Chronicles of Riddick

Debaser · Post by **Debaser** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 3:57 pm

You only keep what you kill.

- The New Radicals

Wow this flick isn't doing well on the old T-Meter, is it? I don't think I've read one really positive review of it... until now!!! Or rather until several minutes from now when I've finished writing this post and go back and reread it!!!

A lot of people want to compare this flick to Star Wars (positively if they're talking about the prequels or negaitvely if they're talking about the original films), and the Dune film (which I've never seen) comes up occassionally. But really, more than anything this feels like the broody, misanthropic stepson of The Fifth Element. In case the word "Necromonger" from the previews didn't tip you off, this little Space Opera has more cheese than a stadium full of Packers fans.

The Necromongers, apart from sounding like creatures who got cut from the original D&D Monster Manual in favor of another slimy ooze variant, have a taste in decor that's best described as "neo-industrial homosexual". Everything's done up in smooth iron, with hilarious alto-rilievos of grimicing faces. Meanwhile, Twohy's hard at work finding the most ludicrously puntastic names for everything in his little universe. For example, the relentlessly angry Riddick is in fact from a race called the "Furions", and the really hot planet he goes to visit is called "Crematoria".

It's all just barely this side of laughable, and in fact will likely slip well over to the other side for a lot of viewers. But by riding that edge, it actually manages to work, at least for me. On an immersive level by making everything larger than life (the creepy bondage hound guys the Necromongers employ are a great touch), and on a structural level by saving on exposition. Say you're trying to figure out why Dame Judi Dench keeps turning invisible and the wind's always blowing around her. Well, if someone said she was of the "Elemental" race, then there you go. Anyone likely to see this movie can get that on an instinctual level without having to hear a bunch of exposition about what an Elemental is and what it is capable of.

Unlike Element, however, Riddick has at least a bit of meat on its bones. If the characters are largely cliches, they're fully realized cliches and it's easy to get who they are, why they do what they do, and what in their natures makes doing what they do difficult. It's not Greek Tragedy, but when Riddick announces to the Lord Marshall "You've killed everything I know"... well, by that point the film and its characters have earned that moment (unlike the horrendous final act of FE).

I was going to say that, on the other hand, it's not as fun as the Fifth Element. And it's not, obviously. But I didn't want to imply that the movie isn't fun at all. It's all gritty pissing contest fun, but that works for the most part. The way Riddick can't go thirty seconds without making a gravely aside to remind everyone how totally in control of every situation he is. The way Kyra (she was called Jack in Pitch Black, I guess) is so obviously caught up in the idea of being a hardened killer. Pretty much any scene involving Toombs (the bounty hunter chasing Riddick) is great.

The effects are very good. Hollywood's pretty much mastered explosions and glowing blue energy fields at this point, but (while some CG was almost certainly necessary for some of the stunts the characters engage in), at no point did anything cease to feel like it had the weight of actual physical substance behind it. The action scenes are alright, if sometimes a little hard to follow at times. The director seems better depicting a quick kill from out of nowhere than an expansive brawl of firefight.

It's obvious they're angling for a franchise here. Characters are left alive or in "fate unknown" state when it would have made more sense to kill them, and the ending is pretty much a blatant lead in to a sequel. I guess they're gonna do one of those animated web-features like the Matrix used to, too. Speaking personally, I'm rather past the point where I want to develope encyclopedic knowledge of the cannonic elements of another fictional universe, but I'd definitely sign on for another two hours of shiny-eyes Diesel glowering menacingly at alien life-forms.

Status: Recommended!

Oh, and for the record, I haven't seen Pitch Black. I prefer space opera or true science fiction to scifi-horror, but I'll probably end up giving it a rental now, just to see where these characters started.

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 11:09 pm

I have not read this review, because I will be seeing this tomorrow, but it's funny that I haven't seen a review of Pitch Black on here, especially since I totally bumped up my own Netflix queue to rent this for somebody recently who promised he would watch it and who I hoped would say a goddamn thing about it.

Charity, it's for losers and maggots.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 10:46 am

I saw the "status: recommended" bit from Debaser. But more, I saw a post from Debaser.

This movie has everything going for it: violence, action and the promise of a new Debaser review when I return to home base here.

Thread status: RECOMMENDED!

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 11:56 am

I thought "Pitch Black" was alright. I've been hoping that the new one is better.

bruce · Post by **bruce** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 8:46 pm

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I thought "Pitch Black" was alright. I've been hoping that the new one is better.

"Pitch Blacker"? "Pitcher Black"? "Pitcher Blacker"? Hardly even know 'er!

Bruce

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:17 pm

Although fairly enjoyable to watch in certain places, this movie sucked it's fair share of ass. The female leads were horrible, the plot aimed towards, like Debaser said, the next epic for 13 year old boys, the script was embarassingly, abysmally juvenile. Riddick had a few good one liners, but since there were so goddamn many of them, it stood to reason that some should hit their mark. Kyra was blessedly awful, and I left the movie feeling that at least this installment was different enough that my memories of PB won't be made to dress up in female clothing and led around on a leash. A low-key sleeper horror flick has alot more ability to do something different than Summer Blockbuster MLXXXIV, all of the previous following the exact same formula. Fuck THAT.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 8:22 am

"You should have taken the money."
"I should have taken the money!"

Also, the guy who kept making that face from LOTR was in it. Pretty much every time I see a guy who was somebody in LOTR I feel the need to comment on it to whoever I'm sitting next to. Why only LOTR? I'm not really sure. Maybe because it was so... epic!

Debaser · Post by **Debaser** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 4:42 pm

Vitriola wrote:Riddick had a few good one liners, but since there were so goddamn many of them, it stood to reason that some should hit their mark.

I'll avoid debating the merits of the film with you, because no one ever wins, but I will say this sentence right here seems to be precisely why the movie appealed to me and not you. To me, regardless of the quality or lack there of of the lines, it was Riddick's nigh-pathological compulsion to deliver these lines that was the point. There reached a point where the quantity silly throwaway clips reached saturation point and it occured to me that the character himself (rather than the actor or the writer) was doing the posturing. Like when Kyra said "I hate it when we're the good guys". The myth of the modern antihero is that these guys are just like that, whereas Riddick and Kyra, regardless of the fact that they are genuine toughs, are obviously trying to be badder than they actually are. I suppose I can't prove that that was what the script was going for, but reading it that way worked for me.