Serenity

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source: Serenity

I can't begin to fathom how this movie has an 8.6 out of 10 as of this writing. Firstly, the plot of Serenity is tenuous at best. Most of the cast basically just serves as screen fodder for the first half of the movie, plodding along to different and seemingly random locales delivering poorly acted and sometimes incomprehensible dialog (subtitles maybe?), while the main story slowly takes shape in the background. After about an hour you'll find yourself saying: where is this going? Thankfully, it does eventually go somewhere, and the movie does improve somewhat in the second half, but even when the plot does pick up, the movie still can't overcome the other main hurdle: very bad acting and questionable dialog. Not once did I find any of the characters convincing enough to suspend my disbelief that I was watching a low-rent sci-fi movie. In a nutshell, the movie basically just comes off exactly as it is (or should have been): a made-for-TV movie that inexplicably made it's way to your local movie theater. As I left the theater after seeing this movie, I couldn't help but think of some of the stalwarts of the science fiction movie genre - Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, 2001, Blade Runner, and how utterly superior those movies are to this film, in terms of plot, acting, pacing, and dialog. There's just no comparison. I also couldn't help but think of all the brilliant science fiction novels that are waiting to be adapted into movies that would probably be superior to this one even in the hands of an average director. In conclusion, don't believe the hype of fanboys - this movie is average at best. After seeing it, I think there's a reason the TV series it was based on was cancelled after 11 episodes...

After reading on the BBC that this was voted the best sci-fi movie of all time, I thought fair enough, I'll check it out. I am extremely disappointed. Lousy incomprehensible story line, lousy cheesy script, lousy acting, lousy effects..the lousy list just goes on and on! Most of the scenes from the movies have been stolen from other films, star wars, resident evil, blade runner, aliens etc..but unfortunately, that's just simply not enough to make a good movie. I can't believe people rated this garbage over 2001, alien, blade runner & star wars according to the BBC article. I also can't believe this has such a high rating on this site. IMDb used to be fairly reliable as a review source for movies, I can only guess that every 12 year old with a computer has now taken residence on this site and has destroyed any credibility it once had.

I remember seeing this film when I was a kid called "Space Voyagers" or something like that. It was kind of a 'B' movie version of a Star Wars film. When I saw it, I knew what I was getting into: an enjoyably cruddy retelling of adventures I was already familiar with. 'Serenity' is not like 'Space Voyagers' at all. I didn't know what to expect from the vaguely nebulous poster. A girl mostly in shadow; a man's expressionless face, etc. The reason why I saw the movie was because of the previews: Cool! A space movie! I thought. Those are pretty good special effects. And is that witty dialogue I hear? But, no, it was unfortunately not. The most pervasive thought I had throughout the film was, "this is bad - why does it have an 8.0 on the IMDb?" --And it really is a terrible film. It plays out like a half-baked Sci-Fi Channel series long-since canceled. Bad Acting. Terrible Dialogue. Unbelievably cheesy situations. Ugh. I guess it makes sense, considering it's basically the final episode of a TV series I never saw (Firefly), but still- I expect better from a FEATURE FILM. This movie would have been so much better if they made it deliberately cheesy/funny/campy, but no...they made a self-important, boring mess instead. Oh Well. 5/10

I watched the whole DVD set of Firefly a few months ago and was hoping that this movie would be an improvement in terms of scale and effects. Sadly, I was disappointed. Firefly (aka Serenity) is a TV series and should remain a TV series. The first hour was so slow and uninteresting that I nearly walked out. Fortunately, the second hour developed some excitement so I actually started to care what happened next. Knowing all the original characters, I was disappointed to see so little of Inara and Kaylee. In fact, the presence of Inara and Book seemed to be incidental and could have been left out altogether. I'd expect Zoe to be stoic when her hubby got his, but she was just impassive and apparently entirely unfeeling. Firefly made a nice space western on TV where you could serialise the crew and their relationships over time, but the big screen is far too big for it. Respect to Mr Whedon, but I think he has overstretched himself on this occasion. If there was any trademark snappy dialogue in there it got lost in the mêlée.

