Joss Whedon's Serenity was an interesting movie that suffered a few major flaws. In particular, it was a movie about a group of people having a major impact on the solar system, which was never what the group of people were about in the TV show.
More problematic, the movie was all about "Reavers", who are basically space-zombies on speed. Zombies are an interesting element of a fantasy setting, where they are magical creatures — the bodies of the dead animated by evil spirits who hate the living. In science fiction, zombies are inherently stupid. (Given whatever viruses, gases, or implants you want, the idea of a zombie human which ambles along without its circulatory system or other organs functioning makes as much sense as a zombie car which drives around despite its fuel lines being severed. If your premise is that a zombie is built entirely out of human machinery, it's silly to talk about completely breaking the machine and then having it work anyway. this objection doesn't apply to Reavers, who are alive, but the next one does.) If zombies are the manifestation of evil spirits, then it makes sense why they attack only the living; if zombies are mindless bodies which attack out of instinct, they should be constantly attacking each oher. Reavers are people who became insanely violent. There's no reason offered, nor any concievable, why they shouldn't attack each other. Yet their insatiable, coordinated violence is a sine qua non of the movie.
There were two things that I found extremely intruiging about Serenity, though. The first is an element of the backstory (which was probably in the TV show as well, but I have not yet watched much of it): Firefly and Serenity take place in a solarsystem populated by people who left earth and are completely out of contact with it. What happened to earth is left a complete mystery. It's a really interesting artistic idea, very distantly related to George Lucas's abssolutely brilliant, "A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
The other moment which really struck me was towards the end. River, who's telepathic — there seems to be some law these days that you can't write science fiction without including telepathy — is talking with the captain. Malcom said, "You know what the first rule of flyin' is? Well I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say." She responded, "I do. But I like to hear you say it."
I thought that that was an absolutely brilliant way to so succinctly demonstrate the problem that a telepath would have in society, and the solution to it. River doesn't need normal human interaction, which distances here from others. The solution is that she has to bridge the gap by forgoing those parts of herself that distance her, much in the same way that when we communicate with dogs we have to forgo the power and richness of the language which we can speak to each other. If we want to keep company with dogs, we must do it on their terms, since they can't do it on ours. It really is amazing. All of this, wrapped up into "... you already know what I'm about to say." "I do. But I like to hear you say it."