A few Serenity Panel/Preview thoughts, in no particular order, and redundant

* I saw four panels besides the Serenity one at the point in which stars were introduced. NOTHING matched this level of energy in this room. Honestly, I can’t think of a rock concert that saw more screaming. Seriously, Firefly fans are nuts.
* Joss is clearly focused on making One Good Movie and not worrying about other projects — all he’s working on right now is Serenity and the X-men monthies — that’s practically a vacation for him. He did mention it would be nice to make a trilogy, and it doesn’t sound like he’s going to push to get the show back on the small screen — he wants his Big Damn Heroes on the Big Damn Screen.
* The pseudo-trailer (you won’t see it in theaters; it starts with “They’re Back” and follows with a series of shots designed to get the hardcore faithful amped up) looked really, really tight and better than the show. As much as I liked the guy who did the TV show and hoped they’d use him for the movie, their new stuff is hot. The backgrounds, costumes, and environments looked a bit more SF-y than the show, which may help folks get over their ‘horses in sci-fi?’ reactions.
* In the trailer, we see: Mal and Zoe holding up a back-room gambling set-up with all their classic panache and snide comments, Jayne doing things from the back of a hover truck of some kind, Inara in what looked like a Companion temple and meeting one of the movie’s Big Bads, and River.
* Lots of River. People who don’t like River are going to get her shoved down their throat anyway, cuz that story is the movie, people. And just so we’re clear, this is the River of Objects in Space and War Stories — this is psuedo-mind-reader River with Gun-fu Grip.
* There’s not much (overt) Blue Sun/Blue Hands in the movie; the Alliance presence is there via “The Operative” (a bounty hunter that we see visiting Inara). He is the Hard Place — the Rock on the other side consists of the Reavers.
* We’re going to see a lot of the Reavers in this movie — they might have even been in the trailer if one shot I saw was what I think it was.) Serenity: River and Reavers — I’m there.
* Literally no swag. Bummer.