Serenity is the feature film follow-up to Firefly, and as such obviously is written and directed by Joss Whedon. It stars Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Summer Glau, Ron Glass, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Alan Tudyk, Jewel Staite, David Krumholtz, and Chiwetel Eijofor.
Simon (Maher) and River (Glau) Tam are a pair of siblings stowing away on a spaceship captained by gruff control freak Mal (Fillion) after escaping from the Evil Space Empire. Said spaceship, the titular Serenity, is crewed by violent merc Jayne (Baldwin), spunky horny mechanic Kaylee (Staite), wacky pilot Wash (Tudyk), and his wife and Mal's former comrade-in-arms Zoe (Torres). After a bank heist goes bad because the town in question comes under attack by Reavers (marauding space rape-orcs), River gets into a bar fight triggered by a subliminal message. The Evil Empire, in the person of the Operative (Eijofor) comes after them, forcing them to reconnect with Inara (Baccarin) and Book (Glass), and eventually ending up trying to broadcast the truth about the Reavers to the whole solar system.
If you're a fan of Firefly, you might read the above paragraph and say "whoa, there's a whole lot of missing context there." And...yeah. There is. But it's missing from the movie, too. Gone is any romantic tension between Kaylee and Simon, instead Kaylee is just super horny for him and he's utterly focused on River. Gone is the camaraderie between Jayne and Book; they don't even interact. Gone is any semblance of passion between Zoe and Wash (although Gina Torres does her best when Wash dies, god love her).
Serenity is weird. It simultaneously manages to be kind of incomprehensible to folks who didn't watch the show, and really unsatisfying to those of us who did. Like, where are the blue-hands guys? If you're going to make the movie about River (which, fair enough, it was the central thrust of the show, too), then why not actually pick up some of the threads that were left. Why not include some of the other characters from the show, like Adlai Niska or Badger? Why not tie in Book's mysterious past with the ongoing story since we'll never get another shot at this? (I mean, I don't know, maybe they'll reboot it, but Whedon has kinda fallen from grace.)
I have a lot of the same problems with Serenity as I do with Age of Ultron. It really feels like Whedon got bored and couldn't be fucked to connect his throughlines. Also, the dialog and interaction between the characters just doesn't have the same love as the show. On the show, the relationships between these people felt genuine. When Jayne betrays the crew, we believed that his greed pushed him to do it, we believed that he really regretted it, and we believed that Mal was angry enough to kill him but also cared enough about him to give him another shot. Here, he tries to sell out River again, and it's literally never addressed. And the dialog has some of the trademark Whedon quips, but they aren't really funny, because those quips only really work when there's also some emotional weight going on.
The best thing about the movie is hands down Eijofor's performance as the Operative, and I kind of feel like Whedon was the most interested in him (the new character) because he gets the best lines, the best scenes, and the only real character arc. But if we're going to tell that story, a) why not make it about Book, which would have made just as much sense and b) why not make the movie actually about that and not focus on this crew of yo-yos?
Grr. Arrgh.
My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: Low
Next up: The Serpent & The Rainbow
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