Serenity: A Negative Review (with spoilers)

[annwfyn]

First of all, I would like to state that there are spoilers within. If you haven't seen this film yet, I don't think you should read this. Secondly, I am warning in advance that this is a rather negative review. Despite this, I'm aware that 'Serenity' is a film which has brought a lot of my friends a lot of happiness, and as such I think it's probably a good thing.

I am writing this as an explanation to those who have asked 'so why didn't you like the film?'.

This is why I didn't like that film...

The Massive Overhype

I am prepared to admit that in many ways I entered 'Serenity' with some heavy duty biases against it. To be precise, I entered 'Serenity' thinking 'this better be pretty damn good if it is even vaguely going to justify the truly sickening levels of hype around it'. I entered wanting to know why this one film had apparently merited turning the entirety of my friends into fangirls of the type most commonly found screaming outside boy band concerts, and I wanted the reason to be good.

It sadly wasn't.

As I said, I think I am partly being unfair, because so much of the overhype has been quietly (or maybe noisily - I'm not often quiet) irritating the hell out of me for weeks. It irritates me that I now am not sure who on earth has written an entry when I see an Inara icon. It irritates me that 'Serenity' has been made the cinematic event of the year, far above dull films about genocide, like 'Hotel Rwanda'. It's the only film this year that I've seen a large group of my friends list drive all the way to Scotland and back in a night, just to see. It's the only film I've ever seen take over my friends list to this extent. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, none of them had this effect.

All this would bug me less if I just had the slightest clue why?

OK, the TV series was nice enough, in a generic Joss Whedon TV series kind of way (he had the same five characters he always has, with exactly the same witty dialogue that his characters always speak), and I did enjoy it, but why was it so very wonderful?

I didn't get it. Therefore it was probably with stroppy thoughts that I headed off to the cinema.

The Dialogue

OK, so it's a western in space. So it shouldn't be full of technobabble and should maybe be a bit more...well...western. Yes, yes, yes, I accept this. Just...well...I've watched westerns. I've watched films with Clint Eastwood. I've even watched Unforgiven. I'm sure none of them were quite so...well...bad.

And that is one of the most distressing features to this entire film. Normally when I watch something written by Joss Whedon, my main complaint is not the lack of witty dialogue. In fact, I have an entire rant which is mostly based around the fact that all Joss Whedon can write is witty dialogue. Buffy, Angel, the TV series of Firefly; they are all entirely based on the notion that people in extremely stressful and life threatening (not to mention world threatening) situations are prone to witty banter.

When I find myself thinking 'gah! That's so goddamn hackneyed' when listening to Joss Whedon dialogue, you know it's gone pretty badly wrong.

rweishaar claims that the dialogue was just as unconvincing in the series, and that I'm being unfair here. I am wondering if I was asleep through the entire series if that is the case. How could I not have noticed how deeply stilted and unreal the entire dialogue was?

"I've had nothing twixt my nethers that didn't have batteries"? The entirety of Dark Brooding Assassin's dialogue (and that's another rant)? It honestly made me cringe with the predictability and clunking heaviness of it all.

The absolute lack of any kind of emotional dynamic being actually shown on screen

Look. I understand that this film is entirely for people who saw the series. I understand that if you are one of the multitude on my friends list who own the DVDs, and can quote entire episodes without pausing for breath, then you know all the about characters' relationships already. You've seen The One Where Wash Gets Jealous, and you've see The One Where Mal Punches Out That Bloke Coz Of Inara and you've seen All The Ones Where Kaleigh Makes Big Eyes At The Doctor. You know all about this and as such can be touched and affected by the film.

I'm not entirely convinced that someone who hadn't watched the series would be able to do that.

Wash and Zoe were probably the biggest example of this. Throughout the entire film the single, sole reference to Zoe and Wash being husband and wife was when Mal made some reference to Zoe about 'your husband'. Beyond that there was nothing. There were no scenes between them. No real dialogue between them. When Wash died and Zoe got all angsty, a bit of my brain said 'oh, yeah, they were married weren't they?' and I suspect that that was the bit of my brain which had watched the series. The rest of my brain may well have been slightly confused by the entire thing.

