Space Westerns scratch a specific itch for genre fans. The union of two seemingly disparate aesthetics has been a part of some of the largest and most impactful sci-fi franchises. Star Wars is a story about the chosen one in space, but it’s packed with Western iconography, from saloons to desert landscapes. Star Trek was famously pitched as “Wagon Train to the stars,” referencing the beloved Western series of the ‘60s.
But one story took the Space Western mashup further, resulting in the most seamless union of both subgenres. Annoyingly, it was developed by Joss Whedon, a man whose legacy we’re still reckoning with following allegations of abuse from many of his co-workers.
Serenity marked Whedon’s feature debut, and it’s a sequel and conclusion (for now) to Firefly, the maligned Fox series that aired out of order and was canceled before its first season ended. The film is streaming for free on YouTube.
The final frontier
Released in 2002, Firefly followed a crew of misfits living on the outskirts of a unified galaxy. Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is a veteran of the war for independence, an effort to free some planets from the Alliance. In this universe, the Alliance acts as an encroaching railroad — a centralizing power pushing its reach into the furthest planets, bringing order, surveillance, and “civilization” to territory that would rather be left alone. While not an evil force, it is a flattening one, trading individuality for order.
Mal fought and survived the war, but was on the losing side, leaving him as a familiar Western figure: an outlaw and former soldier with no country to fight for, scraping by with his crew by taking odd-and-end jobs.
Serenity picks up right after the series’ conclusion. Released in 2005 after fans campaigned for it, the film hits many of the series’ major themes on a grander and more cinematic scale. Mal’s crew is made up of Zoe Washburne (Gina Torres), his second-in-command; Wash (Alan Tudyk), Zoe’s husband and the ship’s pilot; Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), the group’s ruthless mercenary; Simon Tam (Sean Maher), the brilliant doctor; and River (Summer Glau), his sister. It’s a ragtag crew in the old Western tradition, thrown together by circumstance rather than love or loyalty.
River is one of the most Whedon-esque characters and plays a key role. While Mal is the protagonist and the character that walks us through the story, River is the catalyst, with the film exploring her past and the experiments she was subjected to by the Alliance, which have turned her into a sleeper agent, triggered by subliminal messages that weaponize her and make her dangerous to the crew. Amid all of these shifting relationships, the group is pursued by The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a relentless enforcer hunting River. It prompts them to ask themselves if keeping River safe is worth the risk.
And while Serenity is a sequel to a TV show, it feels like a fully realized film, with Whedon taking advantage of the grander medium to tell a higher-stakes story that doesn’t forget the characters at its core. It’s filled with space battles and fight scenes with elaborate choreography, freeing Whedon from the constraints of network television; these are not the clumsy fights from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Whedon makes the Western his own
The idea of the Western is at the root of Firefly and Serenity. According to Whedon, the world was born after reading Michael Shaara’s historical novel The Killer Angels, centered on the Battle of Gettysburg as a turning point in the Civil War. In one of Serenity’s DVD bonus features, Whedon said he became “obsessed with the idea of life on the frontier,” which then made him think of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s beloved ship.
Instead of focusing on grand politics and key figures in history, he wanted to focus on something more intimate. “The personal politics are the only politics that really interest me,” Whedon said in Joss Whedon: The Biography (via io9). “I’m not going to make this big, didactic polemic — I’m just going to say, ‘When there are shifts in a planet, those tiny little guys are the ones who are affected. So let’s hang out with them — not the Federation heads or the Jedi Council.’”
It’s a sensibility that permeates Serenity. While the film can be silly in concept and tone, having perhaps one too many quippy Whedon lines, it never forgets that its protagonists are coping with trauma, whether it’s the loss of the world they knew or the theft of their agency. In a career full of heartbreaking and at times sudden deaths, Serenity contains some of Whedon’s most ruthless creative decisions.
Serenity is the ultimate Space Western mashup, marrying the scope of Star Wars with the thoughtfulness of Star Trek, all while never losing sight of the outlaws at its center.
Serenity is free to stream on YouTube.