Review for Serenity

Introduction

I’m reaching towards the double-dip pile again, taking a quick look at those films that I’ve upgraded to high definition. Next up is the turn of Serenity, unsurprising since I recently gave the double dip quickie review treatment to the Firefly series. I’ve loved this film since the first time I saw it, and it was the best space sci-fi adventure film of 2005. Given that the alternative that year was Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, that’s saying something. Serenity is also an important milestone in the history of HD home entertainment, as early in 2006, Serenity was one of the launch titles on HD DVD. Given the alternatives, Serenity would be that format’s killer app. It would be to HD DVD what The Matrix was to DVD, the title that would get a player into every home. Unfortunately, Sony opted for a different paradigm, focusing not on the software, but the hardware, putting its Blu-ray player into the most popular games console in the world. HD DVD sold in the hundreds of thousands. Millions of gamers had a working Blu-ray player on launch date, even if they had nothing to watch on it. The writing was on the wall, and two years later, Serenity was also released on Blu-ray.


Humanity left Earth when it was no longer able to support life, and they found a solar system replete with worlds and moons to terraform. The Alliance (formed from US and Chinese societies) ruled the 'civilised' inner worlds, while the outer worlds remained independent. Naturally there was a war, and Mal Reynolds was on the losing side of the Independents. After the war, Mal and Zoë, his lieutenant and sole fellow survivor of the Battle of Serenity Valley, bought a battered spaceship and started living the independent life, steering clear of the Alliance at the centre, and the cannibalistic Reavers at the edge of known space, trying to earn enough to keep their stomachs filled. Mal and the crew of Serenity took aboard a couple of fugitives, Simon and River Tam. They were fleeing the Alliance after Doctor Tam liberated his sister from an experimental facility where they were altering her brain. Life for the crew of Serenity grew increasingly complicated thereafter, as the Alliance kept trying to get their science experiment back, and as River regained her sanity, she began to display some remarkable psychic abilities.


Things get tougher as they keep trying to stay ahead of the Alliance. As the film begins, the Alliance's need to recover River Tam intensifies, and an Operative takes command of the hunt. Skilled, dedicated, and an utter true believer, the Operative is a threat on a scale that Mal has never faced before, and methods he can't comprehend are brought into play. That becomes apparent at a bar where Mal and his crew are looking to collect on a heist. River walks in, takes a look at an advert playing on a screen, speaks just one word, and then unleashes a wave of violence that scythes through the bar's clientele. It's only the arrival of her brother that calms her back down. The Alliance have awakened her programming, and that's just the start of the havoc that they wreak on the crew of Serenity. If he wants to survive, Mal will have to finally unlock the secrets hidden in River's mind, and the only clue he has is that single word she spoke, "Miranda".

This review looks more at the technical qualities of the Blu-ray, and if you want more detail about the film, I’ll link you to my review of the DVD.

Picture

The film is presented at 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p, and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the quality of the transfer. It is clear and sharp to be sure, and I certainly didn’t see any significant artefacts. Once again I was blown away by the fidelity of the colours, the sheer vivid, dimensioned nature of the film in high definition, and it certainly isn’t the format’s fault that odd moments of CGI that passed muster on DVD now look obviously limited in HD. What disappoints with Serenity is the dark detail, or lack thereof, with shadows fading away into a constant murky grey, and blacks rarely looking black. Space, thankfully is the right shade of noir, but it’s the shadow detail and contrast in darker scenes that I found lacking.

Sound

Strap yourself in for the audio options. DTS-HD MA 5.1 English is the one most relevant to this review, but you’ll also find two flavours of DTS 5.1 French, one of them Canadian, two flavours of DTS 5.1 Spanish, one of them Latin, and DTS 5.1 Japanese, German and Italian. You’ll find subtitles in those languages, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Mandarin, and Korean. The audio on this disc rocks, one of the few in recent viewings that I’ve actually had to turns the volume down. The surround is put to full use for the action and the music, the subwoofer resonant, the action wholly immersive, while the dialogue remains clear throughout. It’s an excellent audio track.

Extras

The disc presents its contents with an animated menu, and this being a Universal disc, you have the usual U-Control and BD Live options. U-Control offers a host of features during the film’s playback, including a picture in picture cast commentary, picture in picture featurettes and interviews, Mr Universe’s Compendium offering some in-universe trivia, and a Digital Tour of Serenity offering pop-up trivia about the ship. For those like me who are disinclined to chop and change the secondary audio settings of the player for the picture-in-picture videos, there are also subtitles for these features. For the picture in picture cast commentary though you can just switch the audio to the audio cast commentary, exactly the same feature but the audio will be out of sync. You can also alter the volume of the picture in picture material from the menu, which is something I haven’t seen before.


For this Blu-ray release, they upped the extra features in comparison to the DVD and HD DVD, which is certainly welcome.

The aforementioned cast commentary is new for the Blu-ray, and it is also available on this disc as an audio only feature, with director/creator Joss Whedon joined by stars Nathan Fillion, Ron Glass, Summer Glau, and Adam Baldwin.

Alliance Database offers some interactive text and image content to fill us in on the Firefly universe, looking at the worlds, the characters, and the history. This is in HD.

You get four extended scenes running to 6:14 SD.

Take a Walk on Serenity offers a guided tour of the ship running to 4:06 SD.


The Green Clan last 3:07 SD and Joss introduces the film’s cinematographer, and his family who worked on the film.

Session 416 lasts 8:00 SD and is a bit of in-universe fun, with River Tam being psychoanalysed when she was in the Alliance’s tender care.

Carried over from the previous discs is the director’s commentary with Joss Whedon alone. Again both of the commentaries are subtitled. You’ll also have seen the Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary 13:54, Outtakes 6:04, Future History 4:32, What’s in A Firefly 6:33, Re-Lighting the Firefly 9:41, Joss Whedon Introduction 3:54 and A Filmmaker’s Journey 19:55 extras from the DVD, again presented in SD here. The Easter Egg is here too.

Conclusion

Serenity is a fun movie, and I still hold to the opinion that it is a better stand-alone feature than it is a worthy successor to the television series. It doesn’t quite evoke enough of the world established in those 15 episodes to feel like the epic sequel that every Browncoat probably dreamt of, although living up to those expectations would have been impossible (outside of another series). Serenity creates so much new lore, that it steps away from the TV show and feels at times like a different animal. The time skip from the end of the series also hints at a lot of untold story and character development. I count myself lucky in that I saw Serenity before I ever saw Firefly, and for a year or so, I was wholly of the opinion that it was the best thing since sliced bread. It’s got a great story, great action, and terrific characters.


It’s also a movie that I don’t regret double-dipping to HD, even though the transfer itself is imperfect. Those odd twilight and shadow scenes, where it looks like the brightness has been whacked up, where blacks fade to grey, and detail gets lost in the wash, sit at odds with the rest of the film, which has what you could call a reference transfer, where blacks remain black, and detail levels astound, and HD pop occurs in abundance. The audio sounds spectacular throughout though, and it’s one of those rare discs where I actually have to turn the volume down, not up. It’s also a disc packed with extra features, and I beg the cosmos for the time to watch it again with the commentary, and the picture-in-picture interviews and behind the scenes clips. I will make the time... in the next life if not this one.