Writer-director Joss Whedon may have become a household name after helming 2012's megahit The Avengers, but he was already something of a god among fanboys well before that. What may surprise people is that, at the time The Avengers came out, it was actually only the second feature-length film Whedon had directed (he has subsequently directed an adaptation of Shakespeare's play, Much Ado About Nothing), the first being a little-seen science fiction confection titled Serenity, based on Whedon's short-lived television series Firefly.
The film takes place far into the future, when much of humanity has left the overpopulated Earth and taken up residence on other worlds, and after an interplanetary civil war was waged between an alliance of those new worlds and the worlds of people who did not want to belong to the alliance. Captain Malcom Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) fought in the civil war, on the losing side, and now quietly plies his trade as an interplanetary bank robber, traveling across worlds in his ship, the titular, "Firefly-class" starship Serenity which was named for the Battle of Serenity, in which Mal took part during the civil war. Accompanying Reynolds are his loyal crew, Wash (Alan Tudyk), Zoe (Gina Torres), Jayne (Adam Baldwin), and Kaylee ( Jewel Staite) as well as their "paying passengers," the Tam siblings Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau) who are on the run from the Alliance. It is the prodigious and deadly River, in particular, in whom the Alliance is particularly interested because she one's one of its darkest secrets. Such in fact, is the extent of their interest in bringing her in that they dispatch a nameless, amoral and ultimately lethal Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to do the job. After initially deciding that keeping the Tams aboard his ship is more trouble than it's worth, after a violent incident in a bar Reynolds realizes that it's the right thing to do, even if it means bringing the wrath of the Alliance down on him and his crew.
The film, while hardly groundbreaking, is an interesting mix of genres, like the TV show that preceded it: it's basically a "space western." What makes it an utter treat to watch, though, are Whedon's quirky characters, the somewhat interesting future he's created in which people converse in English but swear in Mandarin, and finally the rather unique English his characters speak, which is a mix between the slang employed in cowboy movies, the dialogue in the original True Grit novel (which was reportedly faithfully quoted in the 2010 Coen brothers' film), and sci-fi tech-laden dialogue, with Whedon's own flourishes no doubt thrown in for good measure. As a frustrated fiction writer myself who constantly grapples with giving his characters unique but believable voices, I really appreciated the effort Whedon put into creating so much nuance in his characters' version of English; it shows remarkable attention to detail. Fans of The Avengers will also recognize the humor with which Whedon laces his script here.
I also enjoyed, for the most part, the performances Whedon extracted from his actors, especially Fillion as Reynolds and Ejiofor as the Operative. A full eight years ago, Whedon showed us fanboys what awards-giving bodies are only starting to discover: that Chiwetel Ejiofor is certifiably awesome. Re-watching this film made me yearn all the more to see him cast as Marvel mainstay the Black Panther. Homeland's Morena Baccarin makes a welcome appearance as the sultry courtesan Inara, and the four actors playing Reynolds' crew did a pretty job convincing me that these people had lived and worked together on the Serenity for an appreciable length of time.
The film was not without its flaws, probably the most conspicuous of which is accessibility. Whedon tries his darnedest to remedy this with a big chunk of exposition right at the beginning of the film and some back-story peppered throughout its two-hour running time, but to my mind he nonetheless failed to effectively convey to audiences unfamiliar with Firefly the motivations driving the central characters. It is certainly spelled out in the dialogue why some people chose to resist unification with the alliance ("we meddle"), but for much of the film there's actually little that demonstrates just how oppressive the Alliance's good intentions can be. There is actually a crucial plot development that emphatically makes Whedon's point, but notably, most of the characters are completely unaware of this plot twist until two-thirds into the film, which inevitably prompted me to ask: so why was there a Unification War in the first place? I felt that a better knowledge of what happened in the television
show would have made the history of that world, and the attitudes it shaped, a bit clearer. From that, as well as the interplay of Reynolds with his various crew members, I gathered that only a follower of Firefly could really understand the ins and outs of this universe.
Another weakness of the film is Summer Glau, whose waif-fu (a phrase I would have loved to have coined) is very entertaining to watch but whose attempt at dramatic acting...well, isn't. Funny thing is, when I caught this movie on TV many years ago, I found myself riveted by River Tam's ass-kicking scenes, but apparently completely glossed over Glau's limp acting, only to remember it when I finally got this movie on DVD (for PhP100.00). It's appropriate that she went on to play a robot in the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles because looking oddly detached and dishing out onscreen beat-downs are the two things Glau does really well.
Flaws notwithstanding, one can still see in the script and action sequences the sensibility that Whedon brought to his vision for Marvel's Avengers. Moreover, considering that Whedon had only the fraction of his Avengers budget to work with here, the images that appear onscreen, particularly of Serenity itself, are particularly impressive. Whedon may have only had bargain-basement computer-generated imagery at his disposal, but I would argue that he certainly made the most out of it. It may feel odd that this was the only feature film on Joss Whedon's resume when Marvel hired him to direct their most ambitious property ever, but watching this movie again, the decision actually made sense.
3.5/5
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