Serenity: If You’ve Got Nothing Better to Do

Let’s face it. All the major science-fiction franchises of the last 30 years are wounded. Star Wars was ruined by three stilted movies directed by its creator. Star Trek is on life support thanks to two mediocre movies and Enterprise having a Bobby-Ewing ending. Even pitting Alien v. Predator proved to be career blunders for both species. The opportunity is ripe for something else to fill the void left by these former successes.

Serenity is Joss Whedon’s attempt to unseat the washed-up franchises, at least that’s the impression you receive from the fan base. Fox had its chance with the TV series Firefly in 2002 and cancelled it with a major plot arc left unresolved. The show lived on in syndication through the Sci-Fi Channel and DVD sales which generated enough interest from Universal to back a movie. Let’s just say that Fox and Paramount have little to worry about with their cash cows.

The plot involves some crewmember’s sister being a psychic wanted by the Alliance (the villains of the storyline) and the horrible secret she is carrying. Much like the X-Files and Star Trek movies, you need to be familiar with the TV series or you will be puzzled. Maybe if I watched the whole DVD set, I wouldn’t see the characters as just archetypes on 3 x 5 cards too. The crew has to solve the mystery of what the Alliance is hiding because there’s an assassin following them and he’s killing everyone they know to get their attention. When the crew does discover the awful truth, it is pretty damning of the Alliance.

I will readily admit, I am prejudiced with Whedon. Buffy didn’t pique my interest since I am always skeptical of TV series based upon movies. Alien: Resurrection was disappointing yet he doesn’t bear all the blame there. Toy Story was wonderful, yet again, he doesn’t deserve all the credit. There has been all this hype and buzz about Serenity coming but it has the quality of a made-for-TV movie, especially with the Buffy-meets-Dawn of the Dead-based sequence near the end. He must have an obsession with female teenage martial artists. Also, as a fan of science fiction for years, I was disappointed that the universe of Serenity takes place all in one solar system filled with numerous habitable planets thanks to terraforming. The distance of the system’s sun doesn’t matter? That’s just bad Astronomy. Sure it’s nitpicking for a movie but the average person’s understanding of the galaxy and the expectations which come with it have evolved since Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The only silver lining I can hope for is that this overrated movie will inspire Warner Brothers to reconsider making The Memory of Shadows, the Babylon 5-based film which was scrapped recently or find a way to tie the loose ends from Crusade which had the Earth Alliance hiding a more sinister secret than Whedon’s Alliance.