Serenity
A Review
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
(I couldn't review with this movie in any meaningful away without discussing some of the main plot points, so don't read any further if you haven't seen the movie and you wish to preserve the surprises.)
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
First, let me take a long wind-up.
I don't recall being aware of the Firefly TV series when it first aired, but then again, FOX barely gave it enough time to catch on. I give FOX credit for trying different material like this, but why bother if a network isn't going to give fans the time to warm up to it. Too many people have been dulled into thinking mindless drivel like Friends is the highest form of entertainment humankind can achieve, and so anything that deviates from that kind of insipid formula must be avoided.
FOX took the same tact with another wonderful show, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. At least that show ran a season before FOX sent it to the Great Orb in the Sky. Firefly only lasted 11 episodes, and even those were aired out of order. Three episodes were never aired.
On the recommendation of a friend, I watched Firefly when it began to air this summer on the SciFi Channel. It only took one episode to get me hooked.
The show's creator, Joss Whedon, was also the creative force behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, two shows that never grabbed my fancy. Though those shows had a well-developed universe and a mythos ripe for story-telling, for me they were too much a blend of camp and Beverly Hills 9021-Evil.
I approached Firefly with a little trepidation, then, wondering if it would contain the same flaws. To my delight, I quickly discovered it was one of the best science fiction shows on television. No aliens, no kids, no robots, just finely drawn characters and a universe full of stories.
There was no winking at the camera. The characters took their plights seriously, and behaved as if the situations they found themselves in were very real.
Mal, the captain, has an aw-shucks wit, but a steel will. Jayne, the brute, has a devil-may-care-but-I-don't engaging air about him, but he is ruthless and ultimately only concerned with himself. Wash is a talented Hawaiian shirt wearing goof of a pilot. His wife, Zoe, goes back a long ways with Mal and her loyalty to Mal knows no bounds. Kaylee is a country girl mechanical whiz, who is also somewhat of a farmer's daughter if you know what I mean. Inara is the gorgeous space harlot. When she and Mal are together, they throw off the requisite sparks, both good and bad.
If he stopped there, Whedon still would have a great crew to form a show around. But, the demands of TV drama require something to hang several seasons worth of episodes on, so there are three more characters. Shepherd Book is the classic "character with a mysterious past". His calm manner is a welcome contrast to the others, but the show ended far too quickly for us to discover why Book is so familiar with Alliance ways.
The remaining two characters, however, Simon and River, are the flaw in Firefly. They are my least two favorite characters, I have no desire to spend time with them, and yet a fair amount of the TV series is devoted to them, and the movie revolves around them.
Simon is a doctor, and is rather a wilting flower sort of guy, sort of like the David character in Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. True, Simon did break River out of a heavily guarded Alliance facility, and protects her fiercely, but you get the impression Simon's idea of a fight to the death consists of lightly *patsch* *patsching* someone on the face with a leather glove.
River is a very troubled person, given to fits of crying, anguish. Not a happy sort. She has a haunted quality to her, like a cross between Sissy Spacek and Children of the Corn. She is the classic "Character With A Dark Secret". The Alliance has altered her mind in unpleasant ways.
Whew. All that is prelude to my thoughts on the movie. Now the pitch.
Simon and River took refuge on Serenity, Mal's ship, and several tv episodes dealt with the trouble that brung (to use Firefly-speak), as the Alliance is intent on finding River. She harbors knowledge that could harm the Alliance. But, given their unpleasant personalities, I didn't care to spend so much of the movie in their company at the expense of the other characters.
Secrets were revealed about River. The TV series always hinted that River has created as some sort of weapon. In the movie, we discover she is a martial arts machine.
A cold-blooded assassin is after River in the movie, and this villain was a disappointment. His genteel manner was a distraction. Yes, the most frightening evil is that controlled and unleashed by cool reason, but this villain seemed too worried about enunciating.
The ending was also a big cheat considering how the villain was built up. He is ruthless, kills without mercy. He acknowledges that he is evil, and does what is necessary. Yet, at the end, the villain lets the crew go. Why? If he believed everything he said about himself, why the sudden change?
The movie reunited us with all the elements that make Firefly so addicting: the Chinese influences, the wild West, offbeat snappy banter where words like Shiny became an exclamation instead of an adjective and people say "I conjure" instead of "I think", a loveable old beat-up ship, the monstrous Reavers, etc... (Though, newcomers might have completely missed that Wash and Zoe are married, since this little fact was hardly highlighted in the movie.)
