It Entertains, But "Serenity" Gives No Peace
Movie Review by Christopher Patrick Nelson

The average man is stronger than the average woman. However, in his youthquake phenomenon television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer , writer Josh Wedon ignored what everybody knows, took a rail-thin Sarah Michelle Gellar and cast her as the humanity's Warrior Savior. In the world of the show, every generation or so some young woman is chosen to be “the Slayer” for intense hand-to-hand combat with demons and vampires, guns being useless against them. In his newer series, and in the film based on it, Serenity, a rail-thin teenager of the future is bio-engineered, retrofitted for intense hand-to-hand combat. This causes some problems here in the real world.

The strongest man in the world is stronger than the strongest woman. In the movie, super-aggressive savages of the void known as Reavers swarm on the skinny girl and are rendered helpless by her brawling skills. The same thing happens when she takes out everyone in a bar without so much as picking up a weapon. The problem with this is that studies by people with an interest in supersoldiers   (like the U.S. military) have shown that women at their physical peak around age 30 have the abilities of a 50-year-old man. In this film, when all the good guys are out of ammunition, the young woman River simply starts busting heads and saves the day. But actual adult human females have strength concentrated in their broad hips for childbirth – which is why in the 1940's they were referred to as ‘broads.” (Yes, this is sexist.) Men on the other hand have strength massed in their shoulders and upper body   -- for fighting.

The weakest man is stronger than the weakest woman in the world. Films like Serenity, consciously or unconsciously, are saying something, and thus they have a message. They become successes because they speak to people, and like Stars Wars or Star Trek, they often become those people's myths. The space ships look pretty cool and low-tech here, the villains pull off that hardest science fiction trick of evil without a mask or alien status, and the plot throws many of its major turns quite unexpectedly. It is better executed than the last three Star Wars movies. But there are people born female building their identity from the world around them, and it is harmful and false flattery to tell them what Whedon   does here. This piece of cinema is a rare treat in how entertaining its craft is, but women have their own unique contributions to make to world without trying to imitate men. Serentiy says otherwise; it is well-made, but not good.