Serenity

I'm back!  The semester ended about two days ago now, so I celebrated my new-found freedom from academia  by watching a movie that really wasn't my first choice; Serenity.  I really wish I'd gone to see Desolation of Smaug again (Hobbit 2 post on its way in the near future).

Serenity is the movie that was made to kind of tie up all the loose ends from the TV show Firefly, which - some would say sadly - met a premature end after only one season.

But, since shows usually only go offair once their viewership decreases to a certain point, why weren't more seasons of Firefly made if it is so popular?

Only Joss Whedon, Firefly and Serenity's creator and writer, would know at this point.

Regardless, I wouldn't even be watching Serenity now (yes, I'm about an hour and 37 minutes into the movie as I write) if I hadn't been graciously included in a movie night where the first two episodes of Firefly were streamed from Netflix.  Later, having run out of fresh Dr. Who episodes, and floating somewhere between the first and second Hobbit movies, I decided to revisit the remaining 12 episodes of the show (another tragedy for die-hard fans; only 14 episodes of the original Firefly series were made).  I found them all to be rather vulgar and gruesome The fact that the movie was too gruesome for me is saying a lot, coming from the kid who's favorite movie is Passion of the Christ, and who was the only person in a group of six who actually enjoyed the Spider battle scene from Desolation of Smaug.  The Uruk Hai don't bother me.  The Reavers do.  Always have.  Always will.

Which brings me to an interesting point I will mention in a bit.

In Firefly, we met the crew of Serenity, a Firefly class spaceship in the future.  It would probably be important to note at this point that Earth was getting to the point were it could no longer sustain Human life, so "we" (being the people of futuristic planet Earth) set out and found what Captain Kirk would describe as a cluster of Class M planets to inhabit.  Well, okay, these new planets were terraformed to create atmospheres suitable for Human life.

Then, some of the planet leaders (as futuristic planet leaders usually do) got together and said, "Hey, let's form an alliance between all of these new planets, and we'll run things like a big old dictatorship!"  Which is pretty much what they set out to do.  Some people don't like that idea very much, and a big war ensues.  Ultimately, the Resistance (the guys who don't like the whole alliance idea) lose the battle and disperse, while the Alliance takes control.

The End.

Well, not quite.

Two of those Resistance people were Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds and Zoe Washburn.  After the battle, Mal buys a Firefly spaceship, and he and Zoe set off to make an undercover, if not slightly illegal, living for themselves.  They are joined by Hoban "Wash" Washburn (who later marries Zoe), Jayne Cobb (the source of the majority of the show's crass humor), Kaylee Frye (who happens to be the same chick who got kidnapped by Carl Wade back in the X-Files episode "Oubliette"), and Inara Serra (their sponsor/resident prostitute).

Since Firefly, and its descendent Serenity, are what you might call "steampunk", there's a lot of western lingo and an all around cowboy feeling to both the show and the movie.

Anywho, at the beginning of the one and only season of Firefly, Mal and Company land on a planet to try to pick up some work (that is, smuggling, theft, you name it).  They pick up two noteworthy passengers, Shepherd Book (a pastor) and Simon Tam (a doctor who seems to be hiding something).  Turns out Simon is on the run from the Alliance with his little sister, River, who he has managed to smuggle out of Alliance territory and onto Mal's Firefly by having her body frozen in a cryogenics tank and brought on board with his luggage.

We learn as we make our way through the series that River is being hunted by the Alliance because she was a key instrument in weird and bazaar science experiments.  They've cut into her brain and turned her into a maniac killing machine with mental problems and an ability to read minds.

However, we don't learn about the killing machine part of the picture until Serenity.

Is it possible that River Tam is related to River Song?  No idea.  But, they're both very handy with weapons.

Anyway, whereas Firefly was mostly about Mal and Co.'s various jobs and adventures evading the watchful eyes of the Alliance, Serenity seems more focused on River and her problems.  More specifically, about the things she learned when she was accidentally exposed to people with super secret information that no one was supposed to know about.  At the time, no one thought it would hurt to have these super cool people with their super secret information observe River during her tests.  Later, it is pointed out that she was probably able to read their minds.  The images of what she learned from reading the minds of the guys with the super secret information haunts her in her dreams, and torments her.  This partially explains her out of control behavior.  But, only partially.

At about Serenity's half way point, she convinces Mal and Company to investigate a planet she remembers only from this super secret information she learned from reading the guy's mind back when she was a lab rat (if you think this is complicated, go watch Dr. Who).  On that planet, they make the slightly stereotypical discovery that the government (in this case, the Alliance) has been hiding things from the general public.

What's their secret?

Back to the Reavers from earlier.

