Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

On Sunday, The Gryphon and I, along with the White Rabbit, saw the highly anticipated movie, Serenity, which completes the story arc of the Joss Whedon series, Firefly. For those who don't know, Whedon also created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Firefly was sort of a space western, and the crew are amoral, taking jobs as hired guns, doing things like smuggling or bank heists. Still, they do have their own moral compasses, as becomes evident in the movie.

Serenity answers a number of questions which had arisen during the season. Having seen the entire series, I really enjoyed the movie. Despite the many moments of high drama, Whedon manages to work in enough humor to make the movie easier to watch. That's always been one of the best aspects of his work.

I was wondering if it would be possible for those who haven't seen the series to watch the movie and get anything out of it, but Roger Ebert apparently gave it three out of four stars, and considering he admits to never having seen the series, I suppose that answers my question.

FYI, there are no spoilers in the following paragraphs, so if you haven't yet seen the movie, you don't need to wait to read this.

The movie reminded me of what would typically be a season ender for any Joss Whedon series, where everything is on the line, the truth starts to come out and the heroes find out they've got to take huge chances to fight for the greater good.

Firefly translated really well to the big screen, partly because it was shot in a cinematic style to begin with. Of course, they get to play with that even more in the movie and you get to, for instance, see more of the spaceship than ever in the series.

Without giving anything away, I will say the movie is full of surprises. Even people who think they know some of the unanswered secrets will still find out things they've never known before.

I think Serenity could stand on its own as an action movie, and it's got better dialogue, better acting and better character development than you typically see in such movies. I really feel like this is Whedon's attempt to not only wrap up the story line of the first season, which he didn't get to finish since it was canceled partway through, but also to leave the door open for a further incarnation of the series. Perhaps if this movie continues to do well in the box office, a second season of "Firefly" might pop up somewhere. If not, at least it ties up a lot of the loose ends.

Afterwards, we all went to a place called Ray's Diner, a retro sort of diner, the type that only serves traditional diner food like burgers and fries. I ordered crab cakes, a particular weakness.

We spent a lot of time at dinner sort of deconstructing the movie. Then we all headed back to The White Rabbit's place to hang out. We chatted about things such as a book he's been reading with behind the scenes insight into the original Star Trek. It points out logical blunders as well as providing interesting information about the making of the show.

Then, at The White Rabbit's suggestion, we drove down to Friendly's to get ice cream cones. It was funny; we had to stand in a long line and for some reason people were leaving a huge gap by the counter. So a number of people accidentally jumped in line before they were told otherwise.

The line was the slowest moving ice cream counter I can imagine, probably because they were also getting take out food for people. The ice cream was good, though, and we ate it while strolling down the sidewalk of the shopping plaza.

Back at his place, The White Rabbit showed us some of the improvements to his place, such as work done in the bathroom and furniture his parents had given him. We looked through his video collection, too. He offered to lend us a tape, but most of the ones we were interested in were rarer and therefore, he was reluctant to let them out of his sight.

We talked, too, about the New Year's party our group holds every years. Since 2001, we'd been having a party at a local hotel in the area, where people got rooms and had catered food and a bartender and all. The Paper normally organizes that, but this year she's making plans to go to grad school, so she told everyone she won't be able to attend.

So we were hashing out ideas and decided it might be wise, since some in our group are financially strapped, to look at the possibility of holding it at The White Rabbit's place. We figured that between his place and some other nearby people, we should be able to accommodate anyone who needs to stay over.

At the end of the evening, as we were saying our good-byes, The White Rabbit said he wanted to get together again soon. I had to agree. He's one of my best friends from college, and I don't spend as much time with him as I used to. But that's not The Gryphon's fault; he's more than happy for me to spend time with my friends. It's just that I've been so busy I've not had time beyond scheduled activities.

Now that I've got a lot of the big stuff out of the way, hopefully I'll have more time for fun things.

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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