Please note that while there aren’t any specific Serenity spoilers here in Bill’s essay, it’s been pointed out to me by a reader that there’s still a couple of bits of information that could be more than you might want if you’re trying to remain completely virginal before you see the movie. If that’s your intention you might want to skip on down to the next essay.

And if you haven’t read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, you might want to skim over any places you see King’s name come up…

Dear Browncoats:

by Bill Mudron

The night before any of you creep off to your local theatres to take a gander at Serenity in September, do yourself a huge favor: sit down with a battered copy of the “Firefly” box set and carve your way through the episodes “Out of Gas” and “Objects in Space.” Well, okay, just do it. Again. (Non-fans of the original “Firefly” series should at least rent a copy of these DVDs for a spin, too. Serenity is a damned fine film even without all of that backstory, but knowing a bit more about all that’s gone on before in that universe definitely helps to deepen and enrich the Serenity experience several times over.)

Regardless, consider “Out of Gas” and “Objects in Space” a two-hour makeshift prequel. A treat, even…one last draught of earlier, happier sights with Whedon’s spacefaring crew, or–to paraphrase Stephen King (oh, hush already)–because “I’d have you see them this way not because they have won a great battle–they know better than that, every one of them–but because now they are ka-tet for the last time. The story of their fellowship ends here, on this make-believe street and beneath this artificial sun; the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that’s gone before. Because when ka-tet breaks, the end always comes quickly.”

That slice of morbidity aside, I can tell you that I’m not the most easily impressed sonofabitch on the planet. You’re talking to a guy didn’t think much of either Kill Bill (not violent enough, really), or “Sin City” (too much in love with it’s source material to be worth a damn to anybody but the sternest Frank Miller-jockies), but Serenity? Yeah, Joss Whedon has earned a special place in my blackened heart for not only finding a way to resurrect his beloved little gaggle of anti-heroes (on the silver screen no less), but then he has the balls to take a sledgehammer to his freshly-revived crew, grimly beating the entire gang to within an inch of their lives (and beyond, in some cases)…and all this while the fans are watching.

Okay, this review is turning into a freaking essay, so I’ll just make a quick run-down of the good, the bad and the ugly (argh, I know, I know) of Serenity:

The Good:

• Kudos to Joss & Co. the effortless way in which the audience is drawn into the back story of the “Firefly” universe, to say nothing of how Serenity and it’s crew is re-introduced to the audience. (Pity the poor steadicam guy responsible for lensing that uninterrupted five-minute shot which doubles as a tour of Serenity and intro to its crew, though.)
• Contrary to how wonky a few bits of the fight choreography appeared in the Serenity trailer, Summer Glau’s complete and thorough ass-paddling of both a crowd of half-drunk (and relatively innocent) bar-patrons early in the film is pretty goddamned swell (in fact, the girl could probably hold her own with the likes of one Beatrix Kiddo. Also–as has been noted before–she can still kill you with her brain. Well, River, I mean. I don’t think that Summer can fire mind bullets just yet, though. Jesus.) Loved River’s effortless bounding about the bar and stairwell of the Maidenhead, and the sword/axe double-action at Mr. Universe’s pad.
• It’s a shame that Revenge of the Sith is hitting the street 4 months in advance of Serenity, otherwise Whedon’s zero-g fracas would’ve been a shoe-in for a BEST SPACE BATTLE EVER award. Even if our heroes are running away from the fight while everybody is getting blown to hell. Whatever.
• It would seem that in the 26th century, ancient broadcasts of the Fleischer Brothers’ “Superman” cartoons are still zipping and bouncing around the vast emptiness of the ‘verse. Mmm. Seems that there is a God, after all.
• Simply put, Nathan Fillion gives good bedraggled.

