Serenity

Posted on April 21, 2006 
Filed Under Movies, All

I hesitate to write about Serenity. I watched the movie without seeing the series Firefly that it was derived from. Also, Serenity was literally the movie that wouldn’t die. Without the fanatical Firefly fans, and their outrage when Firefly was cancelled there would be no Serenity. And yes, we all know that Joss Whedon is a god, so claiming to have a better ending is technically huberous. I was pleased while watching the movie that I never felt I was missing the point because I hadn’t seen Firefly.

The story stands up well without any confusing blanks for the un-initiated. It’s a wild combination of Outlaw Jose Wales, Mad Max, Star Wars, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The defeated rebel turned outlaw, a Jose Wales meets Han Solo kind of character, named Mal captains a well-worn ship with a misfit crew on mercenary raids. They travel at the edges of civilization trying to avoid being noticed.

The view of the Universe in this tale is one without weird aliens, or serene worlds perfect for human population. Humanity has terra formed barren planets to spread civilization. The only monsters are called Raves, they are insane mutated human cannibals who strike without reason, and prefer to eat their victims alive. Basically they are berserker vampires without the fashion sense or style that they would have in Buffy or Angel.

One of the members of this misfit crew is River Tam, a psychotic telepath who has been seriously messed up by a secret government psy-ops organization. Picture the Vampire Slayer Faith with ballerina grace tripping on acid. River’s brother Simon has rescued her from the psy-ops group and is trying to hide her from the government by traveling with Mal and his crew.

The problem is that the government realizes River may have inadvertently been exposed to some heavy insider government knowledge through her telepathy. So the government sends a nameless uber fighter official to “clean-up” the problem. Chaos ensues.

Their Ending

River’s forbidden knowledge leads the group to a forgotten world called Miranda, all the while trying to evade the government official. The official and his troops seek to destroy any source of refuge for Mal and his crew, but the crew of the Serenity manages to slip his grasp. On Miranda we find out that the government has tried to pacify the population by introducing the mind-controlling chemical “the Pax” to its air processors. The experiment worked too well and not only did most of the population become non violent, they stop doing anything and eventually just died. However, one tenth of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax and became the rampaging Raves.

Knowing that they could not continue to evade the government forces Mal proclaims that “if you can’t do something smart do something right”. His crew decides to follow him on a doomed attempt to expose the government’s wrongdoing at Miranda. They seek out a character called Mr. Universe. He’s a techno wiz character not unlike some of the Buffy villains complete with a robot female companion. Mr. Universe has the resources to broadcast their evidence far and wide, essentially a futuristic Internet wedgie. Using the rave “fleet” as cover they crash in on Mr. Universe only to find the official has already killed him and destroyed his transmitter. But of course there’s a backup transmitter. There’s an epic last stand with River in some very vampire slayer styled imagery. Meanwhile Mal reaches the transmitter and engages in a mono a mono with the official. So basically after all that, they just post it on the Internet? Yeah, ok. Couldn’t they have just FTP’d the file to him or something? We never even really find out whose memories those were of Miranda.

My Better Ending

Yeah Ok, so they FTP (or something) the evidence to Mr. Universe to put out for public consumption. And as the government realizes this is going on the psy-ops people try to stop the broadcast. However, the raves along with the Serenity are now bearing down on the psy-ops planet/ facility. It turns out that River’s memories of Miranda were from the leader of the psy-ops group, not some unspecified government official. She realizes that not only are they responsible for what happened at Miranda, but that they are still trying to perfect the Pax.

Now the same scenes of pitched battle as the crew goes in to take out the lab involved. River briefly disappears only to show up later when all seems lost with several more telepathic super slayer fighter chicks. In slow motion scenes of stylistic carnage depicting the telepaths plowing through government troops and raves they reach the inner sanctum of the psy-ops facility. There sits the psy-ops leader surrounded by more nameless uber fighter officials (all guys of course). A highly charged battle of the telepaths and officials ensues. In the end River does some super back flip killing move over one of the officials landing right in front of the leader. They lock eyes just long enough for him to know who is killing him.

After the battle, the camera pans out of the facility and smoke is pouring from all the buildings. The camera pans out even further and you see the serenity flying away from the planet amongst a host of Rave ships flying towards the planet. Then a final scene of River gazing out of a window of the Serenity with Mal somewhere visible in the background. Mal says something like “is it over now?” And River replies that “Now even the Raves know who to blame.”

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