CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004) - I enjoyed this one. Especially the invasion at the beginning. Vin Diesel is a interesting character in the films I've had the chance of seeing him in. PITCH BLACK was also good, but CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK is done on the scale of the newer STAR WARS or DUNE films. I think perhaps they could have done with less action and focused more on the religion of the invaders. Then perhaps the "killer becoming king" idea may have worked even better. Sometimes it's just to much action and it can take away from a film. Good film overall.
(http://www.forla.net/diesel/riddick03.jpg)
Post Edited (12-20-04 17:11)
I still have yet to see this. I plan on renting it for next weekend.
I like this one too, Scott. I'm ever so slowly working on a review, but the holidays have just killed my writing time. Sometime in January...
I enjoyed the movie, sans one thing . . .
How many times should the protagonist pause, get "the look" (and pose) . . . "one thousand one" semi arch back . . . "one thousand two" cock head (no pun intended) . . . "one thousand three" remove dark glasses . . . "one thousand four" get the "other look" . . . "one thousand five" look intently into the blue screen (uhh I mean space aliens) . . . "one thousand six" . . . with deft flick of wrist put glasses back on . . . AARG, the first three times were ok, but that was all in the first movie.
I did like that bad guys getting vaporized by the sun (at 700 degrees . . . must have been kelvin scale), but Riddick pours a little water on and doesn't even get a sun burn!
All in all I still enjoyed the mive, I especially liked the David Lynch "Dune" style look & specialy effects . . . I'd love to see more of that style in sci fi movies . . . I hate all the pristine white sterilized look to many sci fi movies.
OK, I done ranting . . .
Thoughts?
Rob
And straight to video, if anyone is interested, the animated "The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury" w/ Diesel voicing the title character. It supposedly takes place between the time of "Pitch Black" and "Chronicles of Riddick."
And his next film, "The Pacifier" in which he plays a Navy S.E.A.L., who has to protect the five children of a murdered scientist. It's from Disney. As I understand it, he got to be quite a diaper wrangler, while he was making the film. Every time the baby needed changing, they got him to do it. As he seemed to have a way with the children in the film.
The chronicles of Riddick Dark Fury is some really good anime. Peter Chung (Aeon Flux guy) did that one.
I finally got a chance to see Riddick yesterday... and you're right:
Goggles on. Goggles off. Goggles on. Goggles off. Goggles on. Goggles off...
It's a very "goggle-centric" movie. Apart from that annoyance, it wasn't too bad a film. I didn't enjoy it as much as Pitch Black, though- and even Pitch Black had it's flaws. All in all I'd give C.O.Riddick a C+ grade.
I saw it last night and was somewhat let down as it didn't meet my expectations. However, having previously read this topic, I started laughing uncontrollably around the 56th time he did the goggles thing. My wife looked at me like I was mad.
Just saw this, and didn't like it much. Seems like another case of taking a cool character out of a good movie and making it all about him. Also far to much effort put into expanding and complicating the story, a la Highlander - taking some of the mystery out of Riddick's background. Also strays very far into fantasy in a number of ways.
I much preferred Pitch Black. It was largely about Riddick, sure, but it was more about the story, of which he was one part. It had its flaws, but it was a good science fiction story at its heart. I liked the way it employed the old Asimov 'Nightfall' idea. I liked the way it played with our expectations of who would be the hero and who would be the villain, and I loved the way it was ultimately a story about redemption, both on the part of the pilot and on the part of Riddick.
I'm actually a little p**sed off that it has been retitled The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black, as though it were always just part of a series of stories about Riddick.
The sequel has its moments, but I found it kind of dull and pointless overall, and I really don't like the direction they took the characters, which I think diminishes the strong ending of the first movie.
Overall, I think they took something that was unusually close to a decent science fiction movie and turned it into the same action-fantasy-attitude stuff that passes for science fiction today. If anything seems the least bit good and different, Hollywood will get its claws into it, and turn it into the same s**t.
Post Edited (12-24-04 08:46)
I loved this film!
I highly recommend watching the special features.
They delve deep into Riddick's universe and are quite fascinating.
