"I am one with the force, the force is with me." ~ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Thursday, 30 April 2015

Whedon Week #6: Serenity movie review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic reviews....
Serenity is a sci-fi action/adventure, which serves as a continuation (and a conclusion) to the prematurely cancelled tv series, Firefly. Like Firefly, the movie was made by Joss Whedon, and stars Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Gina Torres, Summer Glau, Sean Maher, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin, and Ron Glass. The film also has two new actors, with Chiwitel Ejiofor and David Krumholtz.
Following in the footsteps of a beloved cult hit is no easy task, and a lot of the time, it fails miserably (I'm looking at you, S. Darko). However, Serenity is a big exception. Firstly, it takes full advantage of the fact that there's a tv series setting this whole thing up. The tv show did all the world building and all the character development, so you're already attatched to these characters going into Serenity. You know them, and you know them well. This allows Serenity to put a lot of focus onto the action elements. Without any need to explain much of anything, the film can focus on keeping its audience engaged and not spend too much (or any) time with exposition. 
Chiwitel Ejiofor did this movie quite a long time before his recent career jump with 12 Years a Slave. However, in my opinion, this movie shows off a lot of his acting skills in terms of playing a villain. This guy is a prime example as to why I will always trust Joss Whedon where villains are concerned, because this guy is so intimidating, and so cunning. He seems to outwit just about everyone, and you can feel his raw intensity, despite the fact that he's really calm pretty much throughout the film. Whenever this guy and Mal are in a room (which happens around three times), it creates this really eerie effect of Mal and the Operative being complete polar opposites of one another.
Now, I'm going to stop with the critical stuff for a second, because my thoughts on Serenity go beyond just being critical opinions. Like I said in my review of Firefly, it's among my favorite shows of all time, so the fact that it was cancelled totally sucks. To me, Serenity is more than just a continuation, it's some resolution for the fans. To me, Serenity is in a lot of ways the perfect end to what I will always retain was a perfect series, so it will always have value to me in more ways than just critical analysis.

Final Rating
This is hands down my most opinion based review. Critically alone, it's an awesome movie. If you want a cool sci-fi western, I'd say go watch Firefly, then if you're still interested, watch Serenity. To me, Serenity will always have sentimental value, and will always be an important film to me as a fan of Firefly.

Serenity
 5/5

Tomorrow: Age of Ultron

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