Thursday, January 05, 2006

Serenity


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Here's my movie review for "Serenity". Serenity is based on the the t.v. series, "Firefly". It's a space cowboy movie set 500 years in the future. The earth has become no longer inhabitable. Humans have learned how to terraform other planets in the universe to make them livable. The Alliance is a type of intergalactic government that seeks to bring order and unity to all the civilized planets. The Alliance wants to make every planetary society a type of utopia. There are other planets that seek to be independent. They want to be free to live as they see fit. A motley crew of space cowboys on the ship, "Serenity" lead by Captain Mal, fly around the galaxy like Han Solo.

One of the members on the ship, River, has strange psychic abilities and kick ass fighting powers. She was a secret experiment by the Alliance. Her brother, the ship's doctor, helps her to escape.

The Alliance try to stop Captain Mal, River, and the rest of the Serenity crew. River had developed schizophrenia from the experiments that the Alliance conducted on her. Her crazy behavior eventually leads them to search for the answers to her nightmares. The Serenity crew eventually discover a shocking secret that may change the course of the universe forever. . .



Anyway, I thought this was an okay movie. I didn't think this movie even came close to the Star Wars movies like some critics say. There were some fun space chase scenes, but not many. I just felt like it was closer to a made-for-tv movie than a blockbuster hit. I think it would have helped if you saw the Firefly series before watching the movie in order to know more about the story. I didn't really feel any emotional connection with any of the characters. The spaceships kinda sucked. The Reavers, gross humanoids that eat people alive, were scary but not that interesting.

The fight scenes were also blase. Nothing special. There seems to be a fascination these days with small young girls who kick butt when they fight. It may be due to the influence of Japanese anime. For some reason, in the future, people use Japanese Kanji as the main written intergalactic language.

Also, what's the deal with people just falling to the floor when walking on a ship that is spinning out of control hurtling towards a planet? I would think that if a space ship is out of control, it would be worse than when someone is walking during an earthquake. Come on. We need more attention to details like this to make movies more believable. You can't just shake the camera and make people think "Oh no! We're losing control!"

There was humor in the movie too, but it was dry. It was mostly just witty one-liners. There wasn't anything too funny. There was less comedy than Star Wars and Star Wars wasn't a funny movie either.

I give this movie a C, 77. I was going to give it a B right after watching it, but while writing this review, there were too many flaws with this movie for it to be a good one.

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