Serenity

We saw Seren­i­ty on the week­end. I’ve seen a few episodes of Fire­fly, and I quite enjoyed the way the film extend­ed the series and gave clo­sure on a cou­ple of things. We went with a few friends who had­n’t seen Fire­fly, and they all enjoyed the movie immense­ly as well. Viewed as a piece of the whole Fire­fly uni­verse, the movie suc­ceeds very well. Viewed sim­ply as a sci­ence-fic­tion movie, it also suc­ceeds very well.

Seren­i­ty the ship gave me the same kind of feel­ings as the Mil­le­ni­um Fal­con did in the Star Wars tril­o­gy, and it should—she’s a beat-up old hulk held togeth­er by chew­ing gum, bal­ing twine, and the com­bined spir­it of her crew. Said crew is at the fringe of soci­ety, doing jobs that at best skirt the edges of the law, and usu­al­ly are flat-out illegal.

There’s a scene, too, in the movie, where the cap­tain (Mal­colm “Mal” Reynolds) is essen­tial­ly telling his crew that they can either fol­low his orders or die where they stand, that very much put me in mind of Roland Deschain, the arche­typ­al gun­slinger in Stephen King’s Dark Tow­er saga. There was a core of iron to him, in that moment, that I found very powerful.

If you’re at all inter­est­ed in SF movies, I high­ly rec­om­mend that you go see Seren­i­ty. I sus­pect I’ll be going to see it again.