Serenity

So, I saw "Serenity" with Rourke and Jen this weekend. Usually, movies don't form the kinds of cross-activity linkages that make me think to write about them. But there was something interesting not only with the movie itself, but a whole set of "things" surrounding it.

From the start, there was something strange going in to the movie theatre. For some reason, I had no expectations. Not that I didn't know anything about the movie. The topic had been on irc for a few days. I had seen a few episodes of "Firefly" and was aware of the buzz around Joss Wheedon. We'd discussed the topic and I shared the opinon of several other friends that I didn't really watch "Firefly" because I felt it had been boring. The idea of having a 2-hour long sci-fi movie that was boring seemed like a potentially intruiging piece of work, but I can't say that I was expecting it to be boring. Rather, all of the buzz and my personal experience summed together in a weird way that resulted in a net expectation of... completely unknown.

But the clincher is the movie itself. I liked the movie. When we were exiting the theatre, Rourke and I asked each other the usual "what did you think?" My answer was "it was good" followed by a slight backtrack of "it was certainly entertaining" and then a "i thought there was something interesting about it."

Although "Serenity" stands on its own, it's chock full of references to please "Firefly" watchers. There is a certain amount of expected familiarity about the characters. Supporting roles (or at least what seemed to be important supporting roles) are paraded in a number of varying cameos. The punchline of the movie seemed understated for someone like myself, but according to Rourke (a "Firefly" watcher), has a lot of importance to viewers of the TV series. A lot of effort and emphasis was placed on the one-liners and service scenes. In fact, in the most pessimistic view, one could see "Serenity" as a sequence of nostalgia and fan service strung together with a plot.

Hmm... this sounds like a movie I watched just one week prior. "Advent Children" is Square-Enix's Final Fantasy 7 movie, a kind of epilogue to the game. Not unlike my experience with "Firefly", I'd never played the game, only watched select parts of it while being played by others. "Advent Children" is chock full of fan service cameos and nostalgic references. It's also borderline unintelligible without significant memory of the game.

However, whereas "Advent Children" is interesting, "Serenity" is both interesting and good.

Really, the similarites are startling. "Serenity" doesn't have a cinematic feel, possibly due to Wheedon's greater experience with TV. But when everything is summed up, the two movies arrive at completely different levels, despite their remarkable similarity. Maybe it's because the overall storyline is simpler and clearer. Maybe because the one-liners are actually witty as opposed to juvenile. Maybe it's because "Advent Children" is heavily soaked in adolescent male power fantasy whereas "Serenity" is much more emotionally sophisticated.

As usual, elucidating comments are welcome.