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The feature film Serenity (2005) was a continuation of Joss Whedon's television series Firefly, which lasted less than a single season. The series had an intense fan following, but received less than stellar treatment from its network, which regularly pre-empted the show and aired the episodes out of order, despite the fact that there was a continuous underlying story. When the series, including three unaired episodes, was released on DVD, it proved popular enough to justify the commissioning of a full-length, theatrically released motion picture, with Whedon as screenwriter and director.
One of the challenges the film version faced was the need to reprise the basic story from the series without being repetitive. The franchise is an example of old-fashioned space opera, which pays little attention to science. The setting is a single solar system, apparently one with numerous planets and moons. These have, through terraforming or natural causes, breathable atmospheres and Earth-standard gravity. The inner planets have joined to create The Alliance—a repressive, vaguely Orwellian government. The Alliance has recently used its military strength to defeat the outer colonies, who are more freedom-oriented, although poorly developed.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.
Malcolm Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion, is an embittered ex-rebel who supports himself and his crew by performing odd jobs in their rundown ship, Serenity—not always strictly legal jobs. They have given refuge to Dr. Simon Tam (Sean Maher) and his disturbed sister, River Tam (Summer Glau), whom he rescues from government control in the opening sequence of the film. The balance of the movie takes place after the events shown on television. We learn more about River, who has telepathic powers and who has been trained as a superwarrior by the government. The fugitives are pursued by an emotionless, committed agent of the government who believes, correctly, that River has eavesdropped on secrets which the central government would not want revealed.
Some but not all of the questions raised in the original series are resolved. The government's accidental extermination of an entire colony is revealed, and the Tams are theoretically off the hook, but Reynolds and his crew have made fresh enemies in the process, and three crew members are lost. The captain's tentative romance with a professional sexual companion, Inara (Morena Baccarin), proceeds without making progress. The climactic space battle and fight to the near-death are both predictable, but the former is spectacularly staged and the latter involves a clever plot twist. Despite its occasional implausibility, Serenity is graced with believable characters, as well as moments of witty dialogue.
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