Serenity
Okay, let me just get this out of the way now so people don’t complain. This post contains spoilers! If you haven’t yet seen the movie and want to be surprised by it, then don’t read this post.
So, Wednesday night Jessica and I met Joe at the theater to go see Serenity. All three of us were quite excited about it, I mean we almost never go see a movie in the theater. The last time we went to a theater to see a movie was more than two years ago. With Serenity it was different, though. We’re all Firefly fans, and the rumor was that if Serenity did well at the box office and then in the DVD market, that there was a good chance for another movie or even the return of the series. We’re all for more Firefly, in movie, TV or DVD’s, we’ll take what we can get.
Once the credits started rolling and the lights in the theater came back up, Jessica seemed irritated, so I questioned her about it. She was quite upset about the killing off of two of the main characters, as well as the way things ended. She and I talked about it for a while afterward and what follows are the conclusions and impressions I got after thinking about it a bit more.
So, after seeing it, and talking about it with Jessica here are my opinions. Again, I wasn’t kidding — there are SPOILERS here! Read no further if that bothers you.
Let me start by saying the casting of the main characters is great. All of the actors seem quite comfortable in their roles, which really helps to make their characters believable. There is a lot of well written dialog and great one liners spread throughout the movie. Production quality was fair, but it could have been much better. Some of the scenes were extremely well done, like near the beginning as the camera follows Mal through the ship; there are no cuts or fades at all for several minutes as he makes his way through the entire ship and re-introduces you to the crew and ship. Scenes like that are hard to pull off and this one was done flawlessly.
One of the things that I noticed while watching the previews was that in all of the scenes there were two key characters missing, Anara and Shephard Book. I had a feeling this didn’t bode well for those characters. I did see Ron Glass’ name in the credits, so I knew he was in the movie, but it was only a very small role. I think his part was more for the people that watched the series than anything else. It was quite upsetting when he was killed off by the main bad-guy. Not surprising, but upsetting. His character could have remained a solid set of story lines by slowly exposing us to his past life before he was a shephard. There was also no background on these, or any of the characters at all. You had no idea why these people were together or why any one of them was significant. The only way to know this was from the series.
Let me go on a bit about my “more for the people that watched the series” comment. Throughout the whole movie, things felt a bit “off”. I don’t know if it was Joss Whedon’s doing or if it was the studio’s doing, but the characters and the story seemed adapted for the big screen and mass market appeal. Many things changed in the movie from the series. For example, River in this movie became a psychic. Okay, no problem there. We knew that there were lots of experiments on her, and the series ended before explaining a lot of it, so this one could be believable. What bothered me was that during the series, the principal villians were “two by two, hands of blue”. They were creepy, ominous fellows that you didn’t want to trifle with. They were replaced by a single bad guy. Granted the guy they chose to cast in this role played it very well and they pulled it off well. What I had a problem with was there was never any guys with blue hands. It was just suddenly *BAM* here is the bad guy. There could have been a bit more reference to the previous bad guys. I’m not sure why the formula in movies for bad guys is always a single super villain that always gets defeated. Its not necessary and its quite pandering. An enemy that is as mysterious as the guys with blue hands is just as effective and you don’t end up in that same tired movie formula: Here is the bad guy, here is the good guy, bad guy keeps getting the better of the good guy until the end where the good guy wins. I guess Hollywood likes to stick to a single thing that they think will work. Its no wonder movies aren’t doing as well as they used to, there is nothing new being done. It really does make me wonder just how many concessions Mr. Whedon made with the studios in order to get Serenity made, or if he’s lost his touch after being away from it for so long.
On to the part that was really bothersome. Why did Wash have to die? It was pointless and didn’t add anything to the story. The only thing it did for the three of us was piss us off. Jessica was so mad about it that she will probably give up on the whole franchise. Wash was an integral part of the crew — the crazy pilot that saved them and was willing to do things with the ship even though they were not likely to succeed. His warped humor was part of the whole Firefly experience. Without Wash, I’m afraid that there isn’t much show left. Of course, if the future follows the typical Hollywood formula, he’ll be brought back from the dead somehow, or another character that has similar traits will replace him. Either way, it will be really bad. If the intent was to kill off Book’s character and Wash’s death just added “drama”, then a better way to do it would have been to have Book come along to try to help River. He could then have been killed by the Reavers or whatever. I would rather have had both characters remain living, though.
Speaking of Reavers. While some of the background was introduced, it wasn’t quite enough. You would have to have seen the series in order to really appreciate what they were. Even the explanation of how they came into existance wasn’t quite adequate. Also, when they took Serenity into the Reaver section of space, they painted the ship with red paint and put corpses on it. This didn’t make sense at all since none of the Reaver ships that were shown were red or had corpses on the outside. I will say that the chase scene with the Reavers at the beginning was quite enjoyable, and better still, only extras died.
The final space battle with the Reavers was also horribly done. Everything kept jumping around way too fast and you couldn’t tell what was happening, let alone who was who. You could barely make out Serenity itself in all of the chaos. It was almost like the CGI people couldn’t figure out how to do this battle and have it come out on film unless they did lots of very short, very fast closeups. I was sorely dissapointed with that.
The story line at the very end of the movie defies description, and not in a good way. Again, things went back to the typical Hollywood formula — everyone was paired off or it was implied that they would soon be pairing off. There were three tombstones, one for Wash, one for Book and one for “Mr. Universe” who was just a peripheral character, so I don’t know why he was included in that scene. I guess if you’re going to do something badly, why not go all the way with it. River in the co-pilot’s seat taking off was also a bit cheesy.
In reading others reviews, saying this could be the next “Star Wars” or the franchise is re-born, and there was nothing bad about this movie, and I just don’t see it. This movie had a murkey beginning, a clear middle, and a definate end. This story combined several of the previous series stories and wrapped them all up. It will be hard for Mr. Whedon to recover from this and give us good story lines with where the characters ended up.
In conclusion (and this may sound very strange) it was a very good movie, and I’m quite glad I saw it. The aspects above did detract from my overall enjoyment of it, though. If those things were done differently, or principal characters weren’t killed off, then I would have have enjoyed it a whole lot more. The humor and the interplay between the characters kept the movies pace going pretty steadily. The action sequences (with the exception of the last one) were all well done and the characters stayed true to form (except River’s, but that was the main plot line for this movie so it fit in well).
If another movie was in the works (which I’ve heard rumors that there will be) or another TV series was made from it, I’d probably give it another chance. But my personal opinion is that it will have a big initial attraction, but then it will die off again from lukewarm ratings because the characters aren’t the same as they were, and I don’t think it will be able to hold the attention of its audience. I hope I’m wrong, though, and that it does succeed and continue to be “fresh”, but Serenity didn’t give me the feeling that would happen.