The big secret of the movie was my biggest disappointment. A planet named Miranda was the site of a terraforming/settlement experiment gone wrong. The settlers were exposed to some substance designed to calm them, but instead made them so passive they died. (I couldn't figure out why, if people were passive to the point of death, they still went to work where they died.)
In a related disappointment, this same substance turned some of the people into the horrific Reavers, a band of murderous mutilated freaks who roam around pillaging and raping and cannibalizing. The Reavers were more frightening as engimas. The revalation that these were once mere settlers demystified them, took away some of their power. They are really victims, not evil unleashed from the lowest levels of hell.
River knows of Miranda, somewhere in her brain anyway. Something to do with Miranda, in fact, triggers the Bruce Lee in River.
My biggest question then is this? Why does the Alliance want River back? Simply because she was aware of the existence of Miranda? What is it about Miranda that the Alliance wants covered up? Was the government using the settlers as guinea pigs, to see how this substance worked. This was never made clear.
If it was just an accident, why build it up as this Horrible Secret at the heart of the show? The tv series seemed to imply that River's telepathic powers were designed as a weapon, that they wanted to keep this secret, that and the fact they were doing these awful things to human beings like River.
(A side note. In the tv series, River was pursued by two deadly agents who wore blue gloves. They didn't appear in the movie.)
It makes River seem a whole lot less dangerous if she simply knew about a faraway accident. How and why River knew this was also never made clear. I can accept that her telepathic abilities allowed her to glean this from people she came in contact with, but this wasn't explained.
At the end, why was River seemingly better? Did her psychotic tendencies simply go away?
Another smaller question. In the final fight, if they were just going to close the blast doors, and seal them so they couldn't be opened, why didn't the Firefly crew retreat behind them to begin with? Why the initial attempt to fight and hold off the Reavers?
It is a movie worth seeing, don't get me wrong. I was just surprised to see these kinds of questions in a show that has such a strong creative mind behind it. I wouldn't expect that having experienced brilliant scripts in some of the tv episodes.
We bade farewell to a couple of favorite characters. That was shocking. However, Zoe's reaction to the death of Wash seemed far too underwhelming.
Get the tv episodes on dvd. You will see tv storytelling at its best. The movie is fine, but you may prefer to remember the characters as they were in the tv series.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
(I couldn't review with this movie in any meaningful away without discussing some of the main plot points, so don't read any further if you haven't seen the movie and you wish to preserve the surprises.)
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
First, let me take a long wind-up.
I don't recall being aware of the Firefly TV series when it first aired, but then again, FOX barely gave it enough time to catch on. I give FOX credit for trying different material like this, but why bother if a network isn't going to give fans the time to warm up to it. Too many people have been dulled into thinking mindless drivel like Friends is the highest form of entertainment humankind can achieve, and so anything that deviates from that kind of insipid formula must be avoided.
FOX took the same tact with another wonderful show, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. At least that show ran a season before FOX sent it to the Great Orb in the Sky. Firefly only lasted 11 episodes, and even those were aired out of order. Three episodes were never aired.
On the recommendation of a friend, I watched Firefly when it began to air this summer on the SciFi Channel. It only took one episode to get me hooked.
The show's creator, Joss Whedon, was also the creative force behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, two shows that never grabbed my fancy. Though those shows had a well-developed universe and a mythos ripe for story-telling, for me they were too much a blend of camp and Beverly Hills 9021-Evil.
I approached Firefly with a little trepidation, then, wondering if it would contain the same flaws. To my delight, I quickly discovered it was one of the best science fiction shows on television. No aliens, no kids, no robots, just finely drawn characters and a universe full of stories.
There was no winking at the camera. The characters took their plights seriously, and behaved as if the situations they found themselves in were very real.
Mal, the captain, has an aw-shucks wit, but a steel will. Jayne, the brute, has a devil-may-care-but-I-don't engaging air about him, but he is ruthless and ultimately only concerned with himself. Wash is a talented Hawaiian shirt wearing goof of a pilot. His wife, Zoe, goes back a long ways with Mal and her loyalty to Mal knows no bounds. Kaylee is a country girl mechanical whiz, who is also somewhat of a farmer's daughter if you know what I mean. Inara is the gorgeous space harlot. When she and Mal are together, they throw off the requisite sparks, both good and bad.
If he stopped there, Whedon still would have a great crew to form a show around. But, the demands of TV drama require something to hang several seasons worth of episodes on, so there are three more characters. Shepherd Book is the classic "character with a mysterious past". His calm manner is a welcome contrast to the others, but the show ended far too quickly for us to discover why Book is so familiar with Alliance ways.
