Perceptions of a Kilted Hungarian

On my rather lengthy commute betwixt the ole office and homestead, my mind often wonders, taking me to strange and weird places. Come to think of it, my mind wonders all the time, not just whilst driving. This particular time, I found myself thinking about Serenity… the movie, not the pilot episode of Firefly, nor the space craft featured there-in, or the state of mind. Now, I have spent a lot of ‘me’ time reflecting over my love of movies, specifically my love of all movies. This introspection has led me to believe that I pass judgment on a movie immediately after seeing it, and hence, my judgment is more a reflection of my views of the experience, rather then the work itself. I leave the theater affected equally by the cinematic encounter and the motion picture. I spread the hype about how awesome this or that was, and when I spend my hard-earned money buying the DVD it just sits on my shelf, because I never watch it again… the experience is never the same, it can never live up to what I have built it up to be. It is for this reason I have recently been making a conscious effort to ’sit on’ a movie after watching it, to let the hype, majesty and mysticism wear off, so that I can make an unbiased, objective criticism. This can be a difficult ordeal: it was not easy to come to terms with the fact that the long-awaited sequel to one of my all-time favorite franchises (Indiana Jones) was complete rubbish.

The reason for the above lead-in is the parallel I mean to draw between Indy and Firefly: I love both franchises, I was delighted to hear that they were making sequels, I stood in line like everyone else to show my support in exchange for a bit of the experience. When one has so much invested in a thing, months, sometimes years of built up anticipation, tension and hope (all of which are very difficult for the movie makers to live up to), it is hard to allow oneself to dislike it. One sees it, gets excited about it and their memories focus on the excitement, not the plot, characters, story, cinematography etc. When this person finally allows him/herself to accept the fact that they do not, in fact, really care for the film, it can be a real downer. Such was the case today with Serenity.

I initially became interested in Firefly, the series when I saw commercials for it before it aired. At first, I was only interested in it for plot ideas for my Star Wars RPG campaign, which featured a similar collection of characters and archetypes. In the end, it was the characters that got (and kept) me hooked. There were enough primaries to provide writers with a wide pallet of story styles and types, but not so many that the viewer lost interest or got confused; Serenity [the ship] maintained a beautiful balance of relatability and variety. Once the series was watched in its ‘entirety’ (as much as a series that was taken off the air before a season was completed could be called ‘entire’), the viewer feels like they are part of a family, like they belong with the crew aboard Serenity [again, the ship, not the pilot, stat of mind or the movie]. This bond was such that I felt let down and somewhat abandoned every time I watched the series, since I felt there was so much wasted potential, so many loose ends, so many places this show could have gone, if only it had been given a chance. Needless to say, I was giddy when I heard a movie was to be made: at least they would wrap up some of the loose ends. Alas, it would not be so. I didn’t really think this particular investment through: the makers would be unable to make the movie the fans wanted, and the compromise they pawned off on use ended up being a disappointment as a conclusion to our belove’d series and as a stand alone movie.

The impetus for this tirade was something that had been nagging at me since the first time I saw Serenity [the movie, not the ship or pilot]: Mal and Simon/River’s relationship. A large subplot that tied a good bit of the original series together was Mal growing to accept the two as part of the crew, as part of his family. Mal had come a long way in the show from wanting to abandon them. The movie completely ignored this. In the movie, Mal had reverted to the Mal of several years earlier, where the relationships that they had built did not exist. A major plot point that ran throughout the entire series was ignored! I understand why they did it: they needed tension, drama and conflict, but to ignore the character development that had taken place in the series is to ignore the series itself! They re-invented the wheel in re-telling a story they had already covered, instead of focusing one one of the many opportunities the show had to offer (most of which were either ignored altogether or barely addressed). As above, I was super stoked to finally get to see the movie, so much so that I loved it, despite this (then) minor reservation. A reservation that has been festering and growing until I could no longer say that I love the movie, until the day when I realized I not only did not like the movie, I consider it a slap in the face of everything that the series built. I still find it incredibly cool that there was enough of a fan-base and following to talk Hollywood into making a motion picture out of a TV series that had been canceled after less then one season, but the whole experience feels kind of dirty and cheap, seeing as how we had to sell out to make it happen.