On Serenity

I can't, by any definition of the term, be described as a science fiction or fantasy nut. I'm one of a very select few people (apparently) who didn't care much for the Lord of the Rings (the books or the movie). I didn't care much for any of the three Star Wars prequels (although I did watch them; who didn't?). I never cared much for any one of the Star Trek franchises. What can I say? None of them really captivated my imagination. I figure that there are enough stories to tell about human nature without bringing aliens, elves, dwarves, and what-have-yous into the equation.

It was Christmas of last year when my little brother, being the slightly neurotic kid that he is, bought me the box set of Firefly for chritmas. My automatic first reaction, it pains me to admit, was "Don, I'm not a Trekkie."

This is more or less true. Although around about twelve, I did watch the Next Generation incarnation of Star Trek relatively faithfully. Not from any particular love of the series, mind you, but because it was what was on. Even at the naive age of 12, I found something rather annoying about Star Trek: everyone was just too damn happy. Don't get me wrong, I admire Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of the future; but frankly, it was just a little bit too utopian. You had a crew of people of different races, different ethnicities, hell, from different planets, all working side by side. Hell, I can't live with my brother for any extended period of time without wanting to kill him. Basically, it was a LSD-laced vision of what human beings could do if given the absolute best of all possibilities.

Frankly, it just seemed unlikely to me. Just once, I wanted to see one of the captains of one of the series of this franchise go on a completely inappropriate, totally undeserved, and vulgarly profanity-laden rant about the incompetence of his or her crew.

Just once, I wanted to hear this dialogue on the bridge:

Captain: Set course heading 214 mark six and engage at warp eight.

Crewman: But, sir...

Captain: Move your ass, you fucking, douchelapping dickslatherer! Goddammit, how many fucking times do I have to get you tired assholes to do what I ask? You shitbrained apebuggering asspluggers! I'm the fucking Captain! Jesus Christ, you are fucking pathetic! My whole goddamn crew is made up of goddamned motherfucking rimjobbing anusmonkeys!

Believe it or not, it's actually funnier if you imagine it being said by William Shatner; as if.... EVERY. WORD. Is ITS. Own. SenTENCE.

Now, admittedly, this kind of thing wasn't likely to happen on Firefly either; but at least with Firefly, you got the impression that the only reason it wasn't going to happen was because that kind of dialogue wouldn't get past the network censors; not because it was completely out of character for any one of the characters. In short, what Firefly brought to the science fiction genre, that had been lacking pretty much since the original Star Wars trilogy was characters who actually aren't perfect. You have characters in this series who don't have a fricking clue what they're going to do, or even if what they're going to do is right or moral. You have a captain who won't hesitate to deck one of his crewmembers if he wants to. You have genuine personality conflicts.

Which brings me to Serenity. I want to take a moment to comment on something you don't see many people commenting on with this movie: the script. This was, in my humble opinion, one of the most intelligently-written films I have seen in a long time. The dialogue was clever, the plot was intricately thought out. Unlike so much of Science Fiction and Fantasy making it to the big screen these days, I didn't actually feel dumber walking out of the movie theatre.

In short, this was one of the better movies I've seen this year.

If you haven't seen it, see it now.

If you have seen it, see it again.

And that's my input for today.