Mal and Inara, I felt, were equally badly served. Mal made some reference to 'it's a set up - has to be - we weren't arguing', which I felt was rather meant to a) appeal to the Browncoats and b) explain the entire dynamic to anyone new who is then meant to take it on faith. Beyond that, Mal and Inara didn't bicker that much. They smile at each other a bit, and bicker slightly, but the entire dynamic is overshadowed by the constant Impending Doom to the extent that at the end, when Inara does agree to stay, it doesn't really mean much.

OK, she's staying. Erm. Yeah. Oh, doesn't Mal fancy her?

The film has been ignoring this pretty solidly for most of the last couple of hours. I'm not sure why Joss Whedon is so sure the audience won't as well.

The overwhelming sheer awfulness and cliche of the plot

Oh c'mon! You lot can't seriously think that that was not predictable? You lot can't seriously have taken that seriously?

I've encountered the 'reavers & government experiment plot gone wrong' plot before. It was in a tabletop game that I played in when I was 19. It really hasn't gotten any better. And the Dark Brooding Assassin With A Strange Sense Of Honour? Did Joss Whedon really just call up the Paramount props department and ask them if they had anything kicking around he could borrow?

I can imagine the conversation now.

Joss: Look, guys, I need a bad guy, but I can't afford an actor and I'm out of ideas for dialogue.
Paramount Props: It's OK. We've got an old bad guy from a load of other bad sci fi films that comes with his own cassette of generic assassin/bounty hunter lines. He's a bit wooden, but...
Joss: That's OK. Have you seen the rest of my cast?

In fact, I think we're getting to the crux of my irritation with this film, which was a deep sense of disappointment and a feeling that Joss had somewhere along the line decided to jetison everything that was cool about the series.

I quite liked the mystery about the Reavers. Where had they come from? What had driven men to these extremes? I liked the poetry in the half dreamt explanations - Shepherd describing them as 'men who got to the edge of space and looked out over that vast emptiness, and couldn't take it'*. I thought the bad guys in the TV series were really interesting visually - 'two by two with hands of blue' - and really didn't understand why the quiet, menacing men with the weird gloves were replaced with a paint by numbers Dark And Brooding Assassin With A Sense Of Honour. It was as if Joss looked at everything that was remotely quirky, or different, or original and decided it was all too risky. Probably why his show got cut in the first place. Best replace it with a series of cliches from the last 30 years of science fiction.

The TV series was vastly overhyped, but on the quiet I rather liked it. I found it comfortable to watch and had some cute characters. OK, it wasn't stunning, and Joss Whedon plot has always been fairly clunky, but I never found myself sitting through it thinking 'when can I go' which was a constant refrain in my head throughout the film.




*Yes. That was a line from the film. I actually quite liked it. I think that was one of the four I liked. See. I'm not all hatred and bile.

And that's me done.

In other news, I really liked 'A History Of Violence' and found it a very moving and interesting film dealing with some interesting issues. Can I also recommend 'It's All Gone Pete Tong' which I think is out of DVD now. It wasn't big and many may not get it, but I rather liked that as well.

And now, work is done and I am heading home!

Comments

[wildrogue.livejournal.com]

I can answer all these questions very very easily with one observation I made quite early on - River's hair was sleek and fashionably tousled rather than the dragged-through-hedge-backwards look she sported in the series.
The whole thing was smoothed out and prettied up for cinema - hence the bagful of cinematic cliches that were chucked in for no good reason.
The rest of it was just an extended episode of the series.

[obake.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with a lot of the sentiment here.

I didn't like all the hype and I usually make it a point to avoid it all (after being severely disappointed when I finally saw Pulp Fiction). I avoid spoilers and pre-reviews like crazy. I may watch the occasional trailer, but I'm not one of those that goes actively seeking them on the internet.

The emotional dynamic I have to mostly agree with. I think a good job was done between Mal and Inara since they're relationship isn't really defined. If you've never seen the series, you might think they were an ex-relationship. I wish there were more intimate moments between Wash and Zoe before the end. They didn't have to be long moments, just a look, a brush of a hand, that sort of thing. I think it would have added a lot.

