Serenity and Che Guevara

I finally saw Serenity last night, after having watched all 14 of the original Firefly episodes.

There have been countless glowing reviews written of it, comparing it to Star Wars in its space operaesque elements, or going beyond it, as Orson Scott Card did, calling it the greatest science fiction movie ever.

It's not the greatest science fiction movie ever. I'm not a fan of defining anything as the greatest fill-in-the-blank ever. It's pretty damn great. There's not much I can say that Orson Scott Card didn't already say in his review. It's a movie that makes you think. It's a movie bursting with heart. It's a movie about finding a cause that you're willing to die for.

And that's where Che Guevara comes in. Che Guevara was a man with a cause. Serenity is a movie about finding a cause. About things greater than the individual. About laying your life down for something that matters. These are elements that we've overlooked in recent decades. And it's something that Che Guevara epitomized. I think he would have like the humanity of the movie and the message it embraces.

Serenity isn't meant to be political, I don't think. But in today's America, where we live such self-absorbed lives that we often forget about the rest of the world, it is a welcome breath of fresh air. We've mostly forgotten who Che Guevara was and what he stood for - above and beyond "Communism," he represented the oppressed populations around the world. He didn't have to. He could have taken the easy path, lived his middle class life as a doctor and never thrown himself into a life-or-death struggle. Serenity in its own way, represents just that. And that's what elevates it from merely being a fun space opera/western science fiction movie to something greater than its seemingly humble TV premises.