Saturday, January 21, 2006
Serenity Finally
Which isn’t same as Serenity Now.
We finally watched Serenity last night. It was indeed good, if not precisely what we expected, even with my spoiler knowledge. It was sufficient to make us want to watch Firefly. At the time I boycotted it because Fox first moved Dark Angel into the Death Slot, then cancelled it specifically to make the slot - the death slot, of all things! - available for this new ohmygodjossmadeitsoitmustbeamazing show that sounded more silly than intriguing to me. By all accounts, it was great, but Fox made the decision to kill it ahead of time and started it off in the Death Slot to cut to the chase.
The Dark Angel betrayal is electrons under the bridge, and the buzz and commercials and trailers for Serenity weakened me. Plus I sympathized with fox so summarily betraying Firefly in turn. It’s a wonder it took this long.
Even though I already knew the secret of the Reavers, and much of the plotline, I expected something different enough that talk of a sequel made me think “how can they make a sequel when they defeated the evil empire and tied things up already?” The answer is they didn’t. They merely managed to destroy the Death Star, while leaving Imperial Destroyers intact. It was kind of different seeing Obi-Wan get killed when the Storm Troopers attacked the moisture farm. All they did was get word out for those who would listen that the empire is indeed an empire, heinously evil in its attempt to force good and make terrestrial angels of humans. Sometimes when all they are saying is give peace a chance, they are become death, destroyer of minds, reason, lives…
So. Serenity ended with a “that was good” and plenty of food for thought and appreciation of Joss Whedon’s libertarian - or should I say “human” - tendencies, but not worshiping the ground he treads up. It ended with needing to see it again to catch all the vernacular, speaking too softly, and rapid-fire dialog. I must say I liked the one about nethers getting twisted. Plus we like “Heidi ho” better than we did. Well, Jewel Staite, anyway, and yet Deb note that Heidi from Wonderfalls and Kaylee are clearly distant relations, or perhaps reflections.
Recommended. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the bucks for the DVD. We found it didn’t hurt to have not watched Firefly, but as noted, it sold us on the idea of getting to know them better - there’s the vernacular again, and the characters and settings - by watching Firefly when we can.