Serenity (2005) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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You can’t stop the signal!

Serenity continues the adventures of Malcolm Reynolds and his crew, broadcast for a brief time on the television show Firefly. It was the directorial debut of Joss Whedon and a film that presented a unique sci-fi Western, filled with much wit, snappy writing, and a thing or two to say about the human condition.

First Impressions

The trailer informs viewers that this project is from the mind of Joss Whedon, which meant something back in 2005. A group of rebels are on the run from the law and something else. A bounty hunter pursues them for a young woman they harbor. She is a woman with a secret. There’s plenty of space action, chases, and choreographed fights. It also lets the audience know that this movie is based on a pre-existing property that fans love. It’s time for Serenity now.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

A brief prologue explains that humans left the Earth when it could no longer support their life. A new solar system was discovered and terraformed, with the inner planets forming The Alliance, with the outer, more rogue planets resisting them. These Independents fought The Alliance and lost. Dr Mathias (Michael Hitchcock) experiments on a 17-year-old girl named River Tam (Summer Glau), turning her into a psychic and a living weapon. Her brother Simon (Sean Maher) rescues her and escapes the Alliance facility. An Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) for The Alliance watches all this on a holographic playback and then kills the doctor for his hubris–and for putting top military advisors in a room with a psychic.

The crew of the spaceship Serenity is introduced, led by Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion). They are a rogue group of spacers that take various semi-legal to illegal jobs to make ends meet. Mal is currently planning a payroll heist. Simon, who has been aboard the Serenity for 8 months with River, is concerned about Mal taking her on the job. But Mal needs the special second-sight talent that she has, even if she still is emotionally unstable. Things go mostly well on the job until Reavers show up. These mutant scavengers are something that scares even Mal. He manages to escape with his second-in-command Zoë (Gina Torres) and Jayne (Adam Baldwin), the team’s muscle.

Mal takes the stolen loot to the pair of twins that hired him, Fanty and Mingo (Rafael & Yan Feldman). While at the establishment, River sees a commercial on a video monitor, whispers the word, “Miranda,” and begins beating up members of the establishment, including Jayne, with ease. They call Mr. Universe (David Krumholtz), who helps them realize River was triggered by a subliminal message, meaning The Alliance now has an idea of where she is. Realizing they are in trouble, they head to the colony of Haven, where they can hide with a former member of the crew, Shepherd Book (Ron Glass).

Another former member of the crew, Inara (Morena Baccarin)–a companion, calls Mal to invite him to visit her. The crew view this as an obvious trap, planted by the Operative. Mal visits Inara alone but is–as he expected–confronted by the Operative who tells him River is a dangerous passenger. They fight and Mal and Inara manage to escape, barely. The team discovers that Miranda is not a person, but a planet deep in Reaver territory. Returning to their hideout on Haven, they discover it has been attacked by The Alliance, killing everyone–including Shepherd Book. Mal orders his team, including de facto engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite) to prep the ship to look like a Reaver vehicle, complete with dead bodies lashed to the front.

Serenity’s pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk)–who is also Zoë’s husband– flies them through Reaver space, which is a collection of derelict ships and vessels cobbled together from the parts of others. On Miranda they find everyone dead, but not from a war or battle. Everyone just died where they were. The team discovers a recording from Dr. Caron (Sarah Paulson) that explains the Pax–a chemical put in the terraformed air to make people more peaceful–worked too well and 90% of the population just stopped doing anything and lay down to die. The other 10% had the opposite reaction and became cruel, sadistic monsters–The Reavers. Mal realizes he needs to get this information to the public, so they contact Mr. Universe to broadcast it on the wave.

Knowing that The Alliance will be expecting him to contact Mr. Universe, Mal decides to bring along some “friends.” He taunts the Reaver ships to follow him, using them to take out 99% of The Alliance forces geared up to stop him. The Operative escapes to the planet when his ship is destroyed. Wash manages to land the ship but is soon killed by a Reaver harpoon. As Mal goes into the control room to broadcast the signal, the rest of the team holds off the influx of Reavers coming for them. All but Inara and River are injured, so River locks them safely behind a door and kills all the Reavers herself.

