Tibbittz

Tibbittz · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 4:22 am Post subject: Serenity Review/Musings

Serenity
*****

If this were merely a popcorn flick, it would still be a damn good one. The action is exciting, the fight scenes are savagely graceful, and the space scenes are quite impressive, even with so many other space operas in mind. There have been complaints that Whedon borrows too heavily from other sources. And there is a truth to this, but what makes familiar worlds and ideas fresh in his hands is his ability to combine and twist cliches. Sure he mines a very familiar pop fiction landscape, but he sees things hiding in our modern legends that everyone else seems to have missed.

There has been criticism that there isn't enough character development... but it's there where it counts -- Malcolm and River, the two main protagonists, are markedly different by the end of this quest, and since it is their personal stories that encapsulate and reflect the main themes of the piece. Two hours isn't enough time to realistically alter every character in an appreciable way, and so that time is well-spent those who mean more in the larger context of this fictional world at this point in its timeline.

And Serenity is far more than a throwaway action film -- it is also a multilayered metaphor, a deeply human exploration of what it means to be who we are (the title of the film alone is a clever allusion to many aspects of the story). Whedon displays a serious devotion to genuine individuality and the following of one's own path. Certainly the Alliance (represented brilliantly on a personal level by an assassin who believes in being a monster for the greater good; a man who, in rationalizing his state-sanctioned murders is as inhuman as the government he represents), in its bid to control not just the galaxy, but what we are as a race, must in some way represent not only the oppressive homogenizing technological march forward coupled with increasingly arbitrary authority (which Whedon has personally dealt with in the form of network executives), but it also recalls the goals of people like Hitler.

And in both cases, that authority works to change the state of the natural human, whether that be Whedon's creative impulses or, in the larger than life backdrop of the film, humanity itself. It's the decision that what we are is not good enough, too free, somehow misguided if left to our own devices... that we must be controlled for the greater good, even if the powers that be don't really know what that really is.

This is in many ways the anti-Star Trek -- based on the world around us and his own dealings with authorities, Whedon sees all the cracks that would form in a real "utopia". Where its will is most strongly enforced, it decides the fate of its citizens, which is frighteningly close to what our own American "utopia" is sometimes capable of.

This struggle against oppression is further represented in the characters themselves, especially in River, who was forced to change through brain surgery, and even more so Malcolm Reynolds, the man the Alliance couldn't change. Even after fighting a losing battle against the Alliance's formation, he's still thoroughly a rebel, and lives a life as a criminal, operating under the nose of the government he fought to prevent the formation of. He's always running from capture, living a life he chooses rather than one they would force on him. He is stubborn and headstrong, but is still operating as a man defeated, running all the time from his old enemies.

Having River aboard means that he has to work harder to run, as the Alliance chases him that much more for having her -- because she holds a secret in her tortured mind even she doesn't fully understand. A secret that the Alliance has gone to great lengths to hide. And when Malcolm learns what that is, he chooses to face the demon he's been running from all these years head on in a way he hasn't since he lost the battle of Serenity Valley. The fight costs him more than he's had to pay since that battle, but it's worth it to him -- and it is in this battle that the film's varying levels of the same metaphor come together. There is a grand statement here: that humanity is what it is, and what it is is good and valid. And that to try to change us at a fundamental level is an act of evil -- to try to alter what it means to be human is to turn your back on what being human means.

Mal has gone a long time with little to believe in, running whatever way the wind blows... but here he gets a second chance at the battle he thought he'd lost, and in the fighting of this battle he again chooses a direction and finds something to believe in.

Yes, this movie was made first and foremost out of Whedon's deep love of the story, the universe, and the characters... and what better reason is there to do anything? It's a reason that both shapes and guides the metaphors inherent in the script itself. It's the most human reason of all to embark on any creative endeavor. And here we learn that the space-western setting is not merely the world of the story -- it is a metaphor for holding on to our fundamental humanity in the face of "progress", both technological and in our "modern" civilization. This use of setting as metaphor is at work on every level, from the writer to the characters to society as a whole, and it elevates Serenity to a level among the greatest science fiction stories...

All that, and it's still fun as hell to watch. Shiny.

_________________
Court Jester

of the Jadepocalypse www.cellardoorpublishing.com