Regarding the plot, I too was disappointed that there was no follow up on the "two by two, hands of blue" and not even a nod to it as far as I could tell. I think the full impact of what the Reavers are is lost on someone not a fan of the series. For a movie plot, the origin of the Reavers worked fine, but for the non-fan, there could have been more about the Reavers to set it up (I don't think Jayne's brief monologue about them is enough).

I happen to be a fan of the dialogue. It strikes me as a kind of pidgin that could have been spoken in an Old West town that had a lot of Chinese influence.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

*ponders*

I didn't mind the dialogue nearly so much in the series. Not entirely sure why - and I also quite like westerns. Hrm. I'm going to try and work out what made the TV show dialogue liveable with for me, and what made the film dialogue feel very unreal.

[skinny-cartman.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen it don't want to as firefly was shit anyway, I can think of many scifi series more deserving of movies (like say SG-1 yeah I know technically its based n a movie but..)

[ulaidhan.livejournal.com]

Having skipped the Serenity section (not seen it yet, so avoiding spoilers)....

Good to hear a positive response to "A History of Violence". I've heard a couple of critics and another director enthuse wildly about it, but hadn't come across anyone I knew who'd seen it. Gives me another reason to try to do so myself. =)

As for "It's All Gone Pete Tong" - I'd heard that by far the best thing about it was the title. What'd you like about it?

Snapshot reviews

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

A History Of Violence

It's a lovely film - it takes a fairly basic premise (man who may or may not have a dubious past) and tackles it with a lot of subtlety. The interplay of family relations are really nicely shown, and I liked the questions it raises about violence - is it an inherited, inherant thing in someone? What is the relationship between what you intrinsically are, and what you chose to become? It also looks at something that I remember wiffling about on LJ a while ago 'is it possible to really love someone while not knowing something really major about them'?

Viggo Mortenson - very good actor, it appears.

It's All Gone Pete Tong

I can see that some critics might not have liked it - it was a definitely quirky film, but I really did enjoy it. I went to see it randomly, as there was nothing else on at the cinema, but came out of it feeling really bouncy.

What did I like?

I actually really liked the positivity in it - it's one of the few films I've seen that I felt was genuinely uplifting. It left you feeling really good, while not taking itself too seriously. It mixed the silly and the humorous with some really nice ideas and a really interesting message. I also was quite impressed at a film seriously looking at deafness, which has traditionally been 'least glamorous disability ever'.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

The rest of it was just an extended episode of the series.

Yep, I got that. Fair enough, Whedon wanted to finish off the story after the series got dropped.

However, I'd made the mistake of thinking it was going to be a movie in the same setting/same characters, but without required foreknowledge (compare, for example, to the Star Trek films - which, dire as they sometimes were, didn't IMO require having watched the series in order first to make the films make sense), so I was left going "Huh, why are Inara & the Shepherd not around, is that something that is explained in the episodes I haven't watched yet? Is Mr Universe meant to be a character I'm already familiar with? Why has the Doctor suddenly lost his waistcoats and started dressing in fitted long sleeved T-shirts? In fact, what's with the clothes/appearance in general, shouldn't Kayleigh look more oil-stained too?"

It was a fun film to watch, but I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd seen the whole series first (rather than the first few episodes), I think...

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Which (in my opinion) is one of the things that made it it a bad film.

It really didn't stand on its own, at all. You needed the back story of the series for it to really make much sense, and I felt that Joss Whedon wasn't really comfortable with cinematic language - it looked a lot like a seriously edited 'highlights of season 2' for me. It would have been a lot more comfortable if it had been broken up into about 12 episodes, and given some more subplots and character development.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm going to be watching it again this weekend, so I'll keep my mind open.

There were a couple of pretty horrible elements in the film, certainly. Mr Universe, for example - bad idea, bad character, bad name. There were some dodgy lines too, which as someone currently going through slowly cutting all the crap lines from BloodSpell, makes me feel a lot better.

