Serenity: Firefly intensified. Good stuff. No spoilers.

I drove to Austin last night to see a preview of Serenity with Sancho and Dwayne. Thank you, Dwayne, for procuring tickets. I was only half-kidding about exchanging my firstborn, you know.

Showing up at the theater was more or less what I expected: long line, some faces I recognized from local cons, general fannish atmosphere. The theater staff checked everyone for camera phones before letting us in, which I kinda thought they might do. What I was NOT expecting was the sudden appearance of Nathan Fillion and Ron Glass once we were inside. They did a very brief greeting and said they hadn’t seen a full cut of the movie yet, so they shut up and took their VIP seats and watched with the rest of us.

There was a little intro from Joss just before the movie itself, and you can read about what was said over here, but what they don’t mention is that at the end of it, when he says, “Welcome to Serenity,” he has the world’s biggest, most gleeful shit-eating grin on his face. That mood pretty much stayed with me as the movie started.

I’m going to try really hard not to say anything about the movie itself until September, and talk about reactions instead. There are parts that made people jump, but mostly when I noticed other people reacting in any way it was because we were all laughing so hard we missed the next line of dialogue. I loved it. I can’t wait to see it again.

Afterward the actors stuck around for a Q&A and signing. Nathan Fillion is a funny, funny man. I desperately want to tell you about this pantomime thing he did, but it was a reenactment of a scene from the movie that you do NOT want spoiled, so I’m writing it down and I’ll post it in September. One thing I can tell you: during the Q&A, someone asked the actors how they felt about fans and cons and whatnot, and he said for the most part he loved it, but there are always weird requests. Someone asked him to take his shirt off at an event not too long ago, which he found bizarre. So the Q&A went on for a while, and later someone tried to goad them into singing the show’s theme song. Nathan shot back, “Take off your clothes.”

Eventually the questions trailed off and the actors started signing stacks of these giveaway posters. I have to say I think the poster looks more like a green tea ad than something meant to get people to go see this whiz-bang SF flick, but that’s not to say I didn’t take one as we left.

Oh, freaky thing — there was a camera crew there. They were filming us in line, and reaction stuff afterwards, the kind of “what did you think” junk you see in ads sometimes, and they got everyone to give their phone number so they can call if they want to use the footage… but they also filmed the Q&A and some other non-ad-like stuff, so I’m thinking it’ll go on the DVDs, maybe.

The Universal execs seem overwhelmed by the reaction so far. This is going to be good.