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Printer-Friendly ModeSerenity brings Firefly alive
October 10, 2005 —
Serenity is a rare movie.
While it isn't one of the best movies to come out this year, it is still good. It is rare to see a good, well-budgeted science fiction film these days that it is more than worth seeing. Despite some shortcomings, Serenity depicts a pretty convincing science fiction universe, and also has some outstanding visuals, including what could very well be the best-looking space battle scene ever created in cinema.
Serenity is based on the short-lived television show Firefly. Although FOX cancelled the show after eleven episodes, strong DVD sales convinced Universal Studios to resurrect the series and let creator Joss Whedon direct the film. Whedon is also the creator of the successful Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.
Serenity's setting is a universe that the inhabitants of Earth fled to after some sort of difficulty with the planet. We apparently traveled to it in giant ships and "terraformed" new planets so that they would be inhabitable. There is an alliance of humans who oversee the different worlds and help keep order. The Alliance plays a similar role to the Empire in the Star Wars series, but is less blatantly sinister.
The basic outline of the plot is that a young woman, River, is rescued from an Alliance research facility by her older brother, who is a doctor and a crew member on the ship Serenity. The Alliance seems to want her back, and we are kept slightly in the dark about why until very late in the film. The crew of Serenity are either smugglers, robbers, or both. Their true role escaped me, either because it wasn't explained well, or I was distracted by the extremely well-done scene during which this was likely explained, where the movie follows the captain around the entire ship, which is far from small, as he speaks with different members of the crew.
The set design was simply amazing, as every aspect of the interior was convincing.
The Alliance sends someone after River, and he becomes the central villain. Known as The Operative, he works on some levels and doesn't on others. He is a cold, calculating, and deadly man. At the same time, he looks very average for a sci-fi villain. He is just a plainly dressed, unadorned man. I liked this because it was something different, yet at the same time, it took away from his villainous qualities, as well as the way he appeared to have some code of honor he tried to follow. The Operative wasn't entirely convincing, not because of the acting, which was perfectly acceptable, but simply because of the way the movie portrayed him.
As the movie progresses, the crew discover more and more about River and why the Alliance wants her back so badly. We learn early on that she is capable of outrageous and perfectly executed acts of violence, and that she is extremely dangerous. She also seems to have some memory that is extremely traumatizing to her, yet she cannot fully recall.
What the audience eventually discovers is terrifying, and some of the sequences related to this surprised me from a PG-13 movie. How Serenity avoided an R rating is somewhat of a mystery to me as there is some pretty ugly and surprising violence as well as a couple of genuinely disturbing and frightening scenes.
The long and excellent climax of the movie includes a space battle that is absolutely magnificent. The design of the ships is like nothing ever seen before, with insect-like cruisers on one side battling with hulking leviathans on the other. By not overdoing the CGI to make the ships look unrealistically shiny and clean, the people in charge of the visuals have broken new boundaries.
This movie looks amazing, and thanks in part to that, Serenity is a movie with flaws, but despite them, it is must-see material.