Serenity Analysis -- Mal's Story

I re-watched Serenity at Baycon yesterday – eight years or so after I first watched Firefly, I understand movies better.

The first time around with Serenity, I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I could say why. The writing isn’t nearly as good as the series proper, most of the cast has no character development, and the business issues kept the Firefly name and theme song out of Serenity. But it was still satisfying, and now I understand why: Mal is a perfect example of the hero’s journey.

For those who don’t know, the Hero’s Journey is a story structure that’s an expansion on the standard three-act template; you’ll hear people refer to Star Wars (Episode IV) especially. If you look at the way Serenity is structured, it’s very similar to A New Hope, with some of the exact same story beats (dead family on a desert planet, anyone?).

The entire point of Serenity is Mal. Period. Other characters reach endings, but only Mal develops and overcomes challenges. And every change that happens and decision that Mal makes is reflected in the wider world. He travels out to and back from places when he’s making a spiritual pilgrimage, and the Serenity herself suffers as he does. It’s this reflection that makes his hero’s journey so satisfying.

The constant movement from world to world punctuates each stage of the hero’s journey. There are twelve stages to the hero’s journey, and generally they’re a progression as the hero learns more and more —except there points where the hero is set back, or returns to the scene of an earlier defeat with the tools to triumph. Mal and the Serenity have two returns in Serenity: going back to Book, and returning from Miranda.

In the first case, it’s the refusal to face the Alliance, and trying to run from the fight again. As Jayne puts it, it’s hiding under the Shepherd’s skirts. For the first part of the movie, Mal has tried everything to keep his ship flying, and he’s been willing to cut out crew and hide with a monastery to do it. This return is a failure – page through your dictionary and find the phrase “Carthiginian peace”.

When he’s coming back from Miranda, though, he’s finally achieved apotheosis. He’s returning and bringing the truth, and charging straight into the guns of the Alliance with it; the fact that the truth is a fleet of murderous Reavers is just a physical manifestation of his own determination to see justice served.

The other way Mal’s journey is illustrated is in the Serenity herself. The Serenity was always the tenth character on the show, and because Mal is The Captain and the ship is his home, it’s a powerful mirror for him. When the Serenity is desecrated to pass as a Reaver ship, it hurts as much because it’s scarring the Serenity as because they’re desecrating the dead. (Maybe more, if you’re cynical.) No grim and gritty statement from Mal could ever show his willingness to go savage as scarring his home. This corresponds to the descent into the underworld – the grim second movie of the trilogy, if you will, when the hero gives into anger and flirts with the dark side.

The flip side is the return to Mr. Universe’s planet, and the destruction of the Serenity as they pass the blockade. Unless I missed something, the Serenity has burnt off its obscene decorations and fixed the smudge trail, purging Mal’s dark side. Instead, it gets the shit kicked out of it – the same way that Mal does as he fights the Operative. The only thing Mal has that keeps him flying is gumption, same as the Serenity, and the damage on his ship amps up just how close he gets pushed. The fact that the Serenity never actually gets destroyed is a complete reflection of Mal’s character, though, and patching her back up in the dénouement also reflects his completion of his journey.  

Additional note: The final battle the rest of the crew fights, where they’re holding the line against Reavers? The Battle of Serenity Valley. It’s a perfect bookend with the series’ opening scene, with Mal getting to go back to when he believed – and this time, he gets to win.

So, tl;dr version? Serenity is the hero’s journey, starring Captain Malcom Reynolds, and the use of setting and the Serenity herself is one of the best implementations of the hero’s journey that I’ve ever seen. There are tons of other issues with the movie, and an ensemble franchise like this is done a disservice by focusing exclusively on one character, but

(Also, I know someone’s going to say it – no, this story had nothing to do with River. She is not Character Arc B. I’m sorry, but her character arc was going from being crazy with an unstoppable mode, to being a crazy who can intentionally activate unstoppable mode, with nothing in between. River was a part of the plot, like the rest of the crew, rather than actually being a driving character.)