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Serenity
Director: Joss Whedon
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin, Ron
Glass, and Chiwetel Ejiofor
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| Our hero's covered in blood, and, for once, it's not his |
Being a critic, I suspect, is a double-edged sword. You get to watch everything, and you become pretty adept at deconstructing
story content, structure, character arcs, all of these things because, well, it's yer job. However, it means you fall in
love with things other people don't even know are there. I suspect this is true because all of my favorite TV critics adore
the shows I adore, and so we're all so often begging attention from a public with the sound turned off. “Veronica
Mars is excellent!” we swear. Really, there's no show funnier than Arrested Development! Lauren Graham
(Gilmore Girls) is the funniest actress on TV! It's rare when we're cut a break, when Lost is a runaway hit.
But more often than not, we're left to cry in our soup over a show like Joss Whedon's Firefly, a space-western about
a rag-tag group of curmudgeons and crazies trying to navigate the spaces between a nosey government and cannibalistic anarchists
(or the Reavers would be anarchists if they were interested-or even capable-of subscribing to a political movement).
But here we caught the rare break, and though Firefly was cancelled, crazy high DVD sales and a loyal fan following
bought Joss his Big Damn Movie, Serenity.
What the fans, or Browncoats (if you haven't heard of them, you're probably not reading this little site, anyway), earned
on September 30th from all of their extremely organized table-pounding was a chance to see Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion)
and his crew fly again. But, alas, be careful what you wish for; apparently, some fans are none too happy about the direction
in which their fearless leader (Joss) took their story.
Me? I admit, some of it was hard to choke down. Not that I don't trust Joss, just that I love these characters and want
to see them all, well, get to have wine and roses (which is terribly unlikely in any of Joss's worlds). But the movie would
have never fully satiated me, not after having Firefly ripped away when the secrets were just being set up. Thirteen
episodes weren't nearly enough, so how could two hours make it right? It couldn't, but dammit, am I glad for those two hours
(now four, since I've seen it twice).
So I'm going to make a suggestion that nary another reviewer has made (not that this is a review; it's kinda not, despite
it's location in “reviews” on this site). I love the film and I trust that Joss has big plans for Serenity's
crew in the ensuing films (if we ever get there). I know why he's done what he's done. I see it now, and despite the clunkiness
of the Mr. Universe part of the tale, I'll swallow that, too, since, from a media literacy perspective, it's actually quite
fitting: there are those looking for total control, and they use the media, which we assume to be harmless, against us. But
technology is a slippery beast, and anything that can be utilized to reinforce the hegemony can be used against it. So is
Mr. Universe a bit outside the film? Yes. But is he, on that famous Joss Whedon metaphorical level, necessary to the story?
In his own way, sure.
Now back to my suggestion: Fans will love Serenity because it's a world they love, and characters they love, and to
whom their creator is fiercely loyal. However, they will also be critical of certain choices because of that fierce love,
because they will never be satiated, because TV and film are different beasts and there is no season arc, there's only two
hours, and that's a bitch, frankly, after three years of waiting for the second half of season one.
But non-fans, those allusive folk who we are being told will not go see this film, they're the ones who have the opportunity
to love it unadulterated. These characters, especially Mal, are extremely complex in a way rarely seen in science fiction
films. They are dark; they are outsiders. The complexity, the grittiness, the dirtiness of Whedon's world is a unique space,
on that takes the sheen right off the sparkly CGI of Lucas' overly pretty universe. It's a film for the Lord of the Rings
crowd, and that crowd is mighty big. The critics keep asking, “will this play for non-fans?” and my answer is
that it will, and perhaps even better than it will to fans. Because as a fan with a complex history with Firefly,
I proudly give the Big Damn Movie a B+, but as a wide-eyed virgin, new to this fantastic world, its spooks and its reluctant
heroes, I might just give it an A.
So now the question is, how do we get all those potential viewers to turn their sound on?
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