Tag: pitch black

You keep what you kill.

After Pitch Black came The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). It hate even mentioning it here since both Pitch Black and later Riddick were so good, but I really can’t ignore the wart that is The Chronicles of Riddick sandwiched between these two gems, so here goes –

Pitch Black did relatively well on release and soon a sequel The Chronicles of Riddick went into production. But while Pitch Black did a lot of things right from mostly ignoring the futuristic setting to telling a story for adults then The Chronicles of Riddick played up everything that Pitch Black ignored. If Pitch Black didn’t focus on the futuristic setting The Chronicles of Riddick did. If Pitch Black was rated R then The Chronicles of Riddick was PG-13. It’s almost as if The Chronicles of Riddick was the crappy studio remake of Pitch Black yet all of the same people who were involved in Pitch Black were also involved in The Chronicles of Riddick so it’s confusing as to why that one turned out a turd.

In The Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick must face the Necromongers, a race of kind’a sort’a undead people who go around the galaxy converting people to their kind’a sort’a undead ways and blowing up planets in the process. And it’s only Riddick who can stop them because he’s some chosen one blah blah blah blah.

The less said about the plot the better. Regardless, after The Chronicles of Riddick it would take nearly a decade for the next Riddick movie to be released.

It’s always the punch you don’t see coming that puts you down.

A few years ago news started filtering out that another Riddick movie was in the works, this one simply titled Riddick (2013). After The Chronicles of Riddick I wasn’t too excited in another overblown Riddick movie but none-the-less seeing photos released from the production of the movie and eventually the trailers too got me excited in the prospect of more Riddick.

Here’s the kicker, after almost not seeing it I truly believe that Riddick is the best b-movie of the 21st century and I mean that in a good way.

Riddick goes back to what made Pitch Black work so well; gritty realism and an R-rating. Okay, sure, it’s a sci-fi based realism but the Riddick story drops most of the Necromongers Underverse undead gunk build up over The Chronicles of Riddick and goes back to a lean story told in three acts.

The first act takes place over roughly the first 30 minutes of the movie where Riddick is marooned on some far off desert planet and must survive the fauna of this world. He’s a cut and literal broken man with a leg fracture who must face attacks from dog-things and scorpion-things all alone with no hope of escape off this planet. What’s interesting here is that all this isn’t necessarily a negative for the Riddick character; he’s able to thrive under these conditions. It’s almost as if he’s been built for them.

The middle act follows Riddick who now wants off the planet when things change and the scorpion-things begin to roam far and wide. He finds a way to call in mercenaries who are out to collect a bounty on his head. This middle part follows the mercs hunting Riddick, and Riddick in-turn eliminating the mercs one by one since he really just wants their ship to get off the planet.

And the last act of the movie has Riddick and the remaining mercs fighting to survive the onslaught of the scorpion-things and make their escape. Which is, admittedly, a bigger budget retelling of the ending of Pitch Black, right down to the wounded Riddick trying to decide who and who he cannot trust. But even here Riddick works.

In the first act of the movie the audience is following Riddick and we’re on his side as he faces down the scorpion-things and raises one of the dog-things from puppy to adult. However, things change in the second act where we’re introduced to two competing merc groups. The first are made up of mostly scum-suckers but the second are a group of pros who aren’t overtly bad. They’re the kind of mercs respectable companies wouldn’t mind having on their payroll.

And when Riddick begins eliminating members of the first group we don’t mind it too much. But things are a bit different when things start happening to the second. It’s not that we like them over Riddick, just that it doesn’t seem that they deserve the fate he’s dealing them.

So we’re put into the position of rooting for Riddick one moment, but taken back to what he starts doing in the second which I found very clever. Riddick asks the question of if it’s okay to root for the bad-guy when he’s doing good things, do we still root for him when he starts doing bad things again?

Riddick also shows just how clever Riddick is. He makes calculated decisions in order to achieve his goals and he isn’t afraid to put his life on the line or everyone else’s lives on the line to achieve them.

While Riddick did alright at the box office it didn’t break any box office records meaning that after the theatrical run Riddick IV probably wasn’t in the works. That was until the movie was released on home media. Word from Diesel himself was that the film did so well on home media that another film would soon be in the works.