Serenity NOW!

A few years ago my favorite new show on tv was called Firefly. It was made by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you liked Buffy, you would have liked Firefly. It had all of Whedon's calling cards. Complex characters, a talented cast, complicated relationships, oodles of witty dialogue, and lots of action. If you liked Westerns or space movies, like Star Wars, you'd also like Firefly, because it was billed as a Space Western, set in the future. The crew flies around the galaxy in its beater old spaceship called Serenity. The captain of Serenity is Mal (as in Spanish for bad). Mal fought the ruling Alliance as a rebel or browncoat. He, along with his comrade in arms, Zoe; Zoe's husband the pilot, Wash; mercenary Jane; mechanic Kaylee; companion (kind of like a geisha) Inara; and preacher Sheperd make up the crew of Serenity. They took on risky jobs (some legal, some not so much) to make their living. Along the way they also picked up two passengers - a doctor, Simon Tam and his sister River. River had been part of some Alliance initiative that programmed her to basically behave very strangely. As the series progressed, the Tams history with the alliance was a strong storyline. Of course, the writers also teased the audience with a couple of budding relationships: Mal and Inara and Simon and Kaylee (I love the Mal/Inara relationship, but I hate Simon so his pairing with Kaylee never did much for me). Thanks to the lack of a consistent timeslot from Fox and the horror known as baseball playoffs, Firefly never did too well in the ratings and was canceled after 13 episodes.

Something surprising happened after that. Thanks to the miracle known as DVDs, all sorts of fans ended up seeing the show once the boxset was released. It was a huge seller. This led Universal to greenlight a movie version of Firefly that would appeal to fans and those who'd never seen the tv show. This movie was called Serenity and it finally came out in theatres on Friday. Thomas and I were both huge fans of Firefly so we've been waiting years to see this movie. We were also terrifed we'd be disappointed. Luckily that didn't happen.

Serenity does it all. It progresses the Firefly mythology - we learn why River is such a wackjob (and a martial arts machine as it turns out), it delves into the Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee relationships, and it tells how the canabalistic Reevers that terrorized the crew throughout the series came into being. And everyone stays in character and there are tons of great dialogue and witty repartee. The action scenes - basically every single one throughout the movie - are awesome, thrilling and have you sitting on the edge of your seat (and I'm not one for action scenes, really). By the end of the movie you're basically fearing for the survival of the entire crew. I won't spoil it for you, but there are some vicious scenes. Whedon continues to be a heartbreaker, just as he was on Buffy (I'm still bitter that he killed Anya on the LAST episode of that show).

So, if you liked Firefly, the tv show, you'll love Serenity. If you haven't seen Firefly, you'll still probably really like Serenity. There's more character development in Serenity than there is in 95% of action movies. Plus there's some romance, some scares and a lot of humor. If Universal can make some money on this, Whedon has promised to make more movies in the series. He said he has hundreds of stories to tell for the crew of Serenity. Go contribute some dollars to this one, and make Thomas and me really, really happy.

-sunday