[Movies] Serenity

After missing the first few showings, I finally got to catch Serenity on HBO yesterday, the movie inspired by the sadly cancelled Firefly series. The original show was a somewhat an old style Western set in space from the brainchild of Joss Whedon, popularly known for the Buffy and Angel TV shows.

Serenity is set to take place about two months after the end of the original show.

The movie begins with the sort of "another day, another heist" feel with everything pretty much hunky-dory until things start getting complicated with the Reavers crashing the party. What eventually follows is discovering that freaky girl River turns out to have amazing fighting abilities subliminally programmed into her. Wicked.

The chemistry between the characters remains pretty tight - a classic mark of the Whedon universe when you get down to it - and the relationships have definitely developed into something more over the two months since the show ended. Things get interesting in terms of the Alliance's Hunt-for-River initiative with the introduction of The Operative, as played by Chiwetel Ejiofor of Kinky Boots fame who appears to have amazing martial arts abilities and is pretty handy with a katana-style blade.

It pretty much feels like an extended episode of sorts including moments where you fade to black and half-expect a commercial to come up. Still, it's a pretty solid movie which remains smart and entertaining and not that implausible in terms of believability. The movie largely centers around the mystery of River and of course that links into a much larger conspiracy that could damage the Alliance's standing in the community. Along with all of this are a generous amount of leading character deaths, which is also something commonly alleged to be part of the Whedon style.

Even if you haven't seen the series, it still stands out as a pretty good movie to watch that isn't as typically heavy as most science fiction movies, which is a welcome change. I now have the urge to try and find a copy for myself on DVD.