Serenity

Reviewed by Aricson Tarasova
January 16, 2005

Director: Joss Whedon Studio: Universal MPAA: PG-13 for violent action and some sexual references Review Rating: 6 out of 10

Firefly has risen from the ashes of TV cancellation after just fifteen episodes to fly on to the big screen and to take port on to DVD as Serenity . Now as an avid MST3K fan, I've subjected myself to countless B-grade science fiction abominations over the years and can safely diagnosis B-grade material when I see it. Serenity would fit MST3K movie standards of cheaply copied characters and implausible plot points. This movie would be great to either have Joel/Mike and the bots riff this movie or a band of one's role-playing buddies to do some homemade riffing.

The Crew of Serenity boldly goes where most sci-fi has already gone before. Click image to enlarge.

Writer/director Joss Whedon's imagination seems to be stuck in the ninth grade giving adolescent minds a wish-fulfillment of hunky heroes who conquer parental authority figures with the help from a psychic school-girl super warrior at their side while cruising the galaxy looking for criminal adventure. This is the stuff of cheap science fiction pulp that would find a home in the vault of MST3K 's Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank next to such cinematic suppositories as Laserblast and Fugitive Alien . Serenity is constructed of fabricated cultural archetypes that can be easily marketed and consumed to the DVD audience. When I watch Serenity , its like watching authentically hip icons taken from Cowboy Bebop, Friends, Star Trek, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Aliens, Star Wars, Sergio Leone Westerns and god knows what else I'm not including here, into a condensed pop product for mass adolescent consumption.

The first ten minutes of the film are engaging, throwing the viewer into a furious pace of characters and environmental setups. We learn the future Earth has become a utopian nightmare where children who question the sovereignty of their government are imprisoned and tortured to become psychic super warriors of which a girl by the name of River Tame escapes with the aid of her brother. The execution of the first ten minutes of Serenity , although introducing cliché after cliché, was done with clever enthusiasm. However, the film's energy quickly dissipates and succumbs under the weight of its unauthentic pop stereotypes and a plot ripped from a hack role-playing game master.

Now with all my criticisms above mentioned, they could be countered by saying that the films archetypal formulas are rendered in terms of ‘fun' for the audience who wishes two hours of escapism. For is it not the function of art in general, a means of escape from the day-to-day monotony of the real world to the inner psychological world of myth? Yes, I would agree with that, but the crux of Serenity is that Whedon's concept is too unoriginal for at least my imagination to engage in. Serenity could have been a fun movie if Whedon's concept had a more fresh spirit to its execution. It would have been more enjoyable to see Han Solo and his Millennium Falcon instead of Whedon's rip-offs of them. After all there is a thirteen-year old boy in me who wishes to be entertained, but Whedon's heavy borrowing of ideas and blatant plagiarism from other popular material made the thirteen year-old in me fall asleep and the critical thirty-two year old in me slighted.

The best estimation of Serenity I can give is that it is dumb fun when watched with the right group of friends. Serenity does have some witty lines and a villain who knows what his evil role is and carries it out to the best of his abilities. The soundtrack is the only fresh element to the film, juxtaposing eighteenth century musical motifs to a futuristic setting. The direction is professional. All the heroes and heroines are eye candy and the actors were cast to type (somehow even the doctor finds time to lift weights, two to three hours a day). After all is said and done, Serenity does not end with a kind of didactic monologue commonly found in cheap b-rated soft science fiction. Serenity attempts to make an extrapolation, but Whedon's theme has been extrapolated before with much better psychological effect. With a film that offers a teenage girl with the abilities of a super martial arts warrior and is a psychic to boot, what can one expect?

The DVD extras are a shade below average for a science fiction DVD that mainly hardcore Firefly fans would buy. This is a movie to be rented on a weekend night with a group of friends who enjoy science fiction. Joss Whedon's commentary is not terribly insightful and his personal tone is rather self-absorbing. The featurettes are short and not engaging. In a world of hundreds of digital channels, Comic-cons throughout the world, and fan bases of cultural proportions, there is a place for Serenity and its Firefly fans.