Having been attracted by so many favorable comments I expected really something special. Unfortunately I was quite disappointed by a rather common storyline for a science fiction film and a foreseeable development. A big interstellar union with problems at its outer parts is not too new (already the ancient Rome had to deal with it), a group of "rebels" in a shaky vehicle is even more common. But worse than this is that you do not really care for the characters. This would not matter so much if the film was funnier or more suspenseful. But the way it is (rather conventional)at least some strong actors would be necessary to make it work. Blending in many different genres and stealing from other films is also no big contribution. Maybe this film is only recommendable for the hard-boiled fans.

I saw this after being skeptical, but seeing the high rating on IMDb. I've now come to realize this is most certainly what is known as the "fanboy" effect. This movie has a meandering plot, a less-than-stellar conclusion, and is filled with goofy, pointless dialog. Something I enjoyed about the show was how varied the plot lines were and how the characters interacted differently in every episode. In this movie, everyone was very one-dimensional extremes of their characters in the show, and they didn't develop at all throughout the whole thing! The plot just sort of went nowhere until you found out the big "oh no" about the alliance (which didn't seem all that big to me...). Overall this movie was a total bust, and I'm embarrassed that I took my girlfriend with me to see it, in the hopes that I could quell her constant mockery about the fact that I wanted to see it, and clearly I failed in that regard.

I'll say that it was not quite the blight on our culture that I expected -- it didn't have that much significance. However, that said, it is by no means among the "best films ever made". Those are the ravings of zealots who upon being scorned when Fox pulled the show, kept a torch burning in their heart for the series all this time. When I first heard about Serenity, it was from a young snot whose tastes in culture I find akin to a McNugget enthusiast's. Thus, I was immediately dismissive, and moreover I became angry that he would honestly call this one of the best films ever made. My first thought: Please. I'm sure it's not going to be sharing the AFI listing with the Godfather, Casablanca or Citizen Kane anytime soon... However, my best friend - an avid sci-fi fan - wanted to see it, and I went along with my expectations sufficiently low. Perhaps too low. I was expecting something on the order of Blade or Supernova. It wasn't that awful. But, this is not great film. It's merely okay. In reality, this reminded me nothing so much as a strange amalgamation of Cowboy Bebop and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's zombie space-cowboy theatre peppered with painfully hip one-liners so often, you start to expect to hear a rimshot. Then you realize it's just gunfire. The gub'mint assassin was interesting up until the end when he flattened back out into a cardboard cutout version of a spaghetti western bad guy. As much as it tempts me to really tear it apart, this wouldn't be fair. I've seen plenty of mediocre movies and merely shrugged them away. What prompts me to want to pay special attention to eviscerating Serenity is really part of a larger issue I have with my generation's idea of what constitutes greatness. For a film chocked with scathing clever dialogue, look to the banter between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russel in His Girl Friday. Yojimbo was a great film outlining the ronin morals, and went on to influence some great westerns like One Upon A Time in The West and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Orson Welles was great when he delivered his morally corrupt monologue in The Third Man. When Star Wars first came out, it defined an entire genre of epic science fiction where previously it had only been fit for the B-screen. There are so many actually great films that anyone with a reasonable budget, a computer with Internet access and a mailbox can see nowadays with services like Netflix. There's no reason for so many young people to not know great cinema. There are films like The Passion of Joan of Arc that are so powerful and visceral that it won't surprise you when you learn that the actress playing Joan went a bit mad afterward, and never worked again. But, so many people who really ought to see it, won't even hear of it. It would take me days to recognize the many truly wonderful films there are in the repository of our culture, and never would I come close to including something like Serenity. It simply is not up to that kind of par, and I find it hugely disturbing that such a large number of people could honestly consider what I saw today to be an equal among so many of its betters. It's really symptomatic of a much larger issue that troubles me. It seems that people no longer recognize or expect true greatness. Somehow that's been lost in the shuffle of advertising. Certainly, for every one great achievement throughout history, there have always been a million items of vapid fluff, but when did we lose the ability as a culture to tell the difference? It makes me sad, and for that, I'm probably being harder on Serenity than it deserves, but it's going to have to be considered a casualty in my war against embraced mediocrity.