Sci-Fi July week 4 – we watched Serenity

With glorious weather above and slightly breezy wind constantly testing my projection screen, for the final installment of Sci-Fi July we watched Serenity (aka Firefly). Around 20+ people showed up but unfortunately I didn’t snap off any crowd shots. I think it was a wonderful conclusion to a series, and I hope all 4 films together show how diverse, fun and eye-opening the sci-fi genre can be. My introductory text for Serenity is below, with some screencaps at the end – so if you’re piqued by my words and those visuals I really recommend giving the TV show and film a viewing. Thanks to everyone who came out, gave me their time, I hope you had a really wonderful sci-fi-time!

Welcome to the fourth and final installment of Sci-Fi July, a rooftop film series of the science-fiction genre.

The movie you’re about to watch tonight is the afterstory to one of the shortest lived television series of all time. A television series marred by extremely low ratings and botched maneuvers by the FOX corporation that led to its premature cancellation. A television series built around nine characters in space, a motley crew aboard a spaceship and their run-ins with the law, morality, political and ethical corruptness of their – our – universe. A television series that was a failure by certain specific measures, was resuscitated by fanatical reverence and given new life in 2005 with the release of Serentiy, the story of a Firefly-class spaceship.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a movie unto its own – it stands it’s ground independent of the television show, but I am an author and artist intrigued by history, so I want to tell you some. And what’s really beautiful about Serenity once you scratch below the surface is that this is not the history of some galaxy far, far away, but an intricately-woven history of America’s past projected into the future. Less a space opera and more a space western, Serenity is an allegory about America’s frontier, anti-federal sentiments of the Old West, and a reflection on the Civil War and the proclamatory fight for freedom of the Reconstruction era.

As a line from the theme song goes, “Burn the land and boil the sea, you can’t take the sky from me.”

Of course there are some leaps of faith to understand the where and how of this story. Again I’ll reinforce that this story stands on its own, but I want to clarify some historical underpinnings. The opening scene of the film helps lay the foundation for a brief understanding of where this story takes place, and how we got there, but just to clarify:

The year is 2518. Over the first 450 years of the 21st millenium, the American and Chinese superpowers eventually grew to dominate the world’s political and cultural spheres. They would eventually merge, forming the Anglo-Sino Alliance. Thus throughout the film you will hear Mandarin phrases spoken, key expressions as the characters subtly acknowledge their Chinese “ancestry”. The dialogue will also reference America’s past, particularly names or events crucial to the outcome of the Civil War.

In this future, the Earth’s resources are spent. Human civilization has migrated to a new solar system made up of dozens of planets and hundreds of moons, leaving behind Earth-that-Was. New earths are terraformed and colonised – some are rich in resources and materials, while others are barren and lawless.

This “space frontier” is the setting for a future war between the Alliance and the outer planets – the Independents. After five years of war the Alliance emerges the victor and brings a system and code of law to all planets. With the defeat of the Independents whose soldiers are known as browncoats for their western-like trench coats, some decide to buck the norms and status quo of this new “civilization”, and attempt to make a living as space couriers of questionable cargo.

Meet Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, his ship and crew. Along the way they pick up two kids, Simon and River Tam – River is something of an Alliance government experiment gone good or bad, depending on whose side you’re on, and Simon is – was – an accomplished doctor who is now a fugitive after rescuing his sister, the love of his life.

Serenity is a “total narrative”, and if you’re at all intrigued by tonight’s film I totally recommend going back to watch the television series, which is an intricately woven history with deep character developments. Some of those developments were never expanded upon due to the television series getting cancelled, while others are “put to rest” too early in this film, which is disappointing, but such is the nature of fandom. I’m a BIG fan of Serenity. And I hope you will be too.

This film contains some of the most remarkable visual effects to date, includes a hacker known as Mr. Universe, cannibalistic space zombies known as Reavers, and with all good sci-fi there is some trivia! In contemporary techie culture the Google application known as Google Wave is named after the Firefly series, and referencing literary history is the planet Miranda, named after Shakespeare’s Miranda in The Tempest, who says in Act V, scene I: “O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!”

This is the story of those people.

And in conclusion, a small back-story.

Sci-Fi July emerged because during the winter when it was cold out and most of us were holed up and trying to stay warm, I started screening films informally. One night I screened one of the best sci-fi films of all time, Dark City, and to my amazement NO ONE else had seen it before. I was baffled, stunned. As I scrolled through the names of other films, it turned out there were numerous films that only one or two people had seen this film, but not that film, etc. Thus emerged Sci-Fi July, and my attempt to screen a film that while popular within sci-fi circles, might not be so acknowledged by a larger public. With each screening, only one or two people in the audience had seen the movie previously, so with 15-20 people showing up for each screening I consider that something of a success.

Other films that were considered but eventually passed up because I could only screen one film per week, included:

Cherry 2000
The Running Man
Dark City
Final Fantasy The Spirits Within
Black Hole
Tetsuo the Iron Man
Gattaca
Innerspace
Metropolis (1927)
Quartermass and the Pit
Westworld

the list goes on and on. And in my quest to compile my own lists I encountered Moria which is a wonderful database of sci-fi, fantasy and horror films. Enjoy!