I think one of the reasons people like the film is that, more so than the TV series, it diverges from the cliche hero characters of the medium (which has more to do with the lack of innovation in film compared to TV than the merits of this new version). Mal's a lot more human and more interesting than any other action hero due out this year, and Whedon hasn't lost his touch for making characters act *sensibly* - attempting to shoot the assassin in cold blood, for example.

And why isn't Hotel Rwanda bigger than this? Well, did it make anyone, out of its entire audience, come out of the theatre punching the air and talking animatedly about going to see it again?

It was a brilliant, powerful film, and I'll probably buy it on DVD to watch it for the filmmaking craft, but it definitely fell into the category of "Powerful" film where "Powerful" means "You'll be really glad you saw it, but fuck, will you not want to see it again in a hurry."

Which ain't a recipe for box-office smash.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, Joss Whedon mentioned at his talk at the Edinburgh Festival that he cut about 3/4 of an hour out of the film, mostly character-driven stuff, to keep the plot moving. I wonder if he'll come to view that as a mistake?

[melsner.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. Because all the diehard fans of the movie/series will buy the DVDs of the theatrical release and the extended version.

Miss Brewer has the right to disagree with me, but even if you don't think the movie is the Second Coming of Christ, I thought it was a heck of a lot better than the last three Star Wars movies.

[icklehilary.livejournal.com]

one of the movies problems even for the fans is that it's set a few months after the series with 3 comics filling the gap between the two which explain the reasons why Mal and book left and also tie up the Blue sun Guys (the guys in the blue gloves)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

You know, there are those who would call that 'damning with faint praise'.

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

It doesn't stand on its own. True. I sat there afterwards and thought "that would have been a fucking great season of television with a thunderous finale".

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

The response.

Plrrrrb.

I'm kinda torn about the movie. To me it had the sadness of an ending. I think Joss had a five year story arc in his brain... and he tried to squeeze it into a movie, which mean t he could only hit the high points and not get all the refinements which I loved in the series in there.

But let me hit some points here:

The hype. Feck off. People loved Firefly. It rang a bell for them. They chatted about it, they had an icon or two. People had a shedload of LotR icons. And Star Wars icons. It's just there were fewer characters in this, so we ended up with fewer icons, so they seemed repetitive. And of course Lord of the Ring didn't take over, we al got that first glow of fandom for thoat out of our systems when we were 12 and tried to learn elvish! Sure people drive up to Edinburgh to see it, and they had damn good fun doing so. Hell, I flew to New York to see the Phantom Menace and I had a great time. Hotel Rwanda was brilliant, but to come down on Firefly fandom because they chose Serenity over Hotel Rwanda is coming down on all fandom and is a cheap shot.

Overhype was us being excited about something we loved. We weren't some carefuly constructed marketing campaign.

The dialogue was fine. There were some dodgy lines, but everything has some dodgy lines. Yes, is wasn't as witty as the series, but there were some truly great one liners... it comes out far more quotable than many other genre films of the last few years. Go on, quote me Episode III... quote me Hotel Rwanda :p

Bad guy, yes, hackneyed. I'll give you that, and his change of heart at the end was silly. The reavers... well, the reveal on these things always strips the mystery.

It wasn't an extended episode of TV, it was a truncated season of tele vision, which gives it completely different issues to the Star Trek movies (hough it seemed to share a fashion designer... weird).

And what five characters Joss Whedon always does? I feel that Firefly's characters were pretty distinct from his Buffy and Angel characters. Sure you could link Xander/Wash... b ut they are quite distinctly different despite the "tells jokes when nervous" trait. Adn yes, in the early episodes Mal basically was Angel, but he developed sideways into a completely different character.

Gnyargh. I don't think I disagree with you as much as this repsonde might make it seem... but I feel you are not so much coming down hard on the film as on the fans. It wasn't perfect, but I liked it. It gave me an emotional response, and that's what art is about. Mostly I'm sad because I do believe its flaws will mean there will be no more Firefly, and it was a story I was loving,

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

JW also said he had no plans to release an "extended version".

I'd tend to believe him, actually - at least, if he does it won't be soon. Saying that - and saying it very firmly - just after the premiere of your film tends to imply truth.

[melsner.livejournal.com]

That's actually too bad... I'd love to see the extra hour integrated into the movie.

