"Serenity" introduces two characters who didn't appear on the show: The first is a creepily dignified Alliance zealot known only as "the Operative" (played, with Shakespearean elegance, by Chiwetel Ejiofor), who has taken it as his personal mandate to find and kill River. The second is an interplanetary media geek who goes by the humble nickname Mr. Universe (the expressively eyebrowed David Krumholtz), who plays an instrumental role in the increasingly weighty mission that the Serenity crew undertakes.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with Whedon's means and methods knows that "Serenity" is only partly about a bunch of colorful characters flying around and exploring new worlds. "Serenity," like "Firefly" (and like "Buffy" and "Angel" before it), is an exploration of the meaning of community, maybe even the meaning of democracy. (Is Serenity a metaphor for our own country -- a falling-apart vehicle that we love to bits and steer as well as we can, desperately trying to protect it from the creeps who don't even understand how to drive it, much less understand how it actually works?) And there are spiritual quests in "Serenity" that go much deeper, and are far more unsettling, than the mere question of whether or not God exists. There are moments in which good men do unspeakable things, and malevolent men do noble things. And characters we care very much about are allowed to die.

"Serenity" has everything going for it: Whedon has a cinematic eye, and to help make his vision work on the big screen he's enlisted frequent Clint Eastwood collaborator Jack Green as his cinematographer. Even though this is a space-adventure story, the most intense action takes place within the deep space of the Serenity itself, and Whedon and Green capture both the coziness and the unknowability of the ship -- this is a place where something can always go wrong, and yet the haven of its common area is a constant: It's a nook furnished, like a student apartment, with 20th century castoffs like patterned shag rugs and tacky mustard-leather couches. The big screen also reveals details of Serenity that aren't so apparent on the small one: We see how the whole thing is jury-rigged with old cables and bits of tubing, held together with soldered globs of metal and, possibly, duct tape; the stenciled words "Resealable container, do not destroy" are clearly readable on a big metal canister.

"Serenity" is a trim little picture of epic proportions. The combat sequences are brutal and ingenious, and many of them feature River, who, it turns out, possesses special skills beyond her psychic ability: She's a balletic nymphowarrior capable of taking on the most ruthless inhabitants of the 'verse, a tribe of cannibal-rapists known as the Reavers. (The movie's climax includes an unforgettable image of this petite powerhouse silhouetted in a doorway, wielding a giant blade in each hand; it's a noble image in itself and also a nod to Whedon's first great heroine, Buffy Summers.)

Violence isn't an abstraction for Whedon. But even though his characters, male and female, get tossed around -- a lot -- he never presents violence for our delectation. When the Operative hurls Inara, a seemingly delicate creature who's actually capable of matching wits with generals, against a wall, we feel it in our own bones. This isn't violence against women presented for kicks. It serves a purpose beyond the moment, and it also sets up a spectacular rejoinder, a way for Inara to assert her dignity over any pathetic creep who would dare assault her.

So if "Serenity" is this good -- and as a piece of filmmaking, I'm hard-pressed to find much fault with it -- why am I still feeling the strong pull of those "Firefly" episodes? Whedon knows what he's doing here: When he puts lines like "I got no rudder. Wind blows northerly, I go north" in Mal's mouth, he does so for a reason. Everything in "Serenity," including the delicate shorthand used to delineate the relationship between Wash and Zoe, who are husband and wife, is part of a meticulously worked-out plan, a way of cluing us in to the hearts and minds of these characters, fast.

But some "Firefly" characters, most notably Shepherd Book, are accounted for but get lost by the wayside. And when certain characters die, those deaths are likely to hit "Firefly" fans much harder than they do "Firefly" novices.

That's understandable, but I still feel some anxiety that "Serenity" will be viewed by audiences unfamiliar with Whedon's work as just another sci-fi-geek enthusiasm. My problem, I think, is that "Serenity" dredges up some of the same feelings I have when a movie adaptation of a book I love just doesn't measure up. I'm so used to "reading" Whedon in the long form -- so used to riding the rhythms of his television series, rhythms he sustains beautifully week after week, season after season -- that "Serenity," as carefully worked out as it is, feels a bit too compact, truncated. That's less a failing on Whedon's part than a recognition of the way TV, done right, can re-create for us the luxury of sinking into a good, long novel. I hope Whedon makes many more movies (and there's the enticing possibility that "Serenity," if it does well, will be the beginning of a franchise). Faced with a big screen, Whedon knows exactly what to do with it. But the small one needs him, too. Of all the pleasures TV watching has to offer, he has perhaps tapped the greatest one: that of waiting on the docks, anxious to find out what happens next.

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