Serenity Sucks

Let me open this up with a spoiler...

The characters of SHEPHERD BOOK and WASH (the black chick's husband) DIE by the end the new geek movie SERENITY.

To the majority of you who are not already Josh Weadon Kool-Aid Drinkers, this probably doesn't mean shit to you, nor should it. You have no...ahem..."emotional investment" with these characters.

Those of you who still jerk off to a cum-stained picture of Alyson Hannigan probably want to kill me. Ohhh, I'm scared. I'll start worrying as soon as you can drag your 300 pound ass up the stairs of your mom's basement. That will give me a couple of day head start on you; after all, 99 cent Big Mac day doesn't start until Monday...

Why am I trying to spoil this movie? SO YOU WON'T SEE IT. Through an insidious campaign of viral marketing and plants from Universal Studios, most people get the impression that SERENITY is the next MATRIX or LORD OF THE RINGS. Fans of the WB inspired dreck known as BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL have been encouraged to take their friends (who actually have taste since they avoided that dog vomit in the first place) to the theaters to experience the film. The makers of SERENITY are trying to make a pseudo-cult TV show into an actual cult.

Folks, don't drink the Kool-Aid. SERENITY is nothing more than the biggest sci-fi fanboy wank-off to ever be foisted on the moviegoing public this year, and keep in mind, this year also brought us REVENGE OF THE SITH.

At the very least, the intelligence-insulting SERENITY makes one admire the vision and the craft behind the STAR WARS prequels. The world Lucas created is something that sprang completely from his mind, with its own languages, customs, and cultures. Josh Weadon is no George Lucas. Instead of carefully planning his setting, he haphazardly slaps together "The Western" with the "The Space Ship" and throws in some Chinese curse words and thinks that equals ORIGINALITY. Well folks, if that is what Hollywood thinks of us, then this Box Office slump is going to continue for some time...

SERENITY lacks even the most basic production values. Lucas is a true craftsman, constantly pushing the boundaries of special effects and sound. Josh Weadon cannot even be bothered to keep his lens in focus for the space battle scenes. There are several instances during the scenes that take place in space where sound effects are noticably absent. The executive watching over this film must have had his face buried in a pile of coke when this movie was in post-production.

Josh Weadon steals shamelessly from STAR WARS, but only the superficial elements, not the things that made us fall in love with the series. The Captain is obviously just Han Solo 2.0, but without Harrison Ford's wit and charm. Jayne is nothing but Chewbacca with less hair and less interesting dialogue. Shepherd Book is a black Obi-Wan Kenobi, only stripped of any Force powers that might have made him an interesting character. In a shockingly sexist move, two of the four female characters are offensive stereotypes. One is the sex-obsessed mechanic, the other is the ship's withered old crackwhore. God help any impressionable young girls who watch this thing I hestitantly call a film.

Even worse, Weadon cannibalizes himself by making one of the female characters a Slayer. Proving that Weadon hasn't had an original thought since 1992, he always must have a young girl with Kung-Fu powers that can beat up hordes of anonymous baddies. Of course, she is the one to rescue the hapless crew of SERENITY after their trip to the vampire planet.

If you can get a Weadon Kool-Aid drinker to stop stroking themselves to their master's Genius and ask them to objectively state the reasons WHY they like his work, you will typically get two responses. The Characters and The Dialogue. I don't know what drugs they are on, but I need to find their dealer because Weadon's dialogue SUCKS. It is all spoken at a sub-GILMORE GIRLS cadence, and loaded with pop-cultural references that no one is likely to get since...duh, this takes place 500 years in the future. Everybody speaks Chinese, yet there are no Chinese people in space so this device is uniformly useless. Weadon fanboys will also talk about his "wit". Let's take a look at a passage of dialogue from SERENITY to see what passes for wit in Weadon World.

Captain: "Would you like to run the ship?"

Chewbacca-Wannabe: "Yeah."

Captain: "Well...you can't."

If that is what he considers "wit", then Weadon needs to watch and rewatch BAD BOYS II, to see how characters can naturally and wittily interact with each other.

To sum up, do not waste your money on a ticket to SERENITY. Spend it on lunch, donate it to the victims of Hurrican Rita, or throw it in the fucking gutter. If you MUST see it, please, download it off BitTorrent or KaZaa. Just make sure that your cash doesn't find it's way into Josh Weadon's pocket and encourage him to make (*shudder*) sequels to this stinking pile of pigshit. The TV series failed for a good reason. Let's ensure that this movie does as well.