[(Anonymous)]

True. But when Serenity made 10 million in its opening weekend in the US and Star Wars made a Hundred Gazillion Billion, it's annoying. I know you weren't a big fan, but it still annoys me that it's at least better than crap that made a lot more money...

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

*looks apologetic*

I'm sorry if I am seeming very very down on the fans. It might be that I'm being rude there - as I did say in the intro I do think that anything which made people happy is a good thing.

On the one liners - I still think the one liners were dramatically weaker than the one liners in the TV series, and there were chunks of dialogue in the film which actively made me cringe. They did mostly come from the bad guy, who I hated with a passion which burns, but Kaleigh hitting the audience over the head with 'you drove away Inara', or the 'I've had nothing twixt my nethers which didn't run on batteries' did just leave me cold.

One of my ongoing dark mutters about Joss Whedon normally is that he mostly writes one specific type of dialogue. To be fair, most TV shows and most writers do this. All the characters in the West Wing talk like characters in the West Wing (they are urbane, smart, passionate and get heart felt about the democratic party in times of stress). All the characters in any Joss Whedon show talk like characters in a Joss Whedon show - they banter, they exchange witty one liners, they occasionally utter confused one liners ("I think I speak for everyone when I say 'huh') and they talk a lot more under stress. If Joss Whedon ever wrote up a character who was genuinely inarticulate (not inarticulate in a witty Willow who babbles entertainingly under stress) or wrote up a character who was a little too earnest and wasn't able to make self aware and self deprecating comments at times then I think I'b be inclined to rant less.

Honestly, if it spoke to you, then cool. I'm glad. I possibly should have out in a disclaimer saying 'no need to read this'. I wrote it because a couple of people asked me several times 'but WHY don't you like Serenity. Surely it has all a film should have in it' and I wound up vaguely wanting to explain. I don't want to say that people shouldn't enjoy it.

I'll write up the character by character comparison later. I worked it out with jez a while ago, but can't remember it off the top of my head now. I know that it did lead to the rather alarming conclusion that Joss Whedon was writing up Oz and Wash as a married couple which produced some rather alarming mental images.

Re: Snapshot reviews

[ulaidhan.livejournal.com]

Mortensen's starting to get some seriously good reviews from some critics, arguing that he's becoming the Redford or Brando of his generation.

Cronenberg's also winning back some of the friends he made earlier in his career with "A History". I've heard it described as a truly brilliant master-class in changes of pace, how to use a good script, and how to get the very, very best out of good actors.

As soon as I'm up to coping with a surround-sound cinema, I'm hoping to make it out to see it. ;)


On deafness... it occasionally features, because it's one of the easiest to represent. Pretty women who talk funny and communicate through their adorable children, or whatever.... :P

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Having just seen it again, with your review firmly in mind, I have the following to say:

The Massive Overhype
OK, so I'll ignore the overhype ;-) The fact of the matter is, it worked; both times I've been to see it, the screen has been over 75% full -- more than most films I've seen lately. As I want this film to do well, pragmatism suggests I should welcome this!

Sure, there is irritating fandom. I don't pay too much attention to it, and it washes over me. You may learn from my wise example ;-)

The Dialogue
OK, you're right about t'Operative. His lines aren't even especially well delivered. However, I really like the old-school flavour to the language used; things like Jayne's "in earnest, Mal, why are we keeping her?" and even referring to the goings-on 'twixt Kayleigh's nethers really tickle me, because they have a certain cadence and atmosphere I find appealing.

For reference, I don't especially like Westerns.

The absolute lack of any kind of emotional dynamic being actually shown on screen
Erroneous! Extremely erroneous!
Wash and Zoe: references to "your husband," and "my mister" notwithstanding, there's also various terms of endearment used between them and they touch more than any other two characters. Right after Zoe's conversation with Mal about the guy who they left for the Reavers, there's a really good bit between Zoe and Wash. Seriously. And she does go kinda crazy, pawing at Wash's corpse and begging him to get up, before Mal gives her an order and the soldier's training snaps back -- and let's not forget her suicidal approach to fighting the Reavers.

