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Serenity
(2005)
Joss Whedon, the creative force behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has a loyal cult audience, but even they couldn't save his 2002 series Firefly from cancellation after 11 episodes, several of which never even aired on FOX. The improbable existence of a big-screen Firefly feature, Universal Pictures' Serenity, speaks volumes about Whedon's pluck and talent.
Taking a similar tack to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's concept of space as the final frontier, Whedon wittily blended the science-fiction and western genres. 500 years in the future, a bunch of loveable space-cowboy outlaws crew a ship called Serenity, which runs cargo and provides getaways from survival-of-the-fittest heists pulled by Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his motley crew.
In the first of several cheeky self-references, Whedon unfurls much of his backstory in a film-opening children's lesson. Ever since an ugly war for dominance, the galaxy has been ruled by the unjust Alliance (a sinister bureaucracy that's the opposite of Roddenberry's Federation). The Alliance wants one of Mal's passengers, a problem that raises the stakes considerably and sets off potent political allegory. The passenger is River (Summer Glau), a telepath whose shadowy time in government custody appears to have left her a human biological weapon.
River's fiercely protective brother Simon (Sean Maher) is a doctor, making him almost as useful to Mal as he and River are dangerous. The crew proper includes Mal's second, Zoe (Gina Torres), who fought alongside him in the ill-fated civil war; Wash (Alan Tudyk), ship's pilot and Zoe's husband; Jayne (Adam Baldwin), an unpredictable roughneck whose priority is his own safety; and Kaylee (Jewel Staite), a grease monkey with a heart of gold. Two other characters round out the original cast, all of whom reunite in Serenity: itinerant preacher Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) and high-class courtesan Inara (Morena Baccarin), who shares a "just do it already," long-distance romance with Mal.
The crew faces a very real danger in The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a ruthless representative of the government's interest in River. Though he believes in a "world without sin," he confesses to being evil. He's brutally efficient in hand-to-hand combat (proven by two pounding fights with Mal), but proves to have more dimensions than anyone, including himself, might have guessed. The Operative is charged with keeping mysteries secret, but the ordinarily self-protective crew become righteously convinced that those secrets should be revealed, with the help of videohead Mr. Universe (David Krumholtz).
Without straining the imagination, audiences will be able to read an autobiographical streak in the conflict of heroes (Whedon and friends) trying to get the word out in the face of authoritative resistance (network TV executives), but the ethic "If you can't do something smart, do something right" just as easily lends itself to modern political allegory: oppressive, scandalous, secretive governments have yet to go out of style, and whistleblowers are expected to sacrifice themselves in the process. In the science-fiction category, Whedon answers the misbegotten notion of "trying to make humans better" with a flawed but deeply loveable cast of characters.
True to Firefly form, Serenity undermines most of the usual tropes of science-fiction adventure. Whedon stays true to the retro-futuristic patois of his 'verse (good="shiny"; bad="gorram" fill-in-the-blank), and he continues to give unusually rich and limitless roles to women. Handheld camerawork, dramatic zoom-ins, and mostly silent outer-space effects shots give Serenity a queasy realism occasionally jolted by the unexpected. By the story's climax, Whedon has cultivated the thrilling sense that anything can happen; instead of treating his baby with kid gloves, the writer-director goes for broke.
Whedon proves up to his big-screen tasks, enjoying fights, chases, and gunplay but wisely relying on a cast with practiced chemistry (the director lovingly introduces his crew in one lengthy, limber tracking shot). As a result, Whedon's smart, densely plotted, fast-paced story provides ample opportunities for characterization, revealing the pain beneath the characters' defensive humor. Newcomers to the franchise may struggle at first, but the effort will be rewarded by Whedon's adventurous science-fiction actioner, suffused as it is with the strange poetry of love.
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