Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

I have to admit that I walked into Serenity with a chip on my shoulder. While I am not one of those people who walk around wearing “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” t-shirts, I do think of Buffy as revolutionary, and thought Firefly was very good too. And… and… Ok. I’ll admit it. I _might_ be one of those people who walk about wearing a “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” t-shirts, and this possibility makes me a little nervouse. As a result, when the lights went down in the theater on Serenity’s opening day, I was ready and determined to like the movie because it was good, not because I was a fanboy. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the movie not only entertained me, it moved me a little as well. As great as the film was, managed, strange as it sounds, to reaffirm my belief that Joss Whedon is a great master of the medium of television.

First off, the film demonstrates what we all already know — Joss started as a script doctor and will die a script doctor. Serenity manages to be unbelievably tightly written without sacrificing a certain depth as is done in, say, the original Star Wars or Indiana Jones flicks, which are so briskly paced that the dialogue explicates the backstory and character motivations that are necessary to get you to the next fight scene — and little else. So it’s pointless to note that people unfamiliar with the TV series will have no trouble picking up the backstory to the film or that Joss continually writes himself into and out of corners in the film — he’s a script doctor. This is what he _does_.

For those of us who have seen the original series, there are some small differences. In the series, Kaylee is a shy, vulnerable tom boy unsure of how to court her gentleman doctor. In the movie she’s a bit more the randy farm girl saddled with a disasterous masturbation one-liner. Mal is also more darkly drawn. On the show he the strong silent type, a cynical outsider with a heart of gold and unexpected depths of empathy. In the movie he seems not just driven, but much more conflicted. Joss may be going to far when he predicts Nathan Fillion is the next Harrison Ford, but I have to admit that Fillion certainly deserves to be. Adam Baldwin continues to shine as Jayne, and his ability to turn a two dimensional thug intended for comic relief into a three dimensional thug intended for comic relief is a credit both to his own acting abilities and Joss’s ability to write parts that good actors can sound out and round out. Chiwetel Ejiofor equits himself admirably, and Sean Maher is still pretty. Although to be fair to Sean, there points in the film where I heard some scratching coming from inside the paper bag he was trying to act his way out of. Ok that was mean, and he doesn’t deserve it. But I couldn’t let a line like that go.

Of course there isn’t much time for character development in the film. The most important thing about Buffy, in my mind, was its length — a single story arc (reconceived during fliming, but still basically a single story) stretched out over hours and hours of showtime and years and years of production. Joss demonstrated with Buffy that one could develop characters and plots across vast stretches of time while still preserving the coherence of a single episode — providing you had good enough writing. But if Buffy is a marathon, Serenity is a sprint. Joss doesn’t have time to let the characters develop, or let the mythos of his world mature. So instead of capturing our attention with painstaking wrought polyphony, Joss just writes everything with a double forte. The stakes start out high in the movie, and they keep getting higher. We can forgive the occasionally stilted western dialect — laid on more heavily here than in the show — and the intermittent bits of atrocious Mandarin — thankfully rarer in the film — and the “a man’s gotta walk tall” hyperbole because, well, these people’s lives are on the line.

The movie also manages chase and combat scenes well. I’ve never been impressed by the fight sequences in Buffy, but then again, a good fight sequences in a movie can take as long to choreograph, film, and edit together as an entire season of a TV show. Most reviewers were impressed with the “Summer Glau kicks-ass” sections of the film. I thought the choreography was ok — a typical chinese-influenced, LA hybrid thing — and I suppose some people still find it interesting when Joss Whedon writes physical strong female characters dealing with emotional trauma with the help of their gang of friends. I worry that this sort of thing is all he’s ever going to produce. So I fear for Wonder Woman and hope that Joss doesn’t end up being a one-trick pony. Much more interesting to me was the close-up work done by Chiwetel Ejiofor (and his stunt doubles) — a lot of precise short-range work perfectly in keeping with the character. It reminded me of the knife fighting sequence from the end of Brandon Lee’s ‘Rapid Fire,’ an underappreciated film which with a lot of interesting Jeet Kune Do work in it.

I’ve heard Serenity described as the Firefly season finale, but I think of it more as the pilot that Joss never got to make — not surprising, since he’s made no secret of his ambition to resurrect the TV series. As much as I was drawn in by Serenity — and I was — there was something about it that made me feel that while Joss aimed and succeeded in making a great film, what he had really created as utterly superb television. It’s hard to say why I think this — the pacing? The dialogue? The striking (and often elaborate) camera work of someone who _finally_ got the time and money to do all the fancy shots he wanted? I think the true test of the film is if it bears repeated rewatching — I’m not sure it will. Regardless I think he has a much clearer understanding of what he does than Tarantino. The comparison between the two of them is apt — both are from the first (and perhaps last?) wave of directors to grow up working in video stores. “Actors start as waiters — directors start as video store clerks” Joss once remarked. While both Tarantino and Whedon wield the full force of pop culture, Joss continues to deliver great television (even in the movie theater), while Tarantino’s aspirations to ‘art’ (Kill Bill, Foxy Brown) have, in my opinion, failed. Hmm…. now that I think of it it would be interesting to compare Joss to Roberto Rodriguez (they both write music for their scores, tend to be polymaths, etc. etc.). I’ll have to think more about that.

At any rate, calling Serenity superb television is a statement about attitude and atmosphere, not a put down. If anything, the line between television and movies as a genre is fading, and it seems to me that Joss had a lot to do with this. There have always been made for TV miniseries, but the success of through-written, season long shows like Buffy and The Sopranos (and their inheritors such as Six Feet Under), and the rise of high-budget miniseries and microseries such as the Sci-Fi channel’s Dune and Clone War series have demonstrated that there are lots of different genres to experiment with. Crossing over from TV to movies (and computer games, and novels, etc. etc.) is also nothing new — think of the Star Trek franchise. And if anyone has mastered the ability to leverage financially risky undertakings with a fan base, it’s Joss Whedon. It will be interesting to see how and where Firefly finally lands — I for one am dying for more.