I saw the trailers of Chronicles of Riddick, the follow-up to the sleeper hit Pitch Black, and I thought it was going to be a surefire hit. The idea had so much room, such epic vision, great potential. I heard long before it got released that it stank. Anyway, so the other day I finally got a chance to see it and there’s a phrase that sums it up: screwed the pooch.
For those of you who don’t know, Vin Diesel plays Riddick, the anti-hero of Pitch Black who saved two people when their ship crash-landed on a planet inhabited by deadly aliens who live in the dark and enjoy killing anything they find. Riddick is a prisoner who is being transported to another penal colony. Riddick has some formidable skills when it comes to escape and killing, but is somewhat lacking in people skills.
We find Riddick on a planet in the middle of nowhere being chased down by some bounty hunters. Riddick evades them and sets off to find who put the bounty on his head. It turns out an Elemental thinks Riddick is the last of a warrior race known as the Furians and she needs him to fight in order to save humanity from the Necromongers, a race bent on converting and subjugating the human race as they make their way across the universe to Underverse, their promised land. Riddick just wants a quiet life, but he’s not going to get it.
It has masses of potential: an evil despot who is half-dead and posseses extraordinary gifts, an anti-hero who kills for fun, a wizened elemental, politcal plotting, action, great characters and the fate of humanity in the balance. So what do they do, the make Riddick spend most of the film running off on little errands to find out what’s going on, or rescue Jack (the now fully grown girl he rescued in Pitch Black). Thandie Newton (MI:2), Karl Urban (LOTR) and Dame Judy Dench are woefully under-used. This should have been an epic fight of not-so-good against evil with sequels, fan fiction, comic books and a whole herd of spinoffs, but it fails to deliver.
Having said that, it’s still watchable, but the film makers should be kicking themselves at the missed opportunity.
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