Serenity Mini-Retrospective

Serenity is a strange beast, being the big-screen continuation of a famously promising, infamously cancelled cult TV show. As such, it is perhaps best appreciated by Firefly fans; they get a degree of resolution to compensate them for the original show’s messy death. Unfortunately, this means that character issues obviously intended for drawn-out development over many episodes have to be awkwardly and prematurely wrapped up. Some controversial deaths also add to the sense of sad finality, of a setting and a cast who were meant to sprawl luxuriously across many seasons being shoehorned into a two-hour running time.

 Yet for all that, director Joss Whedon does everything in his power to give his intriguing universe, with its thematically fascinating tension between roguish pioneers and spit-polished quasi-fascists, a fitting send-off. There are plenty of the mandatory thrills and spills, as the ruling Alliance close the net on the crew of the good ship Serenity, and the volatile psychic they shelter, River Tam. There is some awkward dialogue, but it is swamped by all the pleasing lines and character beats. There is a dark conspiracy (ironically centred on a world that is unnervingly brightly lit), bringing in some stakes-upping future-horror without smothering the sense of humour, fun and adventure. Last but not least, there is a memorable antagonist in the poised, deadly, dangerously reasonable form of the Operative, a slick anti-villain for the ages. All in all, despite the script’s underdeveloped stabs at profundity, Serenity is enough of a rousing mini-epic to satisfy as the tale brooding Captain Malcolm’s Reynold’s long-delayed redemption, even though it highlights the unfairness of Firefly’s fate, and reminds fans of what could have been.