Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Flashback Corner--Serenity


“This is the Captain.  We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some turbulence and then – explode.”



          So this Avengers movie is coming out.  Now this will get fans of The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and Scarlet Johansson in the seats starting May 4th, or midnight May 3rd.  In short, this movie is going to be huge.  And when I say huge, I mean HUGE!  All of the early buzz ranges from really, really good, to spectacular.  While I have no doubt fans will love this movie, others may be wondering if this movie will fall the way other superhero movies have before it, by the over-saturation of characters.  Too many characters can kill a movie, just ask Batman & Robin and Spider-man 3.  Sure they made money, and kids loved it, but let’s face it, they were bad films.  Mainly because they had to juggle so many characters, you want to give them all their own moments, give them all something to do and also tell a good story.  Now when it comes to Avengers trust me, you don’t need to worry about that, all you have to do is watch Joss Whedon’s last and only film 2005’s “Serenity”.

The story follows the adventures of the crew of the Serenity, a Firefly class ship in the future where the Earth was so over-populated that we had to create settlements on the inner planets which are controlled by the Alliance.  The rest of the galaxy has reverted to an old west mentality; robbing and stealing are a way of life just to scrape by.  Captain Malcolm Reynolds played by the great Nathan Fillion (Castle) is trying to make his way in the universe with his crew and two fugitives running from the law, a doctor and his mentally damaged sister River (Summer Glau) who he broke out of an Alliance facility that was experimenting on her.  The crew stumbles across a secret that River has in her head that the Alliance is trying to keep quiet, to do that they have dispatched the Operative, played as a brilliant villain by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Inside Man).  The film is an incredible mix of action, humor, intrigue, and a crazy Star Wars style ending.

Serenity as a film is a finale of sorts for Whedon’s canceled 2002 TV show Firefly featuring the cast that stars in the film.  While you don’t need to have seen the show to enjoy the film, at the time in the theater I had yet to see one episode of the show.  I did however seek it out afterwards and was amazed at the phenomenal show that Fox let slip through the cracks.  Again what you will notice when watching the film is that Joss Whedon can handle a group dynamic, while telling a fun, and exciting story.  He is the man you want making your Avengers movie.  So give Serenity a watch, you’ll enjoy it as much as I do watching it every year, even now it still reminds me of when I saw it in theaters and I had compared it to Raiders of the Lost Ark, a comparison I still stand by.



--Robert L. Castillo         

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