Serenity

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Firefly fans should be pretty pleased with Serenity. Ordinary people should be, too. Writer-director Joss Whedon directs this film adaptation of his own sci-fi TV series with confidence and style, giving audiences more to cheer about in space since long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

But the movie is not just a retread of Firefly. In fact, many of the signature elements of the TV series have disappeared: the cowpies and cattle, for instance, and those mysterious men with the blue gloves. More importantly, Serenity fleshes out the universe and storyline of Firefly—and takes its characters to places the series has never gone before.

Malcolm Reynolds, owner and captain of the Firefly-class smuggling ship Serenity, is on a journey of faith. He used to believe in a cause—until the leaders of the rebellion for which he volunteered abandoned his batallion to slaughter. Now that the Alliance has its boots fimly on the necks of the once-independent terraformed “border planets,” a burned out rebel like Reynolds is left rudderless. He goes where the wind takes him, as he remarks to Inara Serra, the professional escort once based on Serenity. And when his crew members tell him to have faith, he replies, “Not today.” He has no use for the “fuzzy God” of Christians or the Buddha to whom Inara prays. But when a trusted friend tells him, “I don’t care what you believe; just believe in it,” he steers a course directly into the wind that would sweep him away. At first, we wonder if he will merely become a cheap version of what he wants to destroy; but when he learns the truth, the truth sets him—and a whole host of others—free.

The Alliance Operative who hunts Serenity and its passenger, River Tam, is also on a journey of faith. In contrast to Reynolds, though, he starts as a True Believer—and as Shepherd Book tells Reynolds, believers of any sort are dangerous. And there are different sorts of believers. Book believes in Christ. Dr. Simon Tam believes in his sister. River believes in God. Inara believes in Buddha. The Operative, though, believes in engineered human potential, in building “better worlds”—even if it means slaughtering innocent children. And as his and Reynold’s paths cross, we see that the two men are not so dissimilar. But the Operative doesn’t need to learn the intrinsic value of belief; rather, he must learn that there are better things to believe in than human potential. And the truth of this new belief frees him from his dogged pursuit of Reynolds, his search for River Tam, and from the evil he does in service of the Alliance.

River Tam is also on a journey of faith; but she does not move toward faith, nor from one faith to another. Instead, she moves in faith. A literally tortured soul, she longs for deliverance from the damned voices that the Alliance has forced upon her memory. At the apogee of her journey, she nearly loses all hope and cries out, “Please, God, make me a stone!” But the hope that sustains her is “a hope that does not disappoint,” as the Bible says in Hebrews 11. And when River Tam learns the truth, the truth literally sets her free, too. When the time comes, she is no longer the protected but the protector.

Faith is dangerous, Serenity says, because True Believers of any sort—hijackers, abortion clinic bombers, Mother Teresa, Malcom Reynolds—are those who change the world. The rest are just along for the ride. But make no mistake. Serenity does not suggest that one belief is just as good another. It does, however, make a strong case for believing in something as the first step toward finding truth. And hope will sustain the journey. “I know,” says River Tam. “We’re going for a ride.” And what a ride!

But this film is not ultimately about faith. It’s about love. The film begins there and ends there. The Operative can see it in the eyes of Simon Tam to begin with; and whether Reynolds admits it or not, a love of Serenity has always driven him.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. —1 Corinthians 13:13

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The Greatest Game Ever Played

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This movie is ostensibly about golf. What it mostly seems to be about is special effects: golfball POV shots, shots of golfballs hurtling into the camera, shots from under the ball, crowds and landscapes that dissolve, smoke rings that float impossibly downward, unnaturally cute ladybugs and literally countless pirouetting, zooming, fading and panning scoreboard numbers. I’m pretty sure that The Greatest Game Ever Played single-handedly kept a hundred CG artists employed for a year. Director Bill Paxton overplays the special effects often and early, using a 1 wood when a 5 iron would do—and he unfortunately double-bogeys when it matters most.

The film is also about class struggle, and it succeeds better in this department. Both of the film’s legendary golf heroes—Englishman Harry Vardon and the Boston-area teen Francis Ouimet—are from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak, and are naturally gifted at a game dominated a century ago by the snootily well-heeled. Vardon and Ouimet both must overcome arrogance, prejudice and terrible manners to win major tourneys. And win they do, in very winning performances.

One of the great tragedies of medieval Western culture, which was borne of and nurtured by the Christian church, was that it never quite “got” the Christian principle that in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). A massive red sandstone fireplace lintel in the ruins of Scotland’s Huntley Castle illustrates the point. It is inscribed with the words of Romans 8:28, which says that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” The Huntleys certainly had it good, and must have been convinced of God’s reciprocal love for them. But what did the Huntleys think of the disadvantaged laborers in their mines? Was their plight evidence of a lack of love for God? Or was misery just God’s way of teaching them some lesson? I certainly don’t know what the Huntleys thought, but the historic evidence suggests that sharing a little more of their wealth with their workers was not a part of the Huntleys’ feudal Christian agenda.

Christianity has, of course, also been at the forefront of correcting such social injustices in the West. Crusades against the slave trade, drives for women’s suffrage, marches to promote civil rights, and South African campaigns of forgiveness have all been primarily motivated by Christian values.

Correcting social injustice is always hard. Learning a new way of thinking is never easy. But in The Greatest Game Ever Played, Vardon’s parliamentary-minded promoter and Ouimet’s labor-minded father both are forced to see a new, very Christian way. The former realizes that honor is more valuable to Vardon than prestige; and the latter learns that dreams are more powerful for his son than institutionalized injustice.

Along the way, though, Paxton’s bio-flick sadly manages to evoke too many of what are now clichés from similar films: The Natural, Iron Will, even Aladdin. And at the end, you may be surprised to find that, all along, the film was actually supposed to be about friendship. Somehow, I missed that.

So the final round of golf between Vardon and Ouimet may have indeed been The Greatest Game Ever Played. But Paxton apparently had little faith that it was the Most Interesting Story Ever Told, and felt he needed to pad its themes with huge wads of digital fluff and feel-good bromides. The result is certainly not the Greatest Film Ever Made.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be. If you’re in the mood for a well-acted but over-directed family-oriented golf story, this might be just the ticket. And you can take my word for it, because this is the Greatest Movie Review Ever Wrote.

Darn! I muffed the putt.