I had no idea that there was so much backstory.
I rented it hoping for a fun slightly different space opera with the darker touches of "Pitch Black", I was sorely disappointed to find I was watching a by the numbers scifi adventure where our "hero" turns out to have a history as the last of his kind and a great destiny as the last hope of defeating a great evil. Plus PB was grim and very John Carpenter-like in style and had no magic or mystical elements. So COR seemed too much of a change in tone with the silly Necromongers and the Elementals (or just the one, Judi Dench) and Riddick's newly revealed background.
I watched the extras and even watched the film with the onscreen pop up extra info about the making of the film and explaining more about the Necromonger culture. IMO, there are 15-year old D&D fans who can come up with a deeper and more believable culture. I shudder to think what would happen if the next two films in the proposed series got made, which looks unlikely now.
I did like the ships, planets, and architecture designs (so the visuals were cool, maybe they'll be recycled in other films) and the bounty hunters (or at least the leader).
Like a lot of people I held out hope for Vin Diesel during his first few starring and costarring roles, but, man, has he fallen off quickly.
I sort of liked it, buat as some of you said, it is quite dull, specially the first half. The reviewers were too harsh on this one, for it is a quite enjoyable space opera (and there are not too many being released these days), but it has its share of problems, and ignoring them doesn't do any favour to the movie or David Twohy, who can certainly do better.
I really hope Twohy and Diesel manage to make the planned sequels, because the universe behind the plot was just glimpsed here, and as Twohy and Diesel keep on saying, there is much more to be told about Riddick and the Necromangers. The ending made really a good cliffhanger, so I hope they don't leave the thing as it is.
Yaddo 42 wrote:
> adventure where our "hero" turns out to have a history as the
> last of his kind and a great destiny as the last hope of
> defeating a great evil.
I agree. Riddick was much better as a shadowy character with a largely unknown past. He was very much human, but had obviously had a very hard life. In Pitch Plack, he rediscovered his humanity. What they did with him in CoR was such clicheed crap.
Also much preferred the old-school approach to the science fiction in Pitch Black. It was never actually stated that there were no intelligent alien races, but it was sort of implied that this was just humanity moving out into space, with various cultures colonizing their own worlds. Now they're just tossing alien races in, willy-nilly, as if they've always been part of the story. It's a completely different approach.
Found the prison to be a bit of a disappointment too. Apart from the conditions on the surface, it was not much worse than any sci-fi penal colony we've seen before- Star Trek 6, for example. Actually, the prisoners had a surprising amount of freedom, got along reasonably well, and didn't have it too bad when the animals weren't loose. Compare that to Riddick's description in Pitch Black, which gave the impression of a place of constant misery and danger, where it was always dark, and people were always out to get each other, hence the need for his enhanced eyes. The prison in CoR was lame. It's just one more thing that would have been better left to the imagination.
Post Edited (12-28-04 07:21)
One of the most boring/worst movies i have seen.
Awful movie, but stupid enough that you can have fun trashing it.
Vin's one-liners are beyond stupid. "Follow this." "It's been a long time since I smelled beautiful." Okay Beefe vonManpyle.
And what the hell was with the bemulleted space-goth football player army? Seriously, you just can't mix goth and football. Goths and jocks go together like positrons and electrons. Terrible production design. BEHOLD MY GIANT SCULPTURES OF SAD PEOPLE IN MY ENORMOUS FLYING COFFIN OF SADNESS. DID I MENTION I'M EVIL?
And the planet "Crematoria" is an affront to highschool-level science. The place obviously has a dense atmosphere, so why is there a huge, sharp temperature differential between the dayside and nightside? Why doesn't the air from the hot side transfer heat to the cool side? Oh, because then Thump Steackneck and Yougo Girl couldn't dramatically RUN FROM TEH HEAT.
I loved Pitch Black. It was a great little monster movie that came out of nowhere and kept it's scope limited to what it could effectively accomplish. Chronicles of Riddick, on the other hand, is gaudy space opera that tries way too hard to be hip and gritty.
They were supposed to do like three of these things, weren't they? Interesting to see how that pans out . . .