Serenity Review

First of all, this is a thoroughly spoiler-rich essay on the movie Serenity, so don’t read it unless you have seen the movie or don’t care. Also, it is a serious fan review, not a magazine review. So it may be long and detailed. Beyond reason. You dig? Also, I am writing this in part to treat my current writers block, so I am giving myself a very wide latitude for asides and related musings. Which should be enjoyable for the whole family. But they won’t be. Hopefully, though, they will be to you.

One important note to start off with: Firefly is my favorite thing I have ever seen. No exaggeration. I like it more than any other television show or movie I know. Probably if you threw in all books and comics and everything that calls itself a story, it would still come out on top. So understand my review comes from that place, which puts me in the position of, most likely, either adoring the movie as the realization of my idol Joss Whedon’s great dream, or hating it as a betrayal of the great and sacred narrative world I once held dear.

In fact, my response is…not really either. And the reason I am able to feel lukewarm about it is one simple fact: Serenity ain’t Firefly.

It does not take place on the same ship. It doesn’t take place in the same setting. And it doesn’t feature the same characters. It does, luckily, feature the same actors, which added a lot to my enjoyment, since they are all actors I came to like a lot on the television series Firefly. And they play their new characters pretty well, too.

Maybe I am being a little sarcastic. Yes, I am disappointed. I wanted more Firefly. But I think I was prepared for it to be very different. And if it had been different in a different way, I might be excited. But instead, it went the opposite direction than I think it should have. And I have some theories as to why. But let’s address the main thing first.

This essay will not include a scene by scene analysis. But the first two scenes must be addressed. Luckily, it gets better after that.

The first ten minutes of the movie threaten to sink the whole ship. They feature the daring rescue (by a new character, who we will call “Simon II”) of River II by her brother, posing as an alliance official. Not only does that contradict the established narrative, it also instantly brings my little thesis into sharp focus: the Simon Tam of Firefly would not be remotely capable of pulling off that kind of operation. I would say the whole point of his character is exactly that. He can’t even pretend to be a backwater mud dealer on Canton, much less a high government official. You get the impression that Simon 1 would really LIKE to be the kind of man who could have stormed into the alliance hospital with some powerful fancy weapon and saved his sister. But, instead, he feels kind of ashamed that he bought her out. And these changes aren’t just nitpicking: one of the very central tensions of the series is that Simon has no idea what they did to River. Not, for example, having had a detailed and frank discussion with government scientists before jiggly-freezing everyone and dashing off with River, escaping conveniently into the movie Mission Impossible 2, which was luckily passing overhead at the time.

I will stop here and say that, maybe it is just because I am a grown up now, who doesn’t get quite so excited about these things, but it doesn’t change my impression of the series and its story. I have no doubt in my mind that, in episode one, when River comes out of the box on Serenity, it is the first time the two have seen each other in person since she left for school. That is the whole beauty of that breathtaking scene.

The film follows immediately with a scene of such startlingly ordinary science fiction cliché that one has to wonder if it is meant as a joke. Here, in a big white room with a holographic computer display, we meet The Operative, an barely interesting though well acted grab-bag-villain (brilliant at everything, but not actually very good at anything, as these villains tend to be.) Stunningly, the other narrative event of this scene is that the mystery of River is explained, completely. Scene two. Yes, there are few specific details yet to learn (they turn out to be very important), but we are told right here exactly why the government is after her--- she knows state secrets. And then The Operative kills his government pals. Thusly, we learn he is EEEEVVVIIILLLL.

Then, the movie kind of starts. The credits could roll here. And we happily join the crew on Serenity, a slick silvery pirate vessel which bears some distant resemblance to the working class cargo ship featured in the (sadly cancelled) Joss Whedon series Firefly. Here, there are echoes of the magic. Mal II shares much of the gruff yet silly leadership of his counterpart, and the banter has a pleasingly familiar tone of wry yet driven. Enjoy the ship while we tour through it, because this is pretty much the last you’re going to see of it in this movie. Hey, all the staircases connect! No wonder they moved to a new ship!

Well, without going point by point, there is not a lot of time taken to establish characters. And yet, sadly, there is a little bit of time taken. Which makes them come off as kind of one joke sketches--- it seems like it would have been just as effective to just let them be themselves and do the story.

Which is the central problem of the movie: most people seem to agree that Joss had a difficult task in introducing his narrative while still pleasing old time fans. But I don’t think the proper solution was to introduce everything, just badly, and in a way which erases most of what he already has going for him. Reavers, who are introduced with horror and reverence in the show, here are just mean and loud. River, who is conflicted and vulnerable in the series, here is just weird and spacey. And Mal is so driven and engaged from the very first scene that…well, I hate to accuse Joss of all people of having succumb to Air Force One syndrome, but the shoe kind of fits here.

Or should I say sandal. Firefly is a sci-fi western. The film leans heavily toward the east.

I saw the movie with two people who had never even heard of Firefly, and because I liked them and they had driven me all the way to Santa Fe to see it, I really wanted them to like it. I think in some ways that robbed me of my momentum--- because I was identifying with my guests, I was really watching the movie as a single unit unto itself, not an extension of the series. Also, I am a slavish dramaturg, so I don’t benefit a lot from momentum to begin with--- I do get cheated in many films, and especially in this one, from being far too aware of the mechanics of storytelling.

But what it really felt like was that I was watching the movie that WOULD have been made, IF the series had already completed a five or six season run. More than rushing through the plot, here Joss seems almost to just skip it. Some of that is haste, and some of it is, in my opinion, just misjudgment.

