IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name Theatrical Review of The Chronicles of Riddick 2004...

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IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name Theatrical Review of
The Chronicles of Riddick 2004

"Honestly... the reviews for this movie have been nothing short of Riddick-culous...

... yeah, well... sorry for the horribly overused pun, but I just can't stand all the Riddick reviews out there, Riddick-culing this film...

Now, I was never a big fan of Pitch Black. Actually, I sort of despised that movie, except for the rather interesting premise... and the fact that the lead female role looked pretty damn hot in that balmy little tank top of hers (I have a thing for blondes, you know...)... but still...

And maybe that's why I enjoyed The Chronicles of Riddick as much as I did. I mean, I could feel during the entire movie that Vin Diesel wasn't going to be winning any Academy Awards anytime soon, but I did thoroughly enjoy this film. It had great special effects, a stellar soundtrack, some of the best CG designs I've seen outside of Stargate (...), and no matter what any critic says, it also had some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen in movies since X2 at least... All the critics seemed to despise Riddick though, throwing rotten tomatoes at his high profile candyass. But unlike all those reviewers, you see... I didn't like Pitch Black...

And probably the reason why I enjoyed The Chronicles of Riddick so much, was because I didn't want a sequel to Pitch Black.

Because The Chronicles of Riddick had something that Pitch Black just didn't have: proper pacing, or at least pacing that I liked (except for the first act, at least)... I know Pitch Black became infamous as a niche, cult favourite title. It was definitely a good, low-budget looking movie. And I admit that the pace of the film was consistent throughout the entire film... but the film just didn't have the kind of witty dialogue or moving plot development that's required to keep me entertained for a movie with such a slow heartbeat at times. Only a few things intrigued me in that movie: the sight of the darkness rising, and of Riddick rising to the top of the food chain (until that awful ending, at least).

The Chronicles of Riddick took those two things that I enjoyed from its predecessor, and put it all into what I hope will be the start of a new sci-fi action franchise. I mean, there's a reason why Vin Diesel turned down sequels to Fast and the Furious (surprisingly good movie... horrible milked out sequel) and XXX (movie made out of shit... without shitty porn to make it look good...)... Because simply put, no matter what anyone says, Riddick is Vin Diesel at his very best. He was a badass, pure and through. And regardless of the PG-13 rating, Vin Diesel provided the best badass performance I've seen on the movie screen since Terminator 2 brought forth some of the best one liners of this entire generation of film making...

The first third of Riddick wasn't exactly the best of the movie though... I personally thought the special effects of everything but the Halo-esque troop transport (loved the anti-gravity generators though) was lacking in imagination. Besides, I think the trailers already spoiled everything decent about those scenes to me... It just wasn't very involving for me to see Voyager-Hirogen-dressed soldiers swarming the streets of Star Wars rebel fighters, and it did kind of annoy me to see those Borg-rip off sensor drones just roaming the hilltops... And I'm sorry, but I hated Imam in the first movie. It was nice that he returned for the sequel, to actually link this movie to the first (because God knows Jack/Kyra wasn't a real link), but his character proved rather useless in the end. His family did too, as the little daughter had nothing to do but spout out that Pitch Black line again, about Riddick killing the monsters and yadda yadda yadda... And the scenes in the actual Necromonger acropolis or whatever? The whole mind-reading, prophecy thing was thankfully rather low-key for the rest of the movie, but I'd be hard pressed to claim that it didn't bug me for this one damn scene at least. Just like I couldn't honestly believe that Judi Dench's talents (who visibly could be seen in all her scenes, counting the money she's making from this movie in her head) could completely be wasted with completely cliche and pointless "Chosen One" talk in this movie, I really couldn't believe that a movie based around a badass Furion could end up so boringly bogged down by prophecy crap... then again, it worked for the Matrix...

I suppose there are more similarities between Neo and Riddick than I ever really thought about before. They're both supposed to be uber-cool, and in the end, uber-badass anti-heroes... but while Keanu only got to show his badass nature with his kungfu moves (and the slaughter of cops who wouldn't turn into agents for some odd reason...), Riddick really got some real shiners of lines that truly defined his typecasted character even better than Fast and the Furious ever did... The movie finally started to pick up steam for me when Riddick just shows up at the Necromonger's harvesting of new converts, with really no way to escape (not like he cared). Riddick wanted revenge for the death of his friend, so he actually challenged the killer to a fight, and stabbed him through the heart with his own knife before the fight even got started... Lord Marshal (the cliche leader of the evil Necromongers, wearing a slew of masks he carved out in Face/Off) tells Riddick, "he was one of my best men." And in a brilliant prose of a line?... hey, it may not be Shakespeare, but still...

Sure, the line may be cheesy as hell to read, and hell, maybe even cheesy as hell to hear. But dammit, it worked for the character. It worked for the moment. And it worked for Vin Diesel. And that was what this whole movie was all about... Critics complained wildly about the monologue scene that Riddick has in the mercenary transport ship. And I completely agree with the critics here - the scene was just too damn long, with nothing ever really happening... But even in that one monologue, Riddick had a brilliant line that spoke volumes about his character: "Why drive, when you can be driven?" And it's little quips like that truly define the movie for what it is...