The Bad:

• River erupts into an odd (yet not entirely unexpected) fugue about halfway through the film that does absolutely nothing to serve the plot other than give the audience reason to cringe while River beats on a few key members of Serenity’s crew. I know it’s far too late for this scene to be trimmed, but it’s a relatively superfluous “Wait, what?” moment in the film that could’ve been easily been replaced by a few quick twists of dialogue instead. Ce la vie, man.
• Despite an extended visit to a planetside local absolutely drenched in Asian artifice, few notable Asian extras are given screentime in Serenity. I was hoping to either see oodles more Sihonese citizens, or at least a throw-away explanation for the dearth of Asian faces in this particular ‘verse (i.e. “Ah, this is the best engine degreaser I’ve had since ALL THE POOR GORRAM CHINESE EXTRAS GOT BLOWED UP 20 YEARS AGO. BLOWED UP WITH A FORK.”), but no dice this time. Argh, man, argh.

The Ugly:

• In the future, it would seem that gaping lacerations will be staunched with shaving cream. If I ever pull a Rip Torn and wake up 500 years in the future, I can only hope someone will see fit to fix my broken limbs with buckets of ranch dressing applied with a mortar’s spade.
• No “Ballad of Serenity” to be heard in the ‘bless-this-mess’ cut of the film we saw (though a fair amount of the score was still comprised of temp tracks yanked from The Bourne Identity et al, so who knows what the completed score might include…although some people have suggested that Adam Baldwin be brought in to loop a few lines of “The Ballad of Serenity” for a campfire scene where he fiddles with an acoustic guitar). That said, there seemed to be quite a on-again/off-again love affair between Universal’s sound effects guys and the whole “no sound in space” idea. Granted, all the shots involving Serenity scooting about by itself in deep space are as quiet as a mousefart, but things get a bit noisier in extra-orbital environs (also when concussive spaceborn explosions are involved), and things get down right KERBLOOEY! POW! POW! EEEEYOOOOORRRR KERBOOSH! during a spectacular space battle (second only to the opening fracas in Revenge of the Sith) towards the end of the film. If we’re lucky, the Universal folk might let Joss knock down the SFX during these big space tussles, though. It’s surprising how potent the jump from complete silence to blaring klaxons and gunblasts can be when 5.1 surround sound systems get involved in the equation. Hooah.

Agh, in the end though, I guess this is the part where I top off my review with a heartfelt “thank you” to Joss & Co. for not only guiding Serenity from the metaphorical scrapyard to a berth in theatres (and hopefully the hearts of millions of new geeks) across the country, but also for allowing a few hundred of us lucky Browncoats the privilege of taking his battered beauty out for a quick spin before the last few coats of paint are slapped onto her hull. I know that there’s gonna be a lot of hand-wringing on the part of Universal big-wigs regarding the appeal of a flick like this to the average filmgoer (and truth be told, it’s probably gonna be a tough sell to some folks, no matter what anybody does between now and September), but the truth still stands that the film is an accurate extension of Serenity‘s captain: a bit dense for it’s own good, yet well-meaning and destined to survive (one way or another) all that the universe sees fit to hurl at it.

Ultimately, however, I’m reminded of that pesky goddamned Stephen King again, and these words of his in particular (this is a bite-sized mission statement of the entire Firefly/Serenity phenomenon if there ever was one, it seems):

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blockquote>”He taught me if you kill what you love, you’re damned.”

“I am damned already,” Roland said calmly. “But perhaps even the damned may be saved.”

“Are you going to get all of us killed?”

Roland said nothing.

Eddie seized the rags of Roland’s shirt. “Are you going to get her killed?”

“We all die in time,” the gunslinger said. “It’s not just the world that moves on.” He looked squarely at Eddie, his faded blue eyes almost the color of slate in this light. “But we will be magnificent.” He paused. “There’s more than a world to win, Eddie. I would not risk you and her — I would not have allowed the boy to die — if that was all there was.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everything there is,” the gunslinger said calmly. “We are going to go, Eddie. We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end we will stand.”

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