Serenity Review

Serenity was an utter blast, what can I say. I doubt anyone who has seen the TV show was even considering not going. Seriously, this is the type of niche film that should charge $20 tickets because they have a hardcore audience, and not much casual audience.

So should people who haven’t seen the show Firefly bother to see it? Well the character exposition, is done quite well and lets you know what the characters are like without being too anvillicious for the people that have already watched fifteen episodes with them. Honestly besides characters there isn’t much back-story for the movie to have to catch up to, and that is done pretty effectively (no more than say you’re average Asimov novel). So, given that it’s easy to appreciate as a stand-alone movie, and you have your high quality dialogue and beautiful sci-fi scenes, then yeah go see it.

Oh, there’s politics. However I don’t think anyone would be offended by the strident libertarianism of the film – since the main problem with libertarianism isn’t that people dislike it, it’s just that they never follow it when it’s inconvenient. In story form, it’s still more appealing as a dogma than anything on the left and right.

I’ve been noticing an interesting increase in Christian scifi – not fundie or bible-thumping Christianity, but the sort of Christianity that focuses just on love and the strength of belief. It can be moving in Serenity, although it’s Battlestar Galactica that does wonderfully creepy things with it. Similarly, I’ve been noticing an increase in the monastic villain, an austere loving monk filled with the power of belief who will smite all their enemies because it needs to be done (see Stargate). I think these villains, and what they represent, are of course interesting so it’s interesting to see where they go.

I think I need to make my sig file a random generator from BSG quotes.