... as Vin Diesel finally reclaiming his lost badass glory. Riddick truly is the man...

Because I honestly cannot even fathom the criticisms against the Crematoria scenes in the movie... While obviously "Crematoria" is the worst name for a planet ever, and it's unimaginable that a planet with a 700 degree sunrise would have a breathable atmosphere, why the hell should any of us care when the action and suspense in those scenes were that damn good? Hell, it was even an homage to Pitch Black. In the prequel, safety was in the sunlight; in Chronicles of Riddick, there was nowhere safe on the planet but in the shadows. And I personally thought it was an amazing touch and a thoughtful twist...

Everything about the Crematoria scene defined The Chronicles of Riddick as the absolute best popcorn movie of the summer to date. I loved the way Riddick broke free of his chains. I loved his comment to Toombs that he "should've taken the money". I loved his cheesy interaction with the poorly designed hell-hotdog - " it's an animal thing" - if only because of the WTF reaction on his inmates' faces... And even though the final fight scene on Crematoria was the absolute worst travesty of the movie (at first, I tried to think that the lack of sound effects was an artistic choice... but then I remembered why this film got a PG-13 rating instead of a Pitch Black R...), I must admit that every scene surrounding that one, overdrawn-out battle sequence, was the best sci-fi action I've seen in years. From the volcano ash, to the sun rising in the fight against the Necromongers, to even the revelation about Lord Marshal's "Purifier", I really did love Crematoria (as stupid as that sounds to say). And honestly, Riddick had absolutely the best one liner in the history of recent one-liners down in that jail cell...

Well, maybe that wasn't a single line, but still... death by tea cup alone made this movie one of the best movies of the year so far, no matter what any of the critics say. And even though I had a thing against Alexa Davalos from her Gwen Raiden days on Angel (too much makeup = bad interaction with anyone but Charles Gunn), I must admit that she suited the role of super sexed up "Jack" quite well. She did kick ass in the prison scenes, although she seemed to try too hard to be a badass with her limited, whiny lines. Alexa definitely looks much better than normal with her hair all fritzed up, and I almost felt sorry for her when she saw Riddick just lying dead on the rocks, with the blazing Sun rising on the horizon... and to be honest, I was surprised by her fate. I honestly never saw it coming. And that alone made the final act of the movie a lot better than I thought it'd be. After Crematoria, in my opinion, the movie had nowhere to go but down. But at least, it still went out with a big bang...

Lord Marshal was a horrible villain. His act of stealing people's souls was stretching it too far, even by sci-fi standards. But Lord Vaako and his Truth About Charlie Wife definitely filled the voice of the void, no matter how damn cheesy and single-minded their lines were in the end... Because even without lifting a finger, they proved to be the real threat in the movie, both to their leader and to Riddick... Now, I was a bit disappointed in the final fight scene. Sure I was relieved that Vin Diesel finally got his ass handed to him, I was pleased that it was mostly a one on one fight, the special effects of Lord Marshal as The Flash were decent, and the end to the battle was pretty damn badass in its own right. But I just don't know... I suppose because there weren't really any cocky one-liners, the battle just felt sort of flat to me... And although the ending was predictable, considering all the references throughout the movie to "you keep what you kill", I still was rather shocked to see Vin Diesel slumped in that chair as the final scene in the movie. I don't like how the movie ended so abruptly after that, but still... it does makes me want to know what will happen to our rogue, lead character from now on. That has to count for something...

As it obviously has most critics, as their absolute Riddick-culous reviews have foretold...

The Chronicles of Riddick obviously deserves some of the criticism lobbied at its throat. The first act of the movie felt disjointed and disoriented at best, the crowned villains were clowns (and that includes Vaako, despite the fact that I enjoyed his inner conflicts), the backstory to the riddled Riddick-verse was plagued with hollow answers (Furions? Elementals? Underverse? Underwear? WTF?), and many characters were grossly misused (though Judi Dench was definitely smiling at the bags of money she held in her hands at the end of the movie...).

But for every fault and nitpick, there was so many damn things about this movie that I did so thoroughly enjoy. The mercenaries had some great lines (I loved their reaction to Riddick's little shrug on their ride to Crematoria). Kyra had some great action scenes. Even Imam had some good moments in trying to convince Riddick to save his world. And Riddick himself?... for once, I actually LOVED Vin Diesel's performance in a movie. He helped make Fast and the Furious into the movie that it was, and quite frankly, he WAS Riddick in this film. He was the whole damn film. He was the whole damn show.

And he owned it. He owned the role. The movie may not set the gold standard for all sci-fi movies to come, but dammit, Vin Diesel has truly set the platinum standard for a complete, movie badass... he was so damn cool, that it was simply re-goddam-Riddick-culous...

I went into this film not expecting Pitch Black 2. I went into film not even wanting Pitch Black 2... I went into this film wanting The Chronicles of Riddick, and that's exactly what I got. The movie may be plagued with weak dialogue, weak villains, weak supporting characters, weak plotline, weak story backdrop, weak ending, weak opening weekend gross, weak overall movie, etc etc etc... and 99% of the time, I'd sort of assume that'd be a bad thing...