Serenity (2005)
Can’t stop the signal.
It’s a brand new year - is it a brand new you? If you’ve been around enough, you may remember me mentioning that I do some charity streaming and like to theme it - last year was giant robots, one of those things that I love but not everyone sees the draw to, making it kind of hard to find fitting movies. This year, I was going to be running through some of the Mass Effect games - but I could have done the animated movie for that but it’d be a bit on the nose so I decided to do something that’s a little last year and a little this year instead. Let’s combine my constant memory-loss ridden feature of having thought I already did a movie with a science fiction blast that has bad guys that start with an R. Yeah, buckle up space cowboys, tonight we are going back and re-watching (we both know we’ve all seen it plenty) Serenity.
If you’ve seen it you already know that you can’t stop the signal - which is a bit funny in an angry way considering that old Fox kind of did. Hey, because of that we got a movie though, so there’s that! Now, the show is fun, but one has to ask does a browncoat really need to have seen the entire season of television show in order to follow this movie? Don’t fret your oaty bars - you’ll survive just fine having not seen the show - although your mileage with impact from characters might not strike as strongly without the season of character and relation building. Anyways, this little self contained movie sets us up with a spook of a villain - a laser-focused operative whose out to reclaim a psychic child who was rescued by her brother from Alliance labs and happens to have been around some very high ranking officials. Got to protect those state/planet/universe secrets at all cost right? Well, our ragtag just trying to survive main characters aren’t all entirely aware of the time bomb that’s with them until some sneaky Alliance broadcast sets the girls “beat the crap out of everyone” button to on - and now they find themselves in a hard spot with what to do - and they may end up taking some drastic measures.
It’s a straight forward plot riddled with plenty of complications from various fronts of course. What is the mystery of the memories in the girl’s head that aren’t actually hers? How far will the spook go to keep these secrets secret. Then we get to tie in the inter-character stuff, which is also something that even the characters are smart enough to call out at times. Might as well talk about the characters now while I’m on that topic right? They be good. Now, there is a decent hand full of them, and with the movie’s length you aren’t going to get the full kind of build up and attachment you would get (and did get) from a show. That said, we still get a general idea of each person, and some of them do get to evolve at least in our understanding as the movie goes on. Our lead captain may seem a bit cold and disconnected perhaps, but by the end you know he’s really there for his crew, just like they were family. We get to see that although our main bad is supposed to be bad, his reasoning isn’t necessarily all that wrong - even if the execution is some pretty darker than grey zone stuff. It also leaves plenty of room for some comic interactions in there, which helps build out interactions and chemistry between the characters.
Part of that chemistry comes from the actors - and I’m sure it’s only enhanced by the fact they did the tv show and spent all that time bonding together. They do a great job with line deliveries and adding a little something extra to it - although at times it might feel a bit flat as called for by the script. I don’t think a ton of folks will complain much about the acting - perhaps a few of the character actions but not necessarily the acting itself. The fact that they also get to throw around the occasional Chinese and don’t sound like me trying to not butcher a menu from the place in town is a little bonus really. They also do a pretty good job with the action scenes here - our lead psychic gal shows off some of her dancing talents with some smart direction and production to lean into it - and nothing really feels like it doesn’t belong in this world of the movie.
Speaking of the movie’s world, it’s pretty fun. Maybe not to live in necessarily, but as a thing to watch it’s got some great elements. The outer worlds have a lot of wild western to them - desert like, with local lawmen and bars - while there still plenty of chances at high-tech stuff in the fancier Alliance world base. Mix it all in with some prevalent Chinese influences and you have something that’s pretty unique all considering. Costumes reflect this as well - ranging from dusters and leather coats over to pretty dresses and big dancing fans. Of course, if all of that is still somehow too mainstream for you, you also get space cannibals that like to cut themselves up, add spikes, and do horrible things to people while wearing other people’s skin - and their spaceships match it pretty well. It gives you a lot of options and feelings to those options when you look at the various people and ships - and as far as the movie goes, it even goes through the effort to explain just why those screwed up space cannibals are the way they are.
Props are pretty good, if you haven’t figure it out from some of those outfit descriptions. Guns are relatively varied and neat - even if the movie isn’t just a constant gunfight and their actual use is pretty limited to the end of the movie. It’s not all practical - something I know some people have a knee-jerk response when they hear - and some of the CG stuff isn’t quite as impressive feeling now as it did back when, but I’d argue that none of it looks horrible considering some of the stuff I have seen in my days (particularly even in some modern stuff, which doesn’t have nearly as much of an excuse as the older things do). There’s plenty of variety in the ships, buildings, and settings to make things look plenty of unique - so it’s all thumbs up here.
Line deliveries are good. The crews all charismatic, so even the joke deliveries come off good. Yeah, humor is subjective so there’s always that to keep in mind. The music is good - it does fall in with all the other movies where it’s gone from my head by the time the movie is over though. That said, when it’s around it’s a nice little blend of western and Chinese sounds, so it’s all good. The thinking folks could find plenty of things to pick apart if they wanted to - things like good and bad, how bad can something be before it undoes the good intentions, family, relations, all that normal sort of stuff. There’s also some pretty pointed out stuff about faith - but not necessarily a belief in god kind of faith, but more just believing in anything.
Alright, so maybe it isn’t the single best movie to ever exist - but I’d like to point out that it’s pretty dang fun enough to be liked by plenty of folk. It’s got a somewhat unique feeling setting, and a cast of likeable actors doing a good job to make this movie something special. It might have a few spots where it doesn’t hold quite as well due to aging, but that fact we have a movie made from a television show that isn’t just a retelling of the show nor does it require watching the show for any of it to be made sense of isn’t something that I feel happens all the time. Heck, I’d wager a lot of folks might have found this movie, then the show because of it - and that’s a wonderful gorram thing ain’t it? Check it out sometime, you’ll probably enjoy your time!