The remaining two characters, however, Simon and River, are the flaw in Firefly. They are my least two favorite characters, I have no desire to spend time with them, and yet a fair amount of the TV series is devoted to them, and the movie revolves around them.
Simon is a doctor, and is rather a wilting flower sort of guy, sort of like the David character in Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. True, Simon did break River out of a heavily guarded Alliance facility, and protects her fiercely, but you get the impression Simon's idea of a fight to the death consists of lightly *patsch* *patsching* someone on the face with a leather glove.
River is a very troubled person, given to fits of crying, anguish. Not a happy sort. She has a haunted quality to her, like a cross between Sissy Spacek and Children of the Corn. She is the classic "Character With A Dark Secret". The Alliance has altered her mind in unpleasant ways.
Whew. All that is prelude to my thoughts on the movie. Now the pitch.
Simon and River took refuge on Serenity, Mal's ship, and several tv episodes dealt with the trouble that brung (to use Firefly-speak), as the Alliance is intent on finding River. She harbors knowledge that could harm the Alliance. But, given their unpleasant personalities, I didn't care to spend so much of the movie in their company at the expense of the other characters.
Secrets were revealed about River. The TV series always hinted that River has created as some sort of weapon. In the movie, we discover she is a martial arts machine.
A cold-blooded assassin is after River in the movie, and this villain was a disappointment. His genteel manner was a distraction. Yes, the most frightening evil is that controlled and unleashed by cool reason, but this villain seemed too worried about enunciating.
The ending was also a big cheat considering how the villain was built up. He is ruthless, kills without mercy. He acknowledges that he is evil, and does what is necessary. Yet, at the end, the villain lets the crew go. Why? If he believed everything he said about himself, why the sudden change?
The movie reunited us with all the elements that make Firefly so addicting: the Chinese influences, the wild West, offbeat snappy banter where words like Shiny became an exclamation instead of an adjective and people say "I conjure" instead of "I think", a loveable old beat-up ship, the monstrous Reavers, etc... (Though, newcomers might have completely missed that Wash and Zoe are married, since this little fact was hardly highlighted in the movie.)
The big secret of the movie was my biggest disappointment. A planet named Miranda was the site of a terraforming/settlement experiment gone wrong. The settlers were exposed to some substance designed to calm them, but instead made them so passive they died. (I couldn't figure out why, if people were passive to the point of death, they still went to work where they died.)
In a related disappointment, this same substance turned some of the people into the horrific Reavers, a band of murderous mutilated freaks who roam around pillaging and raping and cannibalizing. The Reavers were more frightening as engimas. The revalation that these were once mere settlers demystified them, took away some of their power. They are really victims, not evil unleashed from the lowest levels of hell.
River knows of Miranda, somewhere in her brain anyway. Something to do with Miranda, in fact, triggers the Bruce Lee in River.
My biggest question then is this? Why does the Alliance want River back? Simply because she was aware of the existence of Miranda? What is it about Miranda that the Alliance wants covered up? Was the government using the settlers as guinea pigs, to see how this substance worked. This was never made clear.
If it was just an accident, why build it up as this Horrible Secret at the heart of the show? The tv series seemed to imply that River's telepathic powers were designed as a weapon, that they wanted to keep this secret, that and the fact they were doing these awful things to human beings like River.
(A side note. In the tv series, River was pursued by two deadly agents who wore blue gloves. They didn't appear in the movie.)
It makes River seem a whole lot less dangerous if she simply knew about a faraway accident. How and why River knew this was also never made clear. I can accept that her telepathic abilities allowed her to glean this from people she came in contact with, but this wasn't explained.
At the end, why was River seemingly better? Did her psychotic tendencies simply go away?
Another smaller question. In the final fight, if they were just going to close the blast doors, and seal them so they couldn't be opened, why didn't the Firefly crew retreat behind them to begin with? Why the initial attempt to fight and hold off the Reavers?
It is a movie worth seeing, don't get me wrong. I was just surprised to see these kinds of questions in a show that has such a strong creative mind behind it. I wouldn't expect that having experienced brilliant scripts in some of the tv episodes.
We bade farewell to a couple of favorite characters. That was shocking. However, Zoe's reaction to the death of Wash seemed far too underwhelming.
Get the tv episodes on dvd. You will see tv storytelling at its best. The movie is fine, but you may prefer to remember the characters as they were in the tv series.
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