show was sold out. Since I had kept her on the phone for what may well have been the crucial last few minutes, and I didn't have a pre-designated use for one of the four tickets I bought, I let her invite one of her friends, the lovely and charming farwing. I spent the rest of the day bouncing and going "squee!".

Serenity...wow

Wow.

Ok, so, first: getting there. The show was at 10pm. R and I had agreed to meet theodosia and farwing at the theater at 9. We ended up getting there around 8:40, and were happy to have done so, because the line was already stretching all the way through the lobby (it doubled around a couple of times before they actually let us in around 9:10). It was a happy crowd; every once in a while a bunch of people started whooping, I think just to see if they could get anyone else to join in.

They let us in early. There were some people filming, but I never got close enough to them to find out where they were from. The theater people gave me a small keychain and marked an "X" on my hand with a marker. (I was worried about that washing off when I went to the bathroom, but I shouldn't have been--it was still quite obvious after my next shower.) We ended up sitting somewhat far back in the theater, but the room had a very big screen, and was well-sloped, so I wasn't upset. It did make it hard to hear various people in the front of the room making announcements. Some fans periodically tried to get people to sing "The Hero of Jaynestown" and "The Ballad of Serenity", which was, well, loud, but not very melodic. The camera crew went around interviewing. Eventually someone came out to the front of the room and announced that he was part of a security team hired by Universal, and that by our presence in the room we'd agreed to things like not taking pictures, or filming, or letting them search our bags if they thought we'd done so. Sigh. I wondered about the legality, but I dutifully turned off my cell phone and made a mental note not to fish out that or my Palm during the movie. He also claimed that they had night-vision equipment and would find anyone who was filming. I do hope that no one filmed, because it'll make this sort of thing less likely in the future, and would probably harm ticket sales.

Then for the happy part: Sean Maher (Simon Tam) and Morena Baccarin (Inara) came out, got a standing ovation, and each made brief remarks about how happy they were to be there and see the film, and how nice we all were to applaud them, and that they'd be sticking around to sign autographs afterward. Then the lights went down, and we saw a short filmed segment with Joss Whedon talking about the movie, and how improbable it was that it had been made, and how important it is for all of us to publicize it. It was actually pretty moving, and I hope that that gets archived somewhere, and makes it onto the DVD of the movie.

Then the movie. I'll put the spoilers behind a cut tag. The non-spoilery review:

Really very good. Started out with an explanation of the background that was a bit better than we ever got in the series, and then got right into the plot. Took chances that I don't think I've ever seen in a movie made from a TV series. Had an intelligent antagonist (though he wasn't as well-developed as he could have been). Didn't have as much conversation among the crew as I would have liked; did have a lot of well-constructed action scenes. (It's a movie, and it's going to be promoted as a science fiction movie, so it has to have pretty spaceships shooting at each other. I'm aware of that. And really, the CGI was quite nice.) I'm not sure what else to say without spoiling, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Actually, the spoilers will appear in a different entry, because I just re-read the section about lj-cuts, and I don't want to spoil anyone who comments here.

Spoilers about Serenity

( here be spoilers... )