Posts Tagged ‘pitch black’

Chronicles of Riddick

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

After the success of Pitch Black, director David Twohy was planning an epic Riddick trilogy, of which this movie would be the first. But when Chronicles tanked at the box office, the next two movies were scrapped, and Universal Studios contented itself with spinning off video games to recoup their losses: an effort that was assisted by the Chronicles DVD, which apparently sold pretty well. But the grander dreams were over. All that was left of a franchise that Twohy had hoped would dominate the SF landscape were fragments scattered here and there: two very different movies, those video games, and a couple of animated shorts.

And that’s a goddamn shame. Because I saw Chronicles again last night, and christ does it kick ass. The sweeping planetscapes (c’mon, any list of top ten SF planets would have to include Crematoria), the demented neo-gothic spaceships, the over-the-top costuming, and the nonstop action: Twohy and his team got a lot of stuff right. And Vin Diesel is a fucking star throughout:  he’s got undeniable charisma, and some really great lines too.  (“Shoulda taken the money, Toomes.”)

But I’m curious to hear what YOU guys think.  There are obviously a lot of folks out there who hated this movie, and this is your big opportunity to weigh in and tell me what you thought sucked.  Me, I think the movie’s central failing was the thing I like the most about it:  Twohy could have just made Pitch Black 2, but he elected to take things in a totally different direction, and take some chances while he was doing it.  Or maybe they should have stuck with the original Riddick origin legend—instead of him being a Furian, perhaps the original explanation of how he got his eyes fixed by a rogue surgeon on a prison planet was more in keeping with the gritty universe that Pitch Black was hinting at.  Or maybe 2004 just wasn’t ready for a big-budget, no-holds-barred, unapologetic space opera.

It’s too bad, though, because I for one would be up for a couple more.