So I haven’t made many updates due to a little distraction. Actually, not too little. We’re talking about a big damn movie that should never have gotten made, but bucking the law of averages, there it was; larger than life and twice as amazing. I am, of course, talking about “Serenity,” the Firefly movie.
First, some backstory: When I served my purgatory that was Best Buy, I met a man named Lawrence, a self-professed “Whedonite.” What the hell’s a “Whedonite”? They’re someone who loves writer/director/television-show-creator Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Now, Lawrence was also preaching about some new show that had just been released on DVD called “Firefly” and how it was sad that it’d gotten pulled from the air. I looked at the box and read the back, but saw nothing that really struck me as truly amazing or ground-breaking. At this point, I wasn’t even a fan of the man. Lawrence made me a deal, though. Since he was waiting on a paycheck and couldn’t by the set, he told me to buy it. If I didn’t like it, he’d buy it back at the standard retail price and I’d make about fifteen dollars on the whole deal. “What if I want to keep it?” I asked. He smiled, “Then I win.” Suffice it to say, I still own a rather worn and loved “Firefly” DVD set that has since been loaned out multiple times over the last two years. During those two years, I was a cult leader akin to Charles Manson, enlisting disciple after disciple in the religion of “Firefly” until every one of my close friends all owned copies of the series and we all waited patiently for the rumor to come true: There was going to be a “Firefly” movie.
Whedon put a part of himself into creating this show and when it was canceled, he was beyond scarred. The thing is, it’s hard to keep a good idea or a good idea man down and through a little bit of fan support in pushing the DVD numbers through the roof and a rival studio of the company that produced the series looking for a new property, Whedon got his greenlight. This became “Serenity.”
“Serenity” follows the cast of “Firefly,” Captain Malcolm Reynolds, his first mate Zoe, their pilot Wash, engineer Kaylee, and mercenary muscle Jayne as they protect a young doctor, Simon, and his psychic, River. Set in the far future, where civilization has grown so advanced that the lower-castes actually resemble the old west, the crew of the transport, Serenity, scour the system for jobs, legal or otherwise. When they offer to protect the young Simon and River from the allied government who are chasing them for unknown reasons, they bring on a world of hurt for very little profit, but a cause worth fighting for.
The message of “Serenity” is not one of action and adventure. It’s one of belief and what you’re willing to do fight for what you believe in. The Alliance has sent an Operative to kill River and whoever stands in his way. This Operative believes in the dream of a perfect world promised by the Alliance. Throughout the film, every character is forced to face their own beliefs, most of all the Captain. Malcolm lost his faith in God during a vicious war that his side ultimately lost. Since then, he’s been a hard man of very confused principles, silently searching for something, anything, to believe in and fight for. To him, without him actually knowing it, defending River from the hands of the Alliance IS that belief that he’s been missing. The moment in the film when he’s forced to face it… “I am to misbehave.” There are moments in movies where someone can feel the room actually shake with the realization that a character is actually going to do whatever it takes to fight for what they think is right. That scene is one of them.
Now, I’m a fan of the show. That is beyond obvious. I loved “Firefly” and was so passionate that I enthralled others to be just as in love as I was. The thing is that I actually brought other people to this movie, non-fans, who had never seen the show nor were total sci-fi fans. Indie movie lovers, action movie junkies, and people just out to see something different. They all loved it. Once again, my DVD box set is making its rounds with a whole new group of people.
“Serenity” is a film built on winning dialogue, fun characters, great action, and a pre-battle speech that we can sum up the movie in one monologue: “Y’all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all comin’to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe everything. Sure as I know anything, I know this: In a year or maybe ten, perhaps even on this very ground, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people better; and I don’t hold to that. I aim to misbehave.”
Tags: Movies, Reviews, Television
Every so often, I come across an actor that I think is way too talented for the work I’ve found them in. Jason Isaacs was someone I first saw in Armageddon way back when. He played the NASA scientist who figures out how to stop the asteroid and has one of the best lines in the whole movie: “I know the presidents’chief scientific advisor, we were at MIT together. And, in a situation like this, you-you really don’t wanna take the advice from a man who got a C minus in astrophysics. The presidents’advisors are… wrong. I’m right.” The man just oozed smarmy badass-ness. Slowly, I waited for him to pop up in better more meaty parts, but alas he wound up as villains in Harry Potter and The Patriot, never really getting a chance to show off how an intelligent, yet realistic, protagonist could be played well. You can imagine how happy I was to discover the BBC miniseries, The State Within.
