Revisiting Serenity: Universal considering sequel, says actor
It is definitely a great week for science fiction fans. First, there’s Deckard dreaming about electric unicorns on the big screen again and yesterday there was this:
“They had to put [the new Serenity DVD] out because they’ve been selling out of the other one and so Universal’s like ‘So, let’s do another one.’”
Moviehole‘s Clint Morris talked to Alan Tudyk, recently seen playing Doc Potter in 3:10 to Yuma, so that’s where the quote comes from. Apparently, DVD sales are reprising the success of Firefly, the prematurely cancelled Joss Whedon series which accomplished a small miracle by going from 14 episodes on television to a movie, mainly on the strength of word-of-mouth recommendations and subsequent great DVD sales. Not only that, but Serenity was named the best SF movie of all times by SFX magazine earlier this year and won a couple of notable genre awards – the Nebula Award for best movie script and a Hugo for best dramatic presentation. And deservedly so. Here is a quick reminder.
Serenity picks up several months after the events in the last episode of Firefly. Captain Mal Reynolds has spent some time without two positive influences in his life – Book, a reverend and the moral centre of the Serenity crew, and Inara, Mal’s confidante and love interest. Consequently, at the beginning of the movie, he is a much darker character than he was in the series: more cautious, more calculated, more driven by fear for his crew than by traditional hero principles. He is closer to Jayne in terms of motives than to the Mal we saw in Firefly and the old Mal is not really restored until he meets Book again.
The film subverts the concept of the hero very early on by defining him as the person who gets other people killed and the plot is very much in line with the definition: River endangers the crew’s lives to uncover the truth about the planet that is at the core of the story, Simon does the same by protecting his sister, the crew turn their allies into targets after escaping from the Operative, an agent of the Alliance, and the Alliance itself is revealed as an institution that had a noble goal once – creating world peace – but their goal wiped out nearly the entire population of a planet and turned survivors into monsters. There is a lot of density to the central theme, all in all, and it keeps being echoed throughout the film and applying to protagonists and antagonists alike.
Another argument in favour of the technical brilliance of the script is the exposition. Easily the most elegant segue from one story to another (series to movie), the movie’s opening sequence lets the introduction into the Serenity universe unfold in a chinese box structure: an Alliance teacher providing a spin on history, which turns out to be River’s flashback while she is held by the Alliance, the scene of Simon, introduced as her brother, rescuing her, which is then revealed to be a recording that the Operative is watching and, finally, his question “where are you hiding, little girl” getting the answer in the opening credits, which bring us the first shot of Serenity, the ship, where we then meet all the main characters in a swift unbroken sequence.
Belief seems to be the main driving force in the movie and it is explored on several levels. First, the Serenity crew are shown living from one job to the next, without much interest in the bigger picture or much faith in the future. Mal’s sole interest is keeping his crew alive, Kaylee fears that the isolation will drive them all mad, and Jayne is still his old sociopathic mercenary self. The interplay between peace, serenity, isolation, madness and death hits a peak when the ship is literally disguised into death in order to pass through Reaver space.
Interestingly, belief is better explored through the movie’s antagonist, the Operative, who is also an outsider, an isolated agent working for the benefit of the Alliance, than it is through the Serenity crew. His belief in the cause and recognition of love and the most powerful force in the universe is played against his willingness to sacrifice people who are supposed to benefit from the cause. Book, who is revealed to be a former operative himself, shows that there is a way out of the trappings of the faith based on ideology alone. In the end, Mal too reaffirms a positive outcome to the theme of faith, echoing the Operative’s words as the ship sets out on a new journey with River as the new pilot.
If there is a science fiction movie released in the last decade or so that deserves a sequel, Serenity would be it. Let’s hope something comes out of the latest rumour.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
