Reviews

We watched this BECAUSE of the hissy fits people we're having and protesting about this before it came out. Yep, their plan failed them here!! It's not the sort of thing me and my husband normally watch, but we loved it. Extremely clever writing/story, and brilliant acting. We loved nearly every character, even the ones we shouldn't.

The petition to stop it being aired is ridiculous. It doesn't body shame fat people.

I wish I could give this film a higher rating.

When I was little I loved the Hulk, watching every episode without fail. I was a bit of a tomboy, but not so much that I read superhero comics, and I probably wasn't even aware of the Hulk's origins. And now I love comic book films. Sin City blew me away, both Spiderman films have thoroughly entertained me, and Batman Begins is just fantastic. So when they made the Hulk with Eric Bana, probably my favourite actor since seeing Chopper years ago, I thought I was on to a winner.

At the end of every episode of the Hulk I cried my eyes out. Dr Banner's life was so tragic, it was a bit like a more intelligent 'Littlest Hobo' (LOL). Every week you would hope that he could start over again and have a normal life, but by the end he would have to move on, and it broke my heart every time.

So the film should have at least made me feel some emotion, even just a little choked up!

If they do make a sequel that's the one thing they need to concentrate on, making everyone weep like little girls by then end.

I really like films, they're probably my favourite hobby. And I probably like sci-fi films more than any other, especially if they're amusing with good action and fight scenes - like Serenity, which I saw at the cinema the same day I rented this film on DVD.

So I was incredibly disappointed that I found this film so hard to enjoy - it could have been so different. It was a mess, like the writers were bored of the idea before they even started. There's a bit of background explained at the start about an ancient race of advanced humans who'd opened a gate to hell or some dark place with demons. See - I don't even know whether it was hell or somewhere else - because I DIDN'T CARE!!!

It's so important for the viewer to give a damn about the characters in the story, otherwise you lose interest. This was the makers first big mistake. With better writing I might have cared what happened to Christian Slater's character, Edward Carnby, but no!

Their next big mistake was not bothering to let the story flow properly. From the information about the ancient race to the flashbacks of Carnby's childhood, to the museum pieces and the professor, the connections weren't being made well enough. Since I wasn't paying much attention (due to their first mistake) the story needed to be so easy to follow a 3 year old could make sense of it. Scary monsters and special effects just don't do anything for me if I'm not interested.

This film will have done nothing for Christian Slater's flagging career. And I've only seen Tara Reid in Scrubs before this, and can't imagine her career will do well out of this. I could blame the director - but the other actors don't come out of this as badly as she does.

I would only recommend this film to someone who needs some time to think and likes to have something going on in the background which isn't going to distract them!!!

I really enjoyed Firefly, so decided that Serenity was well worth a trip to the cinema - and I wasn't disappointed. From the first scene my skin was tingling with excitement. I've read some criticism of the special effects - but it must have been from a total geek who spends far too much time examining the quality of digital effects and not paying enough attention to the story. I thought the special effects were brilliant.

You don't have to be a fan of Firefly to follow the story, I would think that this film could stand alone as a really good sci-fi story. It follows the tradition of sci-fi that questions the attitudes of those do-gooder types in our society who think they should be able dictate how we behave. The story was intelligent but easy to follow, making it very watchable. Try to avoid anyone telling you the plot, it would be more enjoyable to experience all this for yourself first-hand.

The action scenes were brilliant, great choreography for the fight scenes, and the space battles were better thought out than those in Revenge of the Sith, which I felt were just messy and over-produced.

I also liked the way you couldn't really tell whether the writers were trying to bring the Firefly/Serenity saga to a close, or whether there was an opening for a new series. As far as this film is concerned that doesn't really matter, another reason you don't need to be a fan of Firefly to enjoy this.

I hope we do see these characters again, but if not I'm more than happy with this film - it was so much better than any of the recent Star Wars films!!

note: this is written by Liz's Husband

I went to the cinema when I was 5 years old to see this and it was the most exciting and spellbinding thing I'd ever seen.

Its unique soundtrack and set design made this an instant classic and obviously at that age notions of the film being camp were completely non existent yet I did get princess Aura (possibly my first crush) and was terrified by the monster in the swamps of Auboria and remember being unable to watch the whole sequence.

Flash was a role model for me and and when they started showing Buster Crabb on morning TV during the summer holidays I was hooked. The only fault I have with Flash Gordon is that they never made the sequel, oh and there was no Lion Men in it, but maybe they were saving them for the sequel, that would of been cool.

Even now 25 years later this is still one of my favourite films, it just cant be topped. Its stays true to the comic and TV series and lets face it just about everything in Star Wars is taken from the Flash Gordon saga, even though you cant compare the two. You cant take Flash seriously and come on your not supposed to - if they had made it all serious and dark it would of been terrible, instead they made something tongue-in-cheek that is exciting and funny and for all the family.

So the point I really want to make is that to a 5 year old the film was never camp - it was funny exciting and scary with even a dash of romance "I love you flash, but we've only got 14 hours to save the earth" I mean come on that line itself is funny, romantic, exciting and scary all rolled into one!!! LOL

If you told someone the plot for this film they'd think you were crazy - although I find that a lot with Japanese films, I mean a video that will kill you seven days after you've seen it???? Anyhow, this film is set when society is just gone wrong, and the Battle Royale law is passed. The part that's hard to believe is that any society with parents could let a law pass that would allow a group of children to be picked at random to go to an island and be expected to kill each other off until only one is left. If you can look beyond that, which isn't too difficult as the drama of it all is so gripping you can get past that (until its over and you're telling your friends about it, and they look at you with that look...).

Men will want to see this film just to see the young Japanese girls rolling around shooting each other with machine guns with their petticoats showing under their short skirts, and some girls too!!

Its kill or be killed, and it shows how anyone might try to survive when thrown into this situation.

If you like films that leave an impression on you - then you'll like this. I saw this for the first time when I was quite young, I think my dad wished he'd known how weird it would get, or he probably wouldn't have let me watch it with him.

Whilst there is a riotous strike going on outside the hospital there is weirdness going on inside, as an eccentric doctor performs some truly sadistic acts on his patients to fulfill his own ambitions.

Its full of faces any 30-plus British audience will recognise, and if you're an Orbital fan you'll love the speech at the end which they sampled for Snivilisation.

A cult black comedy, with some quite horrific bits in, its quintessentially British, but definitely not in the vain the Full Monty or Four Wedding (thank god!).