I still don't like them.  They're disgusting, gruesome, horrible creatures that make the Orcs of Mordor seem well-mannered.  Interestingly enough, we never actually see the Reavers themselves until Serenity.  During the Firefly series, we hear about them, we see their ships chasing other spaceships, and we catch rather grisly glimpses of their destructive natures when Mal and Company board a dead ship and discover its crew dismembered and hanging from the ceiling in a big nasty chandelier of clumped body parts.  Yuck.  See why I hate these guys?  We also meet a guy who someone survived a Reaver attack (a feat in and of itself), but was driven so insane by the incident that he mutilated himself and started acting like one.  Yeah, I forgot to mention, the Reavers are known for mutilating their own bodies.  No one knows why.

Anywho, on the super secret planet that River Tam leads everyone to, they find a bunch of decaying skeletons lying around.  They find out from a 12 year old holograph recording that the Alliance had been pumping a few chemical into their atmosphere to relieve stress and tension.  But, instead of just causing everyone to stop worrying and hating each other, they stopped doing everything else too.  And so, they all just let themselves die.  Quite literally.

Except a few.

There were a few people who were effected differently by the new drug in the air.  Instead of calming them, it made them more aggressive, to the point of insanity.  They ceased to speak normal English or Chinese (the people of the Serenity/Firefly world are heavily influenced by Chinese culture).  They began to mutilate themselves, and started cannibalizing the few remaining people who didn't let themselves die and who weren't driven insane (how were these people not effected if they were all breathing the same infected air?).

In essence, the Alliance's experiment with the calming air drug created the Reavers.  But, they really don't want everyone to know about that.

Mal is determined to expose this truth to the world.  But, first they have to fight off an assassin who's on a mission to find River and take her back to the Alliance lab.  Second, in order to get to and/or from the super secret planet where all of this super secret stuff took place, they have to pass through Reaver territory, which makes sense considering that the Reavers originated on that planet.

A battle ensues.  Reavers attack.  Mal's still on a mission to expose the Alliance, and his crew is waging a suicide mission against the attacking Reavers to buy him some time.

Oh joy.

So, does Serenity have anything going for it?

Well, I did notice the special effects are better on the film than were those in the original Firefly television series.  The fighting sequences were more intense (mostly due to the advanced special effects).

But, I can also so that watching Serenity in the theatre would have made me sick.  During one battle sequence, there was a lot of spinning action as a spaceship spun out of control before finally coming to a rather jerky crash landing.

River's karate is pretty cool, though.  Yes, she spends her first couple of fight scenes fighting innocent people she's been psycho-induced to believe are bad guys.  But, when up against hundreds of Reaver's, her killing machine skills are invaluable.  Oh, and it is also important to note that she risks her own life to ensure the safety of her brother and the remaining Serenity crew members during their "final stand" against the Reavers.

Another positive, I guess, is Mal's overall character.  He complains about it, "Why did I have to rescue so and such?"  Someone points out to him that its not in his character to not help people.  Even after several falling-outs with Simon regarding River, Mal still takes them both back onto the ship for protection.  When Inara is potentially in danger, he doesn't hesitate to rush to her aid, even at the risk of his own life.  In the end, he's bleeding and probably on his way out, and still refusing to kill his would-be murderer, instead trapping the guy in a position where he is forced to watch the broadcasting of the 12 year old super secret recording, thus forcing him to face the truth about the guys he works for (the Alliance).

But, at the end of the day, (or the beginning of the day, as it is now about 1:15am as I write this), I'd have to say I'll still take The Hobbit and Passion over Serenity and Firefly any day.  For me, there's just too much overly inappropriate content in both the film and series to justify multiple viewings.  The story may sound cool, and the whole thing about the Alliance conspiracies and cover-ups is (as always) quite interesting.  It's one of those deep, complex story-lines where you don't see anything coming, but once you know what's going on, it's fun to go back and find all the evidence inconspicuously located throughout film and TV series.  But, it's just not worth your time or energy (unless you like swearing and crass humor, albeit a lot of the swearing is done in Chinese).

For me, it's just not worth it.  The inappropriate content in general (language and sexual) as well as the disgustingly disturbing Reavers out weight any reasons I could give for watching Serenity again.

There are much better, cleaner sci fi conspiracy movies out there.

For more details about the overall content of Serenity, visit;

http://www.pluggedin.com/videos/2005/q4/serenity.aspx

and/or

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/parentalguide?ref_=tt_stry_pg

PS - If you're sitting there wondering, "If you think this is such a waste of time, why did you watch it in the first place?", that's a valid question.  And frankly, I don't really know.  While I am honestly interested in Simon and River's story, I guess I was mainly curious to see how the story ended.  The last episode of Firefly was hardly a satisfactory one, so I was hoping for a better ending to the story.  Although the end of Serenity wasn't nearly as dumb as the end of Firefly episode 14, it still left the story more or less open ended, a sort of baby cliff hanger that could potentially lead to another movie.  But, it's been about eight years since Serenity, and no one's made any attempts at a sequel yet.