Review Detail

I requested this a few years under the promise I would write a review. Now, I had watched this (and the second edit) with a friend who had never seen the original series. He loved this edit. Both of them, so you have his approval in addition to mine. In fact, when I gave it a second viewing he was disappointed that I rewatched it without him.

What I particularly enjoyed about this edit is that it brings Reynolds loss of faith closer to the surface, using it as his arc in this edit. The first film is very much his origin story. Full disclosure though, I haven't watched this in a while so the memory of both edits is not fresh on my mind. However, from what I do I recall is that this edit was much tighter. It could've easily served as a TV movie with its tight plot and pacing.

The second is a bit more non-traditional in its plot and is more set-up for what happens in the Serenity film. I remember it bounced its focus between four characters: Reynolds, Jayne, River, and, to a lesser extent, Wash. The first has a strong focus on a singular protagonist. Still good, but IIRC it lacks the tightness of this first edit. I don't blame the editor for this as it had to set-up the drama of the cinematic feature, and putting a little attention and development on Wash is not a bad idea before jumping into that film.

There are minor to medium drops in quality when MusicEd921 uses deleted scenes to add some character development to the plots he's trying to craft. However, they're infrequent and easy to ignore. The vast majority of the edit is quite good and I didn't notice any issues. The video quality is what you can expect from a mid-2000's TV DVD box-set. A bit grainy and rough, but this is an issue with the source and not the edit.

An excellent pair of edits. And with an endorsement from someone who'd never seen the original source material, I can hope that is encouraging to MusicEd921's work on these edits.