Serenity (film) - Themes and Cultural Allusions

Themes and Cultural Allusions

While the film depicts the Alliance as an all-powerful, authoritarian-style regime, Whedon is careful to point out that it is not so simple as that. "The Alliance isn't some evil empire," he explains, but rather a largely benevolent bureaucratic force. The Alliance's main problem is that it seeks to govern everyone, regardless of whether they desire to belong to the central government or not. What the crew of Serenity represent—specifically Mal and his lifestyle—is the idea that people should have the right to make their own decisions, even if those decisions are bad.

The Operative embodies the Alliance and is, as Whedon describes, the "perfect product of what's wrong with the Alliance". He is someone whose motives are to achieve a good end, a "world without sin". The Operative believes so strongly in this idea that he willingly compromises his humanity in furtherance of it—as he himself admits, he would have no place in this world. In contrast, Mal is, at the movie's beginning, a man who has lost all faith. By the end of the movie, however, Mal has finally come to believe in something so strongly—individual liberty—that he becomes willing to lay down his life to preserve it.

Whedon has said that the most important line spoken in the film is when Mal forces the Operative to watch the Miranda footage at the climax of the film, promising him: "I'm going to show you a world without sin". Whedon makes the point that a world without sin is a world without choice, and that choice is ultimately what defines humanity. According to Whedon, the planet "Miranda" was named for William Shakespeare's Miranda in The Tempest, who in Act V, scene I says: "O brave new world, / That has such people in't!" The Alliance had hoped that Miranda would be a new kind of world, filled with peaceful, happy people, and represents the "inane optimism of the Alliance".

The Fruity Oaty Bar commercial is partially inspired by Mr. Sparkle, the mascot of a fictional brand of dish-washing detergent, who was featured in The Simpsons episode "In Marge We Trust". Whedon mentions in a DVD feature that when the Fruity Oaty Bar commercial was being designed, he constantly asked the animators to redesign it and make it even more bizarre than the previous design, until it arrived at the version presented on screen.