Mal fights with the Operative, who strikes the captain in the back at a pressure point to immobilize him. He is unaware that Mal had that nerve cluster damaged during the war, and Mal breaks the Operatives neck but does not kill him. Mal broadcasts the message to the planets in the ‘verse and regroups with his team. Sometime later after having a funeral for Mr. Universe, Book, and Wash, they repair their ship, with the help of the Operative–who is no longer as fervent a believer in The Alliance as he had been. He warns Mal that The Alliance will eventually come for him, and they part ways. The crew sets off on their next adventure, Malcolm now allowing River to serve as a co-pilot, having earned her place on the crew.

“I don’t care what you believe. Just believe it.” – Shepherd Book

History in the Making

As many people might know Serenity is a big-screen sequel to the short-lived Fox television series Firefly. Premiering in 2002 and running only 11 episodes long (in the United States), the show was plagued by problems with Fox, including requesting a new Pilot episode and airing episodes out of the intended production order, which led to some confusion among viewers. At another time, or in another universe, this show might have gone on to multiple seasons (like Star Trek). It had a huge fan base that kept the show alive after cancellation, using message boards and the internet to share fan-related content. When the full season was released on DVD the following year, all 14 episodes (the original 11 plus three more that had only aired in the UK) were finally put in the intended viewing order. The extended interest in this canceled show bolstered writer/director Joss Whedon’s attempts to revive the series as a film at Universal Studios.

By 2005 when Serenity was released, Whedon was known as a successful writer and showrunner. He got his start working on the TV show Roseanne before writing his first feature film Buffy The Vampire Slayer in 1992. He worked on several other screenplays including Toy Story and Alien: Resurrection before creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a television series in 1997. This was soon followed by Angel (a vampire-centric spin-off to Buffy) in 1999 and Firefly in 2002. Serenity was the first feature film he directed, but he had helmed over 30 episodes of his various series. The look and feel of the film is much like his television shows but on a slightly larger scale. But the most apparent element that lets viewers know this is a Joss Whedon film is the voice in the writing. Technically and thematically the characters in Serenity have a distinctive cadence to their dialogue, most closely associated with Whedon’s work.

Genre-fication

In the history of science-fiction television shows, the addition of elements of the Western genre has been a mainstay. Star Trek (1966) famously has been billed as “Wagon Train to the stars,” while Battlestar Galactica (1978) also has Wagon Train vibes. Firefly did something new and fresh with its series. It created a world full of parallels to the post-Civil War era of the United States (Reconstruction) in a future where settlers to a new solar system were also facing a post-Civil War era. The characters of Malcolm and Zoë were members of the Browncoats–a group fighting for the Independents–and on the losing side of the war, who must now travel around the ‘verse taking odd jobs (of varying legality) to make ends meet. The dialogue has old-timey elements in it, with characters using words like “twixt” and “shindig,” which give an entirely different feel to a show with spaceships and laser guns, as well as creating an old-timey feel.

The look of the worlds all have a frontier style; dirty and dusty. This comes from a lot of filming in the Santa Clarita Valley, outside Los Angeles, where many Westerns–both new and old–have been filmed. The crew uses guns that look like 1800s-era weaponry. Their clothing has a late 19th-century frontier look and feel to it. And even their small transport is called “the Mule.” All of these retro styles pair with a very modern science-fiction sensibility. The plot revolves around a dystopian world in which a Big Brother type of government, The Alliance, meddles with its people in order to create a better world–as explained by the Operative. As with the scientists in last week’s film, The Island, the scientists of Serenity try to recreate River in a new image–as a psychic and killer, regardless of what that does to her psyche. They also were responsible for creating the most horrible killers of that Era, The Reavers. By attempting to alter the terraformed air on Miranda to make colonists have a more peaceable civilization, The Alliance killed the majority of the colonists and transformed the others into a nihilistic, mutant killing race–similar in many ways to some of the desert-dwelling tribes from the Mad Max films.

