« Official Launch of VOS REGNUM DEI | Main | The Jesus Train »
Serenity and Sin
Last evening I attended a viewing of the film Serenity at a friend's house. It was an action packed film that had a fast-paced story. This film is a follow on to a failed TV series. Fox produced a series called Firefly. They botched the series by showing episodes out of order on different days of the week and even missed showing some of the episodes. Then they wondered why the viewership never picked up and canceled the show.
In comes Universal who picked up rights to the film and produced a movie that continues with the story line. Don't worry... you can watch Serenity even if you haven't seen Firefly. I plan on going back and watching the Firefly episodes, which are now out on DVD.
One particular theme that came out of watching Serenity, Sin. Sin was mentioned in the story a handful of times. Most prominently an assassin who works for the Alliance discusses the sinfulness of the world around them. The Alliance is a confederation of planets at the center of the galaxy where the story takes place.
By the end of the film, the viewer is clearly shown the reason for all the events taking place in the world, or galaxy in which they live, Sin. It was the sin, violent sin, which caused the Alliance to take certain courses of action that backfired on them. It was sin that forces the assassin to go after those who oppose the Alliance and it is sin that has cause one of the main characters, River, to has suffered during and after her captivity.
There were two responses or shall I say one lack of response and one response that bothered me.
The first was the lack of response. There is a dialogue between the Assassin and the leader of the rogue faction that is opposing the Alliance where the Assassin admits that in the "sinless" world the Alliance hopes to create there is no place for him. He sees his own violence, though justified in his own mind, as being sinful. The question raised here is not dealt with, namely, is justified violence sin or even is there any violence that is justified? The larger question of right and wrong and justice being served is never dealt with.
The unsatisfactory response in this movie dealt with how we deal with sin. The Alliance believed that they would be able to use a course of action involving war and violence along with developing technology and drugs that would take the violence out of people. Isn't this the course of action we have seen fail in our own world? Utopianism is doomed to failure because even though it sometimes correctly recognizes human sinfulness it fails in its response to eliminate this sinfulness.
Typically in these utopian endeavors failure is either experienced in the creation of this utopian dream world or once the dream world has been created the leaders are just as corrupt as any other leader and it is less than ideal and more typically it is an evil dictatorship under the name of being utopia.
Overall, the film got me thinking which not hard to do. I would highly recommend this film and think it has great potential for stirring discussion amongst friends who view it together. It is an easy way for followers of Jesus to have a discussion on the fallenness around us and the failed responses and ultimately the only satisfactory response, the Gospel.
UPDATE: After my friend read this blog post, she reminded me that there were two very strange items in the story line that distracted from the plot. The first was a "Mike TV" like personality who is the "signal-man". He is responsible for the signal intelligence given to the rogue faction that is fighting against the Alliance. What would you choose for a name of a character like this? Remember he is a skinny TV addict kind of fellow who looks like he should still be living in his parent's basement. The screenwriter made a mistake when they named him "Mr. Universe". All I could think of when this was mentioned was a greasy muscle popping dude.
The second distraction was a girl who was supposedly the engine mechanic on the ship. All of her speaking lines show her to be aloof and it is not convincing whatsoever that she is the mechanic that keeps the ship running. Her only contribution is to add a romantic subplot to the story.
