Film Review: Serenity.

‘We’re not telling people what to think. We’re just trying to show them how.’

Note: This was written sometime ago, for a completely different purpose. I just put it up here so you have something to look at while I come up with new stuff. Sorry about that. Enjoy.

In 2004 there was a TV show called  firefly, which was cancelled prematurely by the studio that produced it, 20th Century Fox. A year later Universal Pictures released Serenity, a spin-off film based on the show. This was an unprecedented event in the business-orientated world of TV and cinema and it happened for one reason only- the fans demanded it. Something in the show had touched them to such an extent that writer/director Joss Whedon (best known as the creative drive behind the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel) was compelled to add the next chapter in the story he had created on the small screen. And so Serenity took to the air once more.

    The plot is set in the distant future, where humanity has spread out and colonised a new solar system. Things did not go smoothly however, when an inter-planetary civil war broke out between the central planets and those further out. The central planets, known as the Alliance, wanted to build a utopia by unifying everyone under one rule while an opposing faction, the Independence, resisted and fought for individuality. Eventually however, the Alliance won and took control of the system. Several years after the war Malcolm Reynolds, (played by Nathan Fillion) a former volunteer for the Independence, is the captain of a small transport ship named Serenity. He and his crew go from planet to planet trying to avoid the Alliance wherever possible whilst searching for work, which is sometimes honest but is more often illegal.

Mal- I put this crew together with the promise of work which the Alliance makes harder every year. Come a day there won’t be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all… So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don’t push me and I won’t push you.

Life gets more complicated when Mal takes on two fugitives, a young doctor named Simon (Sean Maher) and his sister River, (Summer Glau) a child prodigy abducted by an Alliance program that experimented on her brain. She is a psychic, or ‘reader’, but she is so mentally traumatized that she rarely makes coherent sense. A shadowy agent of the Alliance, known only as The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is sent to hunt River down and keep her from revealing any secrets that she may have locked in her mind, no matter what it takes. If that was not enough to deal with, Mal also has to avoid the Reavers, a race of brutal cannibals who inhabit the farthest edge of the system. He soon finds himself trapped between the judicious Alliance and the savage Reavers, while desperately trying to uncover the secret that burns inside River’s mind.

The style of the film is hard to define as it blends elements from sci-fi and westerns, with moments of action, emotional drama and comedy. The roles of each character or faction are not a clear black and white either. Mal, for example, is more a rogue underdog than a hero and is not above resorting to violence or treachery in order to achieve his aims. The Operative on the other hand is not strictly villainous as he is often calm, intelligent and methodical. Above all, he believes that killing River is the right thing to do for the good of the people. As the Operative himself puts it:

‘Nothing here is what it seems. [Mal] isn’t the plucky hero. The Alliance isn’t some evil empire. This is not the grand arena.’

The central theme of belief is conveyed through thorough yet subtle characterisation. Throughout the Operative displays his devout belief that his actions, although they are evil, will help to build a better world for the future, the raison d’être of the Alliance. One of Mal’s confidants Shepherd Book (Ron Glass, reprising his role from the series) tells Mal that ‘Only one thing is gonna walk you through this… Belief’ before giving a key insight into the Operative’s mindset.

‘The sort of man they like to send believes hard. Kills and never asks why.’

He goes on to tell him later in the film ‘I don’t care what you believe. Just believe it.’ thus giving him the weapon he needs to beat the Operative. In order to destroy the man he needs to destroy his belief.

Mal- A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.

Another character worth noting is River who would typically be the standard damsel in distress. In Serenity, however she is far from helpless and actually poses a significant threat to the crew after the Alliance uses a subliminal message to trigger her into a one-woman dervish of violence and destruction. Summer Glau’s tender portrayal is not without a sense of vulnerability however, which is best shown in her relationship with her brother Simon. River often talks in fragments, which serves both as a device to conceal her predictions and as a way to show her unbalanced state of mind. A good example comes when she is describing the Alliance using a series of seemingly unconnected statements

River- Show me off like a dog. Old men covered in blood. It never touched them, but they’re drowning in it. I don’t know what I’m saying. I never know what I’m saying.

From a film-makers point of view the film also takes some bold choices, such as the first introduction of the ship and it’s crew. The scene is a continuous shot that takes us from the bridge, through the ship, to the cargo bay, meeting all the characters along the way, without a cut. This is not mere self-indulgence as it serves the purpose of showing that this is not just a ship but also the home of the characters that live aboard it without having to have the characters state it explicitly. This adds to the jeopardy of the action scenes as, when it is attacked, it is not just a ship being blown out of the sky but a home being destroyed; moreover, it is the only home that these people have and they want nothing more than to live on it in peace.

This scene is typical of the film as a whole in as much as each moment has to be vital and justifiable in terms of progressing the story. This stems primarily from the fact that Joss Whedon is used to writing for TV where he has the luxury of setting something up in one episode and paying it off in another, a luxury denied him in writing a one-off film. This also caused problems in terms of its dual audience of people who are already familiar with the world and its characters and newcomers who have never set foot upon a firefly before. The challenge was to bring closure to the existing fans without alienating the casual cinemagoer, which he meets with exciting and intriguing results.

Serenity is a cult classic and, like all cult films, it has a relatively small yet ardent fan base. If any film deserved a universal audience, however it is this one as it is a well-written, well-executed piece of storytelling by one of the best of his generation. It contains comic moments that don’t draw attention to themselves, moments of emotion that don’t become sentimental; you don’t need to be a scholar to understand its finer points and neither do you have to abandon reason to enjoy the action sequences. The largest amount of praise has to go to the actors who give life to flawlessly believable, lived-in characters in a world that could have so easily become just another hammy sci-fi schlock. This is the reason that the fans of firefly and Serenity are still calling for more. Until then however, the ‘verse is the best kept secret in the history of TV and film.

‘Secrets are not my concern. Keeping them is.’ – The Operative.