*** This review contains spoilers ***
The family sat down to watch Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” again last night, with a view to getting the series on DVD. The movie tracks the crew of the ship (or “boat”, as they like to call it in the movie) Serenity and how their lives and the life of young River Tam interwine.
River (Summer Glau) is a talented teenage psychic experimented upon by the Alliance in order to build a series of super spies/assassins. Her ability to read the thoughts of everyone around her is stressed a number of times. Her older brother, Simon (Sean Maher), spends all his money to break her out of the grasp of her Alliance handlers. Both flee and find refuge on the ship, Serenity. But things are not so cosy with a nameless, super-efficient Alliance operative on River’s tail.
The captain of the Serenity is Malcolm Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion. He has some baggage, which includes being on the losing side of a system-wide war and a doomed romance with Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), a prostitute. Alan Tudyk plays the role of Wash, the humane pilot of the ship, married to Zoe (Gina Torres), a tough no-nonsense ex-soldier. Of course, as they’re married, one of them has to die. And there’s the ship’s mechanic, Kaylee (Jewel Staite) who alternates between looking bewildered or about to burst into tears.
My favourite character was Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), a gun-happy mercenary with a very black and white view of the universe.
WHAT I LIKED
The flashes of humour. The look of the ship sets, which takes the seminal Star Wars grunge look (but only if you don’t already know about Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” which, I believe, was the original space grunge) and projects it light years ahead. Glau’s boots.
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
Oh boy, where to begin? And remember, except for catching parts of maybe two Firefly episodes while on my way from one place to another, I’m new to this universe.
If you take away the humour, there was nothing about any of the characters that made me care for any of them. No hints of personal development, no real camaraderie. Instead, they all appeared to be people lumped together with nothing in common except grumpiness and misery. If this is how it started out, it would have been nice to see some growth during the movie. It doesn’t take much. A touch. A surprised look when someone does something unexpected. There was no such growth from the crew.
Summer Glau was great at playing the victim. Constantly. Getting that grid pattern embedded in her cheek because she seemed to spend so much time lying on metal grates eavesdropping on people. (Why? Why have her eavesdrop when she can read everyone’s minds?) But an assassin? She spends more than eight months lolling around, growing over her scars from the multiple puncture marks the Alliance inflicted on her, then we’re supposed to believe that this skinny little girl who hasn’t even breathed hard during the entire movie takes out a company of Reavers that Jayne and Zoe can’t handle? Puh-lease. The spirit may have been willing, little girl, but the flesh really wasn’t up to it. And it shows.
The names. A preacher called Shepherd. Because I’m not familiar with the Firefly universe, I thought it was the dude’s name. And we have “Mr Universe”. In that case, I thought, why not called Inara “Hooker”? Just so we’re all straight on who does what.
The locations. So dreary. So monotonous. And if you’re going to film a supposed settlement, at least tidy it up a bit so it doesn’t look so obviously like you’re filming in an abandoned mining valley.
Mal Reynolds. Yes yes, he’s supposed to be a flawed hero, but he only comes off as a grumpy bastard. Why do these people even follow him? It’s never explained. We’re just supposed to take their loyalty for granted. The one time Jayne comments that he’d rather captain the ship, instead of this leading to a dramatic moment where Reynolds shows why he’s the leader, we get a lame one-line throwaway that isn’t even any good. Way to build character.
The crew. The number of people in the cast was too big for the plot. Inara is introduced just so we can see The Operative go head-to-head with Reynolds, then she disappears for the entire movie and suddenly pops up at the end. “Oh, so she’s still in the movie,” I commented when I saw her again. “Fancy that.”
EDITED TO ADD: The Reavers. How could I forget the Reavers? Aggressive to the point of insensibility. Like nothing better than to eat people alive. Depicted as slavering, mindless nightmares. Yet they can pilot and maintain complex pieces of spacefaring machinery and fire at enemies? How do they maintain their vessels? Scavenge? But that requires the kind of thinking that’s not depicted. Really, the Reavers should have been able to get some ships in space but then they should have destroyed themselves within months, if not weeks. Lame.
The accents. How come I didn’t have any trouble watching, and enjoying, all those old Westerns, but I had incredible difficulty trying to understand what everyone was saying in this movie? With Fillion as Reynolds, this was a particular problem. Put him in profile or with his back to the camera and he might as well have had a bag over his head while orating.
The moralising. Have a moral? Leave it up to the viewer to reach by her- or himself. Don’t have one of the characters stop in the middle of laying waste to half a planet, just to say, “And you know, you can’t force anyone into doing anything.” Really? The political scientist in me wants to say something, but I shall desist.
SUMMARY
Harmless enough. I won’t be watching the movie again. And we won’t be getting the DVD series.
VERDICT: I give it 5/10 and recommend it only for North American sensibilities. The Wast gives it 2.5/10. Little Dinosaur gives it 9/10.
