Long-Overdue Thoughts on "Serenity"

It's hard enough to settle in to read a post on a six-year-old film that you haven't thought about in months even when it isn't super-long, so I'm gonna keep this short and sweet.

Regular readers know that the tv show Firefly (2002) is basically my favorite body of scripted media ever made.  I wasn't crazy about Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel, but Firefly alone earns showrunner Joss Whedon mad credit in my book.  He's the reason I'm going ga-ga for The Avengers (2012).

I recently re-watched Firefly and its feature-film follow-up Serenity (2005) (something I do yearly), and now I have what I think are some profound (or at least new) thoughts on the subject.

Poor Joss Whedon was forced to write three separate pilots for that damn show. 

He first wrote the pilot episode "Serenity," which the network didn't like.  They said it needed more laughs, more action, less backstory, and a larger-than-life villain with an eastern-European accent.  Oh, and they wanted the new script on Monday (it was Friday).

Whedon and co-producer Tim Minear raced home and, in what I like to think was a weekend filled with coffee and booze, pounded out a brand new pilot, "The Train Job." 

"The Train Job" has its charms, and it's definitely not any betrayal of the show's integrity.  It's creative and fun and not a big disappointment, though the exposition is a bit rushed -- then again, that's what the studio demanded. 

The original pilot, only aired after the show was cancelled, was called "Serenity," and it's one of my favorite episodes of the show.  In fact, it's one of my favorite hours and a half of science fiction ever put to celluloid.  

That pilot is, I believe, a better piece of cinema than the big-screen follow-up Serenity.

Serenity, too, was tasked with re-introducing the show all over again, and the first twenty minutes or so of Serenity play just like "The Train Job."  It's fun, clever, and introduces all the characters in a serviceable manner, but it lacks cohesion.  It feels like we're just sitting down, ultimately, to have things explained to us. 

And what's worse, it's far less fun than "The Train Job." 

In fact, I think there are a lot of problems with Serenity.  It feels kinda small-scale for a feature film (we're told that the Alliance is this galaxy-wide oppressive force, but the only real agent of that oppression we ever see is the Operative).  It also feels disconnected from the continuity of the show (a quick reveal of the Reavers in the first fifteen minutes, a condensed re-hash of Mal's entire emotional journey crammed into two hours, and something about the lighting didn't work for me).

So Serenity doesn't quite work as a standalone film and it doesn't quite work as a continuation of the show.

Oh, and then we have the spoiler bit: the death of Wash, which is, simply put, totally unacceptable.

I get it -- someone had to die to prove that the situation was serious.  But was Wash the right pick?  What about Simon, who lay dying on the floor at the end of the movie anyway?  Or Zoe?  Wouldn't it be an interesting turn of character to see Wash become an emotionally closed-off badass in the wake of Zoe's death?

And then the method of execution: a Reaver spike through the chest, cutting him off in mid-sentence.  Hitchcock said that suspense is not a bomb suddenly going off under the table, but waiting for a bomb to suddenly go off under a table.  In Wash's death, there was no suspense, no reason, no closure. 

I get it -- death rarely brings closure to the bereaved in real life.  But a scripted drama is not real life.  Everything that happens needs to happen for a reason.  Why did Wash have to die for the story to continue?  I've never heard Whedon address this.

And then his funeral: lumped together with Book and Mr. Universe.  A grand total of about thirty seconds to mourn a member of the family.  A soulmate.  Not enough time.  It doesn't feel real.  My complaint isn't that Wash's death hurt too much, it was that it didn't hurt enough.

It's so sloppily-done that I'm tempted to declare the feature film Serenity non-canon.  But I suppose that's not really my call.

Anyhoot.  Those are my thoughts on this matter.  Rumor has it that the first draft of Serenit ran 180 pages.  No doubt it took its time introducing the characters for yet a third time, no doubt giving the audience time to mourn the deaths of its beloved characters properly. 

I'd give more than I'd care to share on a blog post to be able to read it.



--Serge