Serenity: The Triumph of the Human Spirit
When FOX cancelled the sci-fi drama Firefly after only eleven episodes in late 2002, creator Joss Whedon refused to simply accept the news and move on. After shopping the series to other networks with no success, he turned to the film industry as a means of continuing the saga of Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his band of space scavengers struggling to make a living on the outskirts of civilization five-hundred years in the future. Despite the odds—how many failed television shows, after all, get resurrected as major motion pictures—Whedon secured a deal with Universal Studios to write and direct Serenity, a two-hour feature that not only expands the Firefly narrative but serves as an enjoyable stand-alone action-adventure film in its own right.
Whedon originally envisioned Firefly as a television series that would last for multiple seasons. While the small handful of produced episodes effectively introduced the main characters of the show as well as the world in which they inhabit, many potential storylines were merely hinted at during the course of Firefly’s truncated first and only season and thus left unresolved when FOX regrettably pulled the plug. One such plot device were the Reavers, described in the original pilot episode as “men gone savage at the edge of space.”
“They’re not stories,” first mate Zoe explains to Simon Tam in regards to Reavers. “If they take the ship, they’ll rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we’re very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order.”
While the Reavers were only featured in a small handful of episodes on Firefly, the mystery of Simon’s younger sister River was an ongoing saga until the very end. A brilliant teenager with a love for dancing, River was part of a secret government experiment that left her mentally unstable even after her brother Simon rescued her from captivity. The sibling fugitives-on-the-run inevitably found themselves on Malcolm Reynolds’ Firefly-class spaceship Serenity, the perfect hiding place given the criminal nature of the crew and Reynolds’ distaste for the Alliance government. It turned out, however, that River Tam was more than psychologically damaged after her ordeal as she demonstrated both a mind-reading psychic talent as well as an adept ability with firearms.
“The Alliance could have any number of uses for a psychic,” Shepherd Book mused in what would be the television show’s last original episode.
“A psychic or an assassin,” Zoe corrected.
Although the story of River Tam was left unresolved on Firefly, it became the central focus of the film Serenity. Not only was River important to the Alliance because of the skills they had imparted in her but also because of other government secrets that she may have psychically been exposed. Thus enters the Operative, a special agent of the Alliance with no official ranking or name, who has been assigned to retrieve River Tam regardless of the cost and with any means necessary.
Before he can retrieve, however, the Operative first has to find his target and so he sends a subliminal signal designed to trigger whatever has been hiding within the recesses of River’s damaged mind. It turns out that River Tam is more than just mere assassin but a finally tuned fighting machine capable of taking on and defeating dozens of larger and stronger opponents until she is deactivated by a secret phrase known only to brother Simon. With the Operative now aware that River has sought refuge on Serenity, and Malcolm Reynolds and his crew now aware of River’s abilities, a cat-and-mouse game begins as the Operative attempts to find both his prey and her protectors.
When “cheese” fails to do the trick in the guise of luring Reynolds to the rescue of Inara Serra, the Operative resorts to “fire” and lays to ruins any location that the crew of Serenity has found refuge in the past. With the smoke of burned-out buildings and scattered remains of dead bodies—including one of a very dear friend—dotting the landscape around him, Malcolm Reynolds decides that the only course of action is to determine what River secretly knows that would drive the Alliance to such drastic measures. The plan involves sneaking through Reavers territory and finding a distant planet that not only contains the secret of a government conspiracy but the origination of the Reavers themselves.
While River Tam may be the centerpiece of Serenity and the Reavers its catalyst, the film is also the story of Captain Malcolm Reynolds. During the War for Unification, Reynolds fought on the side of the independents and against the Alliance government. It was also the losing side of the war and the defeat turned Malcolm Reynolds into a hard and solitary individual content to eek out a meager living outside of the government’s control. A “softer” side still remains, however, a side that cannot turn his back on River Tam despite the dangers involved in protecting her from the Operative. When he discovers the deepest, darkest secrets of the government he had once fought against, Malcolm Reynolds also cannot let it go unanswered for—not because of vengeance but because it is the right thing to do.
In the end, Malcolm Reynolds broadcasts that secret to all of the ’Verse during a bloody battle against not only the Operative and his vast army but the Reavers as well. There is more loss of life in the form of another dear friend that in many ways makes the victory a hollow one. Still, it is not so much a victory for Malcolm Reynolds and his rag-tag crew of space scavenger but a triumph for the human spirit instead—demonstrating that no matter the odds, the truth will always comes out and that “good” will always trump “evil.”
As one character phrases it, “You can’t stop the signal.” That not only proves true for the cast of Serenity but creator Joss Whedon and fans of the original Firefly who likewise did not give up and defied the odds in their own way. The television series may have been cancelled but the crew of Serenity lives on nonetheless because of a small rag-tag group of self-proclaimed Browncoats who refused to not believe in the impossible.
“Love,” Malcolm Reynolds explains as the first rule of flying in the final scene of the film. “You can learn all the math in the ’Verse but you take a boat in the air you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she’s hurting ’fore she keens. Makes her a home.”
And so it is with Serenity.
Anthony Letizia (December 31, 2010)
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