Kill The Riddick!

What a crappy movie. Or more accurately, what we have in The Chronicles of Riddick is three crappy movies, each trying to convince us it's the real film: the blessedly short early movie weighed down with meaningless talk about space religion, the stupid two-parter filled to the gills with evil space fleets, poorly-kept statuary and black Mrs. Macbeth in a tortoiseshell dress, and the long middle movie, about a prison escape from a jail planet, that's more interesting than the entire rest of the film combined. That's not saying much.

Movie number one takes place on Helion Prime, and begins after we're given a couple of wholly unnecessary scenes to establish Riddick's (Vin Diesel) character. (For those who missed Pitch Black, that's “amoral ass-kicker.”) I didn't get the full effect of these scenes because I could barely hear what Vin Diesel was saying. The man's voice is so low it makes Henry Kissinger jealous. At the end of Movie #1 there are strobe-lit fight scenes that rival Pikachu himself in seizure-inducing power, and the universe's most ceremonial explosive device.

Also around this time we meet Aereon, an Air Elemental played by the semi-invisible Judi Dench. Elementals “calculate,” we're told, but we're not told what. (Taxes? Actuary tables? Poker odds?) Ariel's role is to be a bargain-basement Bene Gesserit in a movie that looks, when it starts blabing about prophecy and faith in unconvincing ways, like it'd dearly like to be Dune, if it weren't trying so hard to be space opera. Anyway, Aereon might be interesting if she did even one damn thing in this movie besides be invisible a lot.

That brings us to the second movie, set inside of the (please understand it causes me pain to write this) Necromonger spaceship. The Necromongers are trying to reach either the Omniverse or the Underverse, I'm not sure which. Necromongers operate by turning the people into conquer into Necromongers themselves, but it's not obvious why they do this since later it becomes obvious the procedure doesn't instill any sense of loyalty.

The Necromonger national motto is “You keep what you kill,” a phrase that doesn't make sense even if you've seen the film. (Maybe there are lots of game reserves on their home world?) They are led by the Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), a guy who visited the Omniverse personally, and according to The Invisible Dench, “came back as a different being. Stronger... stranger.” This means he can swoosh about real fast and has, I swear to God, H. R. Giger's comb-over.

And he can take people's souls. Early on he runs up to someone in casual evening-wear, and pulls out a transparent version of him, in transparent evening-wear. The rather surprised, de-souled guy looks back kind of wistfully, like he wants to shout “Hey man, I need that to be with!” then collapses. How long before Riddick gets to experience this? About an hour thirty.



The third movie has little to do with the Necromongers and saving the universe, in which Riddick goes to a completely pointless prison world, Crematoria, so he can meet up with his old girlfriend. This planet marks the beginning of the best parts of the movie, and when we leave, all that's left is crap. At least there isn't any soul-taking, alien-toupee'd idiot swishing around in Man-E-Faces' helmet.

How bad was this movie? The audience I was with laughed at it. They laughed at the dumb neon-faced Necromongers standing around like gecko lizards. They laughed at the stupid alien uniforms, which look like a cross between Roman armor and a pillbug. They traded dumb lines in the lobby outside the door. I heard one kid this particular groaner: “There is only one speed... my speed.” There are lots of movies I don't like, but rarely is there a film in which the audience joins in on the hating.

It was beautiful. But the movie, let's be clear about this, was not.
- posted by JohnH @ Saturday, June 12, 2004