As for Mal and Inara, there's stuff there too; their whole conversation over the wave only left in doubt whether they were ex-lovers or lovers-to-be, in my mind (for those who hadn't seen the series, at least). The references to their history ("You can't make me angry, Captain Reynolds." "Seriously, spend an hour with him!") in the scene with the Operative all build towards this, as does Mal's statement that Inara "fogs things up" for him.

I do think Inara was really quite underused, however, as was Book -- whose death had more impact on second viewing, once I knew the backstory from the comics, which I've not read. That's one of my big gripes with the film; I really like Book as a character, I think there are loads of ways he could have been used, but when he died I was like "whatever."

The overwhelming sheer awfulness and cliche of the plot
Here we disagree. Yes, the whole "government experiment creates horrible doom and destruction with hilarious consequences" thing is a staple of many sci-fi and other stories. Yes, the Operative isn't especially clever as an adversary (why wasn't it the brilliant existential bounty hunter, Jubel Early, who The Operative so clearly resembled anyway?*). Yes, I've based entire campaigns around that very plot.

However, you have to appreciate its impact within the world of the story; the Alliance deny the very existence of Reavers, and base their discourses on their ability to keep people safe. Then it turns out that they're responsible for the biggest single threat to the planets on the outer rim...major problems. This is a big victory for the former Browncoats, because it's striking a major blow against the Alliance.

And, yeah, the ghost-story explanations for the Reavers as people driven crazy by space being so damn vast are really cool, but actually it makes much more sense for their to be a mundane, biological cause; in a sci-fi show without aliens, the idea that people mystify something created scientifically and make it into a bogeyman even Jayne's afraid of is really cool and really appropriate, and mirrors the development of myths and legends on our own world.

Also, on second viewing, the film goes quicker, which is always a good sign. So, yes, while it was far from perfect (Wash's and Book's haircuts both irritate all manner of bile out of me!), it was far from as bad as you say.

*: cos of the theme of belief, I guess.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

More than one series, I'd say...I think there's a definite end-of-season episode when Mal talks to the Operative after Book's death. It did kinda feel like an extended tour of the highlights of what we would've got if we'd had a full season. 'Sall good, though.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

for their to be

Sweet God, I can't apologise enough.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

OK. Having finally watched the film, I can now read this and comment on it :)

And I think the most important thing I can say is, that you not liking the film had nothing to do with it being bad and everything to do with it... just not being the sort of thing you like.

I loved the dialogue. I laughed at the 'batteries' line, and I still think that The Operative's 'Target the Reavers! Target the Reavers! Target everything! Somebody shoot!' panic was one of the finest things I shall ever see.

Emotional dynamic: Wash and Zoe had a lovely short scene just after Zoe confronted Mal about leaving the man for the Reavers, that made it quite clear how they felt about each other. Mal and Inara's wasn't played up in the later parts of the film, but Mal was willing to walk into a known trap in case she was in trouble - what's unclear about that?

The plot itself was largely irrelevant. Firefly and Serenity have never been about cunning and convoluted plots, any more than Buffy. The plot is just a vehicle for the scenes and the characters, and it did that just fine. I had my heart in my throat when I realised how Mal was going to deal with the Alliance on Mr Universe's planet. And how ironic is it that the weapon he used to get past the Alliance is what killed Wash?

And yeah. He killed Wash. He killed one of the most likeable characters in the series and the film. He did it suddenly, he did it without setup, he did it without fanfare. He broke the dramatic conventions, because he damn well knows how to do tragedy. And I was crying at the end when Firefly took off again because it wasn't right that anyone but Wash was flying her.

So, yeah. You didn't like the film, but that don't mean there was anything wrong with it :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I didn't think the change of heart was silly. I thought it was inevitable.

After all, the Operative did what he did for the Alliance because he believed that they were the good guys. What did you expect him to do when he found out they weren't?

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

All the problems you allude to, however, are problems people coming to the film without watching any of the series wouldn't have. They don't know that Book and Inara are meant to be on the ship. They've never seen oil-stained Kaylee. They don't know if Mr Universe is a long-running character or not, and they don't need to care.

In other words, this says nothing about the film's accessibility :)