You should know up front, I’m giving “Serenity” a minor rock fist up. You would need to make a particularly awful space movie for me to have an entirely bad time. Like say…”Mission to Mars.” Now that was a terrifically dismal film, with the lovely Gary Sinise in eye make-up that confounded all logic and frankly, scared people. That exception aside, I love shit in space. I’ve said many times put a hot dog in orbit and I will turn up to watch it. “Serenity” is much more than a run of the mill space adventure, unfortunately from writer/ director Joss Whedon I had hoped for so much more.
The story behind “Serenity” is grand. Joss Whedon, creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” takes a stab at a sci-fi adventure show. It comes complete with snappy dialogue and Whedon’s sense of irony and timing. His TV show was prematurely canceled, but not before developing a crazed cult following. A pack of savvy Whedon fanatics who won’t stop bitching about how the series, called “Firefly,” got the boot long before anyone had enough of Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his ragtag bunch of merry men, aboard the ship Serenity. So just when the rest of the population couldn’t be any less aware of this injustice comes… “Firefly” the movie.
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This is actually a familiar story. When the original “Star Trek” series was canceled in the 60’s it caused an uproar that Paramount couldn’t live down, so with some convincing, they brought it back. Mostly, because the time the executives were spending peeling unwanted bumper stickers off the backs of their cars, while parked in the Paramount lot, was getting out of hand. A daily barrage of “Kirk Lives” and “Bring Back My Spock” stickers, plastered guerilla-style on vehicles and mountains of fan mail, were required to revive that now classic show. “Star Trek” was set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the civil rights movement, it’s stories were rooted in modern dilemmas and were groundbreaking as often as they were goofy. The fans of that show wanted “Star Trek” back because it was about something and although it’s characters were rather two dimensional, they were larger than life and fascinating. “Serenity” doesn’t have the weight of importance that “Star Trek” did, and although the cast of almost entirely unknowns is great, not one of them seems compelling enough to make a movie about. The story of “Serenity” ends with a two hour long film that should have been a Sci-Fi channel original. Written with the dual intention of taking care of unfinished business from the series and trying to create a viable franchise for the majority of people unfamiliar with the “Firefly” universe. It’s not a dud, but its attempt to serve too many masters has made it less potent.
“Serenity’s” big budget didn’t buy it the look of a major motion picture. Instead it looks the way most modern sci-fi shows look. Not unlike the new “Battlestar Galactica” or “Star Trek Enterprise,” “Serenity” doesn’t make up much ground in the special effects category. Save for one impressive space battle, the measure of any good post-”Star Wars” space adventure, it looks pretty typical. Actually, there are many elements of Serenity that we have seen before. The captain looks like Han Solo and has many of the same traits and issues. The conflict, a civil war dividing the humans of a future earth, who seek and create new earth’s to colonize is a regular device in all of the “Star Treks”, especially “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.”
The story itself, on the other hand, is good and full of the freshness that we have come to expect from Joss Whedon. As a storyteller Whedon takes chances with characters that most people would think better of. Making characters uncomfortable and throwing them curve-balls are trademarks of both “Buffy” and “Angel” that have made those shows so spectacularly different than anything that has ever been on television. In the end though, the story and the payoff will hit much bigger for those who know the particulars of the “Firefly” universe than for those who do not.