Societal Commentary

One thing that many people like about Whedon’s work is the tight plotting and thematic elements of his writing. Having grown up in a family of writers, his scripts and dialogue are on the top tier of written work. Serenity is no different. The biggest theme of this film is that of belief. The Operative is described as a dangerous man due to his unwavering belief in The Alliance and its mission. So much so that he doesn’t even question his orders. He knows that he is a necessary evil in the world designed to usher in a better tomorrow. A tomorrow he also knows he cannot live in. There’s also the belief offered by Shepherd Book. He gets minimal screen time in Serenity, but his character from the Firefly show is a religious man, akin to a preacher. He tells Mal that the only way he can get through the tough times is with belief. Not the capital ‘B’ belief, of which God is a part. But the lowercase ‘B’ belief. His dying words to Mal are reprinted above. It doesn’t matter what you believe in, as long as you believe in something.

The crux of the film is the transition of the belief from the Operative to Mal. The only way to stop this zealot is to shake the foundations of his belief. Mal does that by showing him “a world without sin,” throwing the Operative’s words back at him. The video evidence of The Alliance experiment gone wrong shows that his righteous government is no better than the men the Operative hunts for, and that traumatizes him. It breaks the cycle of his devotion and allows him to question his place in the process for the first time. This tape also is what gives Mal something to believe in. His role as leader and ship captain is a part he understands. He never tells his crew how he feels about them, as this may be too much emotionally for him to handle. It’s obvious he lost people and things during the War, and that has made him unable to show compassion to Simon and River outright or to tell Inara that he values having her around–whatever his reason. His ability to find something bigger than himself (for however brief a moment) allows him to grow as a character, setting the stage for further (undocumented) adventures.

The Science in The Fiction

The technology of Serenity owes a serious “thank you” to the worlds of Star Wars. Whedon and his team create a lived-in look with technology that is finicky at best. The Serenity, the namesake ship of the film, is shown falling apart at a moment’s notice. And Kaylee, as the ship engineer, is the one that Mal blames when things go wrong. She is a female version of Montgomery Scott but with less of an accent. She takes pride in her work and bristles when Mal suggests that they turn her ship into a Reaver abomination. As with many fan-favorite series, audiences connect to the ship as well. The ship Serenity feels like another character in the film so when it crashes, audiences become concerned just like the destruction of the Enterprise, or problems with the Millennium Falcon.

The film also uses technology as a way for the government to build a better world. A world without sin, as the Operative quotes to Mal. But their use of the technology shows it’s a double-edged sword. Where some of these advancements might be used to help people, The Alliance uses them to change people without consent or permission. There’s the introduction of the Pax into the air purifier on Miranda which has unexpected consequences. Whether it was an issue of dosage, or those in charge were just unaware of the side effects of the gas, the need to make a better society killed almost everybody in it, and transformed the remainder into the opposite of what was intended. There’s also the transformation of River, and presumably others, into a psychic killer. Not much is shown or intimated, but The Alliance’s meddlesome behavior indicates that her brain was transformed in ways that aren’t completely understood. The desired results were achieved, but as with the Pax, unwarranted side effects were also created. Side effects that led to the downfall of The Alliance, or at least an opening showing their atrocities.

The Final Frontier

Whedon continued his work in television, creating a show about a corporation messing with people’s minds in Dollhouse, and wrote the meta-horror thriller The Cabin in the Woods before writing and directing the first two Avengers films for Marvel Studios and launching the successful Agents of SHIELD television show. He also was brought in to supervise reshoots for Zach Snyder’s Justice League film when the director needed to step away. Then, during the pandemic of 2020, several accusations come out about the director’s behavior towards his cast and crew. As with other cases of this type, as numerous people began to step forward and publicly accuse a person in power of wrongdoing, Whedon slipped quietly out of the limelight. His most recent show The Nevers did not advertise his association with it.

Regardless of any individual’s opinion of Whedon and his actions, his work is still a strong pillar of quality storytelling. Serenity, and many of the other properties he created, tell engaging stories about strong and flawed characters. These stories resonate with fans and inspire many other ideas and elements of popular culture. The energy fans have for Firefly and Serenity has continued for over 20 years, with no signs of stopping anytime soon.

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