Warning: Extremely vague, generalized spoilers for Serenity follow.

The temptation, of course, is to write a glowing review -- ten million stars out of five! -- because I love Joss's work, because I desperately want this movie to succeed, because I really want them to make Serenity II: The Wrath of Saffron, and because Serenity genuinely is worth seeing.

I could go on and on about all the fantastic little moments in the movie, the jokes, the surprises, the mythology. Like any Browncoat, I'm incredibly grateful (and still a little bit in disbelief) that we got to revisit these characters at all. And I enjoyed the movie, will buy the DVD when it comes out, will watch it again and again, and all that jazz.

So it's not easy for me to say that I have a problem with Serenity. But I do. It's hands-down my least favorite Joss project to date. And here's why -- it just isn't a continuation to Firefly. Yes, it uses the same characters, and yes, the same set, and yes, the same sort of universe -- but the tone is all off.

The whole point of Firefly was that these people were alienated losers living on the outskirts of society, after a failed civil war in which some of them played relatively minor roles. It was the Wild West, and these were third-tier cowboys, Jesse James's second cousins once removed. They weren't world-shapers. They weren't epic heroes with a mission. In the series, Mal Reynolds didn't stand astride the globe, larger than life; he was just some guy trying to make it, barely getting by. The smallness of these characters, their lack of resources, their limited choices were what I loved about the series in the first place.

But this is a movie. So now our ragtag band of outcasts is at the center of galactic intrigue, in a position to bring down the corrupt Alliance government with one act of heroic defiance in a single afternoon. It's Star Wars now; it's a cartoon. What's worse, it reduces the innovative series I enjoyed to little more than a "Before They Were Stars" special.

And there's no going back now. If there's a sequel, they'll just raise the stakes even higher: Mal and River blow up the Death Star, Mal and River find the cure for the Ultradeadly Pan-Planetary Flu, Mal and River stop the sun from exploding.

Maybe this is where where Joss always intended to go with the series. When I talked to Ezra about this, he pointed out that Mal's character arc requires him to "win his war" eventually. (Either that, or put it behind him.) Maybe by season four or five of Firefly this type of grandiose movement would have been believable, would have seemed organic. Right now it's way too much too soon.

For me Firefly was always smaller, and subtler, and that was part of what was so great about it. Firefly asked "How do we keep flying?" Serenity asks "So who wants to save the gorram world?"

As fun as this movie is, I liked the first version better.

UPDATE: Bill at Candleblog has some thoughts here.