I don’t know what would have worked better (I have only seen the movie once, I should note) but I think the structure of River’s story is just not plotted right. I’ll reserve analysis on that for a later time, with one exception: It seems very clear to me that the story is headed toward a confrontation between the Operative and RIVER. I understand the natural drive to make Mal the hero--- and he is, here, mighty and pleasingly heroic, I don’t argue that. But the Operative is focused on River, that is the bomb under the table in this movie, and it is a let down for me that they never even end up in the same room.

Which is related to another issue, once which Joss of all people should have realized: River’s secret has nothing to do with River. It is not personal to her at all. And so, she ends up having essentially no arc. The movie even deprives us of what could have been the most moving element in the story: River herself realizing what she knows, and the crew learning it from her. Instead (again breaking one of the fundamental rules of Firefly) they learn it from a computer.

Joss chose, instead of making Firefly, to making something else. Where Firefly was specifically and intentionally about small people living one day at a time, instead he chose here to make it BIG. And for most of the film, I was there with them. I was proud of their heroics. I was charmed by their banter. I cried when Book died (taking all his compelling mysteries with him--- oh, the narrative tragedy!) And I was honestly moved by the sentiment, by the big idea behind the action. I left the film feeling good. And, I left the film longing to someday see just one more episode of the show I love. The show about people whose only ambition in life is to just keep flying. The movie isn’t just different from Firefly, it is the opposite.



So, what went wrong?
What I have been asking myself since I saw the flick is an irony unto itself: one of the huge baffling mysteries since day one of Firefly has always been “Why did Fox go through with the show when they didn’t actually want the show?” And my question is very much the same: after all the pain and struggle that Joss Whedon went through to resurrect Firefly, why did he not make a movie that was like Firefly? The series lived on through cancellation because the fans fell in love with the show as it WAS. So why when it came time to make the film did he decide to change, almost literally, everything?

I think the easiest explanation is that he got spooked. The series failed, and it broke his heart, and when the movie became a reality, he felt like he HAD to make it a success. Which meant making it “exciting.” Which meant, mostly, making it really fast. He didn’t trust the excitement that the show itself created: I think he reasoned, in a logical but ultimately flawed way, that if the show had failed, the movie would have to be different, or it would fail too. So he made it bigger, louder, and more what people “expect” when they go to a sci-fi action flick.

Of course, I cannot imagine the amount of pressure this one amazing overworked man felt. He wasn’t just staking a future franchise and his own future film career on this one completely outlandish dream. I also think Joss feels very personally responsible for the actors and crew of Firefly, and he needed to make it work, to not let them down again. And I think it made him push harder than he should have--- it made him doubt himself, and it made him doubt the strength of what he originally created. It is easy for me to say “if Joss had just picked up right where the series let off, and let the film unfold in the same style and world, people would have gotten it.” But I don’t know. And I didn’t have to make the choice.

Also, if Joss Whedon has one huge flaw as a storyteller, it is that he is too lax with breaking his own rules. It happened in Buffy and it happened even more so in Angel--- Joss doesn’t balk at betraying the characters in favor of the story. In a lot of ways, it is one of his strengths: Joss rejects the old TV standard that everything stays the same, and instead makes dramatic changes--- sometimes with great success. And sometimes, it felt like a whole different show with different characters.

I don’t think this goes that far. Except for the Simon II problem, which I think is just a bad bad mistake, I don’t think these characters were made irreversibly into different people. I mostly feel that this is just a story which doesn’t fit the concept, and certainly doesn’t fit in the amount of time allowed here.

Though Joss has said there won’t be a “directors cut” of the movie, I think that the movie MUST have taken incredibly deep cuts, which could have dramatically changed the character development and haphazard pacing. I am sure that he was contractually obligated to deliver the film under two hours. (it may be a coincidence, but it isn’t lost on me that the running time of Serenity is 1 hour 59 minutes.)

I plan to watch the movie several times again. I want to watch it and be able to get a close look at what DOES survive from the Firefly world, because that is what I am in love with. And I hope that, as has happened to me with Angel and the last two seasons of Buffy, now that the “big deal” is out of the way and I have to time accept the story changes, I will be able to appreciate what the film has to offer. If nothing else, I expect that just watching the cast and crew in special features will feel more like a return to the home I know and love than the movie did.

And I hope the same thing happens to Joss. I still want the movie to be a success. I hope that the numbers climb, and that the DVD sales go through the roof, and I hope with all my heart for a sequel. Because now that the big epic arc is out of the way, Joss has a blank slate. And I think (much like with Star Trek II) that in the second movie, we could see the heart of Firefly come back to life. Or, just something neat and good.

If Firefly is forever just fourteen episodes, then I am grateful. It’s about the same amount of time that Star Wars fans get. (and four sixths of that is pretty crappy.) I’ll tell ya, if the show was going to someday go off the rails and forget what it was, I am glad it happened in a movie instead of dying slowly on TV.

But I will tell you what I choose to believe instead. What I believe is that Firefly is not the birth of a franchise, I believe it could be the birth of a full-fledged contemporary myth. Like the X-Men, like Batman, like Star Trek, I really think the idea will live on, and it will be created and recreated and fucked up and ruined and resurrected and retold for many years to come in many different forums. We have decades to go, but I think that Joss Whedon has the potential to be our generation’s Stan Lee.

Or, he may be a three hit wonder. And if so, I’m glad I’ve been here to see it. It has made my life happier, and given me imaginary heroes to look up to and identify with. For one guy, it ain’t a bad gift. So I raise a glass to Joss and his big old brain: if my track record were one tenth what his has been, I would be a proud and happy man. Here is to you my hero (and hopefully future employer.) I’m setting ten bucks aside for your next one.


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