Movie Review: Serenity (2005)

Movie Review: Serenity (2005) directed by Joss Whedon

This is what we are told: It is around 500 years in the future. Life on Earth That Was became unsustainable, so humanity went looking for new worlds to live on. At least one place they found was a trinary star system with multiple planets and planetoids in its “habitable zone.” The so-called “Core Worlds” were easy to terraform and travel between, and they soon developed a unified civilization called the Alliance. The Border, Rim and Frontier Worlds were less hospitable, and developed more independently. Over time, the Alliance, with its greater resources, sought control over the Border Worlds, which opposed becoming junior partners (at best.) Some years ago, this brought on war, called the Unification War by the Alliance, and the Independence War by the Border Worlders who lost.

One of the defeated soldiers (known as “Browncoats”) has refused to fit in to the new order. Captain Malcom “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) managed to get ownership of a small Firefly-class transport ship, Serenity (named for the Battle of Serenity Valley) and performs transportation and…other services for those who can pay. He and his crew often run afoul of the occupying Alliance, more so since they took on a couple of fugitive passengers.

This was the premise of the 2002 television show Firefly. Helmed by fan-favorite director and writer Joss Whedon and featuring an innovative setting and viewpoint, it could have been a huge hit. But the executives running Fox’s programming at the time were much less fond of Whedon than their audience and had little faith in the show. It was given a bad time slot, poorly advertised, aired out of order (the pilot episode was shown last, after the show had already been cancelled!) and cancelled before the halfway point of the first season. Ordinarily it would have joined the scrapheap of failed series that get fondly remembered by a few diehard fans.

But Firefly sold phenomenally well on DVD (with three unaired episodes) and a burgeoning fan community refused to let the show die. Letter-writing campaigns, merchandising, rebid internet interest and fundraisers allowed Whedon to convince enough people at Universal Pictures there was a market for a movie version. Thus Serenity, a sequel to the series.

The movie begins with a standard history voiceover, only to actually be a classroom propaganda lesson, only to actually be a hallucination by psychic/test subject River Tam (Summer Glau) who’s being rescued from an Alliance laboratory by her doctor brother Simon Tam (Sean Maher), only to actually be a recording of that event. The person reviewing the recording is The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who has no name or rank. While previously the Alliance had been tracking down the Tams just because of the whole “escaped from a lab” thing, The Operative has realized she’s potentially a danger to the Alliance itself.

Cut to Serenity, where Mal is planning a payroll robbery. His first mate Zoe (Gina Torres) (also a Browncoat), pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk) (Zoe’s husband), engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite) and violence expert Jayne (Adam Baldwin) are more or less on board with this plan, but Simon is not, since Mal wants to take River along because of her sometimes useful psychic abilities. Mal points out that because the ship is carrying fugitives, it’s not able to land many places, or accept many honest jobs. The robbery is interrupted by an attack by Reavers (basically monstrous space marauders.) Mal does try to limit the loss of life, but makes hard choices about who and what to save, something Zoe calls him out on.

Simon and River are scheduled to leave the ship right after the payroll is delivered to the client, but a subliminal message broadcast by the Operative triggers River’s “kill people switch” right in the middle of a crowded bar.

As the Operative closes in, the crew and passengers of Serenity must reconnect with old friends preacher Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), courtesan Inara (Morena Baccarin) and information broker Mr. Universe (David Krumholtz). They will uncover just what it is that the Alliance wants kept secret, but at a terrible cost.

When I first saw this in the theater, I had not yet seen the DVDs, and indeed had watched at most two episodes of the TV series, but had the plot and in-jokes forcibly inserted into my consciousness by the internet. So I was able to follow along just fine. These many years later, I have seen all the episodes, so the movie hits a bit differently. It’s possible to follow the plot perfectly well if you’re coming in cold, but much of the emotional resonance won’t be there.

Whedon’s trademark quippy dialogue hadn’t gotten stale yet, and there are many excellent lines. “I aim to misbehave” is still a banger. There’s also exciting action scenes.

While River is the fulcrum of the plot, we learn more about her as a plot device than as a person. Mal is the star of this story, and most of the best lines and emotional moments go to him, or to people speaking directly to him. The Operative’s goal may be River, but he does all his interaction with Mal. this leaves relatively little time for everyone else, just moments to tie off some subplots.

The Operative is a good choice for the antagonist. He’s a “true believer” in the Alliance goal of making the ‘Verse better, but also realizes that once the world is better, there will be no place in it for him because of the monstrous actions he’s taken to achieve that utopia. It makes his final scene in the movie make sense.

The Reavers were, while the show was airing, one of the big mysteries/complaints as they didn’t make sense as a group that simultaneously had a spacefaring capability and a single-minded desire to harm others violently that would seem to make them unable to handle complex tasks. The big reveal in the movie tries to explain how and why they got that way, even if it’s a little cloudy on how they continue to exist.

There’s a lot of death in this movie, both of minor characters and a couple of major ones; some of these are foreshadowed while others are for shock value. Hope you didn’t get too attached to anyone in a Joss Whedon production!

Content: Lots of deadly violence, some gory. Medical torture. Cannibalism (no gorier than the rest of the violence.) Mention of rape. Desecration of corpses.

Overall: Joss Whedon’s star has somewhat faded as his more unpleasant behavior has become better reported. As such, some viewers may feel uncomfortable revisiting this franchise. But it is a good movie for Firefly fans, with some excellent performances, and may be of interest to general science fiction fans. Recommended with reservations.