SERENITY (2005) | OnStreaming

Serenity Poster — Images: Universal Pictures

“Shiny!”

Created by: Joss Whedon
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
1h 59minPG-13$

Serenity has a big job to do.

The much loved but little watched series Firefly was cancelled in 2003. The final episode of the show was a great one, but did little to bring closure to the story of Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew. Who were the Reavers? Why does Book the preacher know so much about hand to hand combat? What’s wrong with River?

Firefly was fantastic, but it was poorly promoted, aired out of order, and quickly cancelled by Fox. No big deal, happens all the time.

Here’s where it gets weird. The show’s creator, Joss Whedon, convinced Universal Pictures to finance a feature film that would complete the story and answer some (but not all) of the questions presented in the fourteen episodes of Firefly.

Convinced by strong DVD sales and an internet full of vocal fans, the studio put up the cash and Whedon got to work on what he described as:

“…not a blockbuster, which is not what I was trying to make, but not a low-budget movie either. They wanted to make a real movie out of it. They wanted to give us the scope that the show could never have had.”

And Serenity certainly has scope far beyond the television series it’s based on. Serenity comes armed with more visual effects, more planets, higher stakes, and more tension than anyone should expect from a western set in outer space.

The opening sequence—a multi layered flashback that feels like a dream within a dream—gives us everything we need to know about River, the emotionally volatile stowaway disturbing the peace on Mal’s ship. Then we witness the crew of the Firefly class starship Serenity doing what they do best—stealing loot and narrowly escaping the clutches of demented space pirates.

Pursued by a katana wielding bureaucrat obsessed with keeping River a secret from the rest of the universe, the Serenity crew learn what they always suspected—The right thing is never the easy thing.

I consider Serenity to be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theater, but it really should have been Firefly season 2. There is enough story here to fill ten or twelve hours of television, and the movie feels the pressure of its restricted runtime. There’s also a sense that some of the character growth established in the television series was reset in an attempt to keep the movie self contained.

All that really means is that you don’t have to be familiar with the series to enjoy the movie. But if you want to do this right, you’ll finish off a binge of Firefly with a nice big scoop of Serenity. That’s my plan for the weekend.

Watch with your Netflix subscription.