Serenity

'Serenity Now!'

If you don't know Joss Whedon, I can at least guarantee you've probably heard of his work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and you might have even heard of a little show a while back called Firefly. Well, in 2005, Whedon released his first blockbuster type film based off of his small television show Firefly called Serenity. When it came out the movie was critically lauded as an excellent action film, one of the best of that year supposedly. So, to say I have been looking forward to this film is no joke. And here is how it breaks down. First the history.

For those of you that don't know, Firefly was a space opera, in other words an epic space show that combined a lot elements of classic westerns into itself. The show was well-recieved critically, but overlooked by most audiences. It was canceled after 1 season due to the network not being able to understand or see how to market the show. Fans of the show, like Buffy and Angel before it, are intense and whole sites of fan-fiction exists. There is even a site dedicated to writing fan scripts to create the next few seasons called stillflying.net. It turns out that Joss was a big fan of the show too and somehow got Universal to bank on the idea of a Firefly movie. Before the movie came out to the delight of browncoats(fans) everywhere, Whedon released a small miniseries of comics that helped to prepare audiences for the differences between the series and the film called Those Left Behind. Then the film came out with all of the original cast intact and good word of mouth and critical praise, but the box office was not as good as to be expected, preventing Joss from being able to follow up on doing the sequels he had hoped for. The last possibility is really seeing how well the show does on DVD. But my question is, is it worth it? As someone who has read the miniseries and seen all of the episodes with director's commentary and then seen the movie, I will be approaching this review from the point of view of a fan and I will try and talk about what it would be like to not be familiar with the history of the series.

Honestly, my answer for if the film is worth it is pretty close to no. It's a decent action film for sure and a lot of the acting is well done, but Whedon makes many mistakes, especially in how he tries to take something that is a cult hit and expand that feel to a mainstream audience. It simply doesn't work right and in the process he makes a less decent film than I feel the series deserves. From the fans point of view, the film's focus on action leads to some great scenes for Summer Glau, Nathan Fillion, and the villain; but this detracts from what made the television show so great and what made the show so endearing. Joss talks about the fact that when making a film you have to bow to the God Momentum and make everything bigger and more action-oriented. Well...in doing so he sacrifices relationships and character moments. I understand that an action film, especially now a days, has to be really fast and furious but every great film has slow moments. I think that if Joss had stuck to his guns and added in some more character relationship moments and slowed things down a little at times, he could have created a truly memorable movie. As it is, I would be surprised if someone not familiar with the show knew that Kaylee and Simon liked each ther before the huge showdown scene near the end. The investment in the characters by non-fans of the series is so minimal that it forces Joss to kill off two of the main characters from the show, when he only needed to kill one of them if he had included more relationship scenes. As much as I hated to see Wash go, I agree with Whedon in the commentary that Wash had to die to make it believable that the others could die too. But Shepherd Book had no reason to die. I'm sure there was idea of making the bad guy look badder, which works a little when you think about how badass the shepherd was at fighting in the television series, but honestly I think Whedon killed him off because he never knew how to write him. Even during the television series Book never sounded like a holy man. He always came across as someone playing at being a holy man to hide from his militant past or something like that. Its an interesting back-story, one that is never explained and makes me even more agitated that he killed him, but there are moments in the television show where you see Book truly doubting and wondering about his path showing that he does care about being a holy man. The problem is that you never see him doing anything holy besides reading a book and occasionally trying to tell someone something and having them spit it back at them. I think Joss wasn't sure of how to write the character because he has stated before that he desn't believe in God or anything and this fact would keep him from being able to understand and sympathize with a character who is compassionate about God. The one transitional thing he did well was to cut out a lot of the cheese. Whedon is an admitted fan of cheesey one-liners and things as evident from the show. On the small screen, these well done cheese lines are funny and not too annoying. In a film dealing with such dark and interesting material, it detracts and really takes the audience out of the experience, which creates some problems since the main leader, played by Nathan Fillian was concieved as a Han Solo'ish type whom of course made good use of the one-liners in the Star Wars films. Since the cheese is natural to the show and necessary, Joss does a good job by including it only scantily in the movie and instead letting the movie follow the more serious path to mimic the darkness of the plot. It's also nice in the end when Simon and Kaylee finally get to make out like mad. Whedon, who also scripted the movie, performs perhaps the biggest and most unforgivable flaw though in the script.

I have to say, this factor right here would be what would turn me off the most as a fan and as a non-fan. The story essentially involves three people. Now, if you have seen the show then you know that the cast is much bigger than that and that they are all in the film, which is exactly the problem. The other characters tend to serve as merely background spectators and events to the three main storyplots. The main storyplot revolves around River and Simon Tam and their relationship and the fact that they are being hunted down so that River can be recaptured/killed. Which makes little to no sense because in the series it was always they were after her to re-capture and bring back for more experiments. Anyhow, it focuses on illuminating more of their story and on what the experiments did to River. The other main point is in showing captain Mal's slow ascent from the dark drudgery to which he had descended back to being a hero for what is right. All the other characters serve to merely make the action scenes cooler. Some aren't even able to do that. Honestly, Adam Baldwin's character would never have followed Mal out past the Reavers and on a suicide mission. He would have tried to kill everyone and take over first because he might be dumb but all he wants is to live, kill things, be funny, and get paid. It took a lot for him to do the right thing in one episode called Jaynestown. But in the movie, he puts up a little verbal tiff and its over. Wash and Zoe's love is briefly touched upon just like all of the other romances and we rarely hear from either of them. I hold that Gina Torres is possibly the only woman who has looked truly deadly in a fight scene. Kaylee is the mechanic who runs around fixing things. And then there is Inara. Inara and Mal's relationship is such a strong point of the television series that its a shame it gets almost no mention in this film. In fact, the film feels like it brings everyone back together simply to have them together, which is not worth ever doing in a film. Inara has one story point that could have been easily rewritten to not include her and their are moments where you catch a glimpse of her in the film and wonder what she is still doing there. She is essentially useless in the story and is the only character whom we don't see injured in the final showdown for whatever reason. She is essentially a ghost who just randomly appears at times creating no discernable care for her character. Instead of fulfilling the role of the Leiah to Solo role as she starts off to do in her introduction into the movie, Joss just kind of drops her character and she never becomes anything more than that girl Mal visited and saved. Nothing about her interesting past and history as a companion is ever shown or revealed and there is one deleted scene on the DVD that I am sad Joss decided to cut since it would have made Inara much more interesting and fleshed out.

Conclusion:
The television series is great, the stories are always interesting, but Joss's decision to make the movie more action oriented and to cut out a lot of the relationship scenes creates two-dimensional characters and drowns out a lot of the magic of the original television series. Also, by creating a storyline focusing on only three of the main characters, the rest of the cast becomes potential fodder and leads to him killing off two great characters instead of one if he had designed it more so that each character was NECESSARY to the plot. A lot of the things in the series that gave Firefly and the cast its charm was the universe and backgrounds of the characters and how they all overlapped, most of which is lost in the movie in favor of action scenes. The good news is that despite these problems of the script, their are some truly well done artistic directorial choices involving camerawork and lighting on Whedon's part. Also, he transfers just enough to of the fun of the series in the cheese factor over to make the crew recognizable as the same Firefly crew and to imbue the film with funny moments. I'm sad that the film so far hasn't made enough money to make sequels but I don't know if I want sequels if Whedon isn't going to make all of the cast necessary. If you get the chance, buy the television series and then if you decide you like it more than that, consider buying the film. I want more of the idea and cast and Whedon banter, but the television show is much better.

2.75 out of 5

Wannabe