The offscreen story of Joss Whedon’s Serenity is a textbook case of a corporation, Fox, showing disdain and distrust both of an artist and the public. Serenity is the film born out of the aborted television program, Firefly. Whedon and his excellent cast finished 14 episodes of the show, but Fox chose not to air all of them. In fact, those that they did air were shown out of order on constantly changing nights and time slots in order to have something to show around the World Series. It was obvious that even though Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel had met with critical success, long television runs and, obviously, great money for the network, Fox no longer trusted the artist’s writing abilities or the public’s acceptance of his quirky and creative dialogue and fantasy worlds.

    But Whedon stuck to his guns, releasing the series on DVD to great reviews and success. He built a fan base for a program that hasn’t even been on the air for two years (although, with the buzz about the movie, the Sci-Fi Channel is now airing the series on Friday nights) and got a film version of the television series greenlighted. Before this review turns into a rant about art versus corporate money, let me just say that you, the viewing public, have a great opportunity with Serenity. This is a rare moment in which your support for an incredible film can tell network and movie executives where they can stick their pessimistic, simplistic ideas about the viewing public. I am giving Serenity 5 out of 5 stars. Spend your money on this one.

    Serenity picks up where the television show left off, but it is not necessary to have seen a single episode to thoroughly enjoy the film. The early scenes of the film explain that humans, 500 years in the future, have overpopulated the earth and left to populate a new solar system. They terraformed the planets and many, many moons to support life. Over time, the central planets formed the Alliance, a civilized government intent upon eradicating humankind’s warlike individualism at any cost in favor of a government imposed civilization. The outer planets rebelled, causing a civil war which the rebels lost. In the aftermath of the war, the outer worlds have become a frontier analogous to the American old west: technically, they are part of the Alliance but are so far away that lawlessness often rules in the absence of government.

    Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) lives in this lawless frontier as captain of the Serenity, a cargo ship he and his crew use to make an unlawful living through theft and smuggling under the nose of the Alliance. The crew has taken Simon and River Tam into their protection, a brother and sister running from the Alliance. The Alliance has done experiments on River’s psychic brain and ruined it, making her an unpredictable schizophrenic who might have gleaned government secrets psychically from Alliance parliament members. Now, the Alliance wants her back and sends one of their operatives to track her down by any means necessary.

    The film is pure science fiction epic, filled with humor, love, sadness, difficult moral choices, fierce loyalty, sexuality, danger, action and important questions about freedom, government and belief. The film effortlessly establishes all of its characters sympathetically, truthfully and logically while avoiding action clichés.

    Nathan Fillion as Mal represents the moral ambiguities that "living free" entails. He and his crew live outside the law, leading Mal to believe that if he can protect his crew that he has fulfilled his obligations as a human being. He is a man whose bottom line is survival. Take for example his twist on an old action cliché: "If I’m not back in an hour, take the ship and come rescue me. I don’t have any intention of dying." But through the course of the film, we see him and his crew assume a mission greater than themselves and their personal survival. The journey is a hard one, as it should be. The world of this film is one in which heroes are mortal; they get shot, stabbed, trapped, beaten up, outwitted. Mal and his crew are always outgunned and rely upon their wits to save them. This is a world in which being heroic does not guarantee safety and where doing what is right often comes at a terribly high price.

    And I ask, "Why not?" In a movie environment where the audience can trust in the fact that heroes never die and villains always lose, why not tell a story with much more ambiguity, a movie that we as the audience cannot always predict? Why not have a science fiction frontier that mirrors the western frontier? Why not create an ensemble cast in the spirit of Star Trek who behave more like The Magnificent Seven? Why not break all the rules and take a risk on the audience’s ability to understand?

    Whedon dares to defy convention in Serenity. Obviously, Fox thought the answer to all of those questions was, "Well, there is no money in the risk." Whedon, with all of our help, should continue to prove Fox wrong. If you haven’t seen the television series, it is well worth adding to your DVD collection. But more to the point, whether you liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer or ever saw an episode of Firefly, you really owe it to yourself and to cinema as a whole to go see Serenity. It is a great time at the movies in the tradition of the original Star Wars. Don’t miss it!

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