Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Universal is testing the shit out of their summer movies right now. Between this and VAN HELSING, they are dominating the test screening reports we’re getting in. No matter what anyone says, I will see this one opening day because I have faith in David Twohy. So far, he makes some of the most fun B-movies around, sort of like Stephen Sommers wants to do, but never quite manages. And I still remember the kick of discovering the original PITCH BLACK with Harry, back before it had a distributor and when it was sitting in limbo. Showing that at two in the morning at the first BNAT was one of the great screening experiences I’ve had. Here’s hoping Twohy harnesses that same sense of fun this time around. Here’s what today’s spy had to say...
Hey Harry,
I just back from a test-screening of the Chronicles of Riddick, here in Tempe, Arizona. I was pleased when I learned that the screening would be of Riddick, since Pitch Black is one of my favorite sci-fi/horror movies of the last few years. In fact, I discovered the movie largely through AICN's ceaseless promotion of it back in 2000. The print that we saw was far from finished -- it was full of green screen shots, wires, and an innocuous temporary score.
It certainly helps to have seen the original film, especially at the beginning, but on the whole, Riddick is supposed to stand apart from Pitch Black. Unfortunately it stands apart in a negative way. Pitch Black was an intimate, atmospheric, and (I thought) intelligent horror movie with a touch of sci-fi. Riddick is overblown, bombastic, and (mostly) dumb. David Twohy returns as director, but little of the first film's originality is apparent in the sequel. The story, such as it is, involves a race, or perhaps more accurately, cult of aliens called the Necromongers conquering the universe in a messianistic attempt to bring about the "Underverse," something that is never really explored beyond the beginning of the movie (unfortunately portending another sequel). Riddick enters the story as a pawn of Imam, the holy man from the first film, and Aereon, an "Elemental" being played by a mostly-wasted Judi Dench. She seeks to convince Riddick that he is the last of a race called Furions, the only beings feared by the Necromongers. At this point the Necromongers invade the planet, and this is where the movie began to lose me.
The Necromongers are supposed to be brutal, they're supposed to be menacing and vicious. Unfortunately they looked kind of silly to me. I appreciated the design of their ships (especially the literal cascade of them that takes off during the invasion) and the menacing and towering statues they place on the planets they have devastated, but the actual aliens (technically they're humans converted to the Necromonger religion/military) look rather like an average Star Trek race. They come off as clunky and cumbersome and just plain uninteresting.
I'm not going to summarize any more of the movie, partly because it's good to go in relatively unawares and partly because the story's somewhat muddled. I don't want to be too brutal on the movie, it did have its redeeming qualities, and it was very preliminary. After the Necromonger attack the film jumps around to a couple different planets, one of which is Crematoria, a Mercury-like prison planet, with a deadly solar daybreak that makes for an exciting race-against-time sequence. There are a couple of very cool escapes that show flashes of the resourceful Riddick from Pitch Black. Midway through, another character from the original film makes a welcome return appearance. There were also some very cool stunts that I could tell will be real showstoppers when the visual FX are completed.
Diesel himself is adequate. Back when Pitch Black came out he was a fresh, exciting face, with had a bit part in Saving Private Ryan, and who voiced the Iron Giant. I thought the guy could do no wrong. Now, with The Fast and the Furious and the execrable XXX behind him, Diesel seems overexposed and too one-note. In hindsight, it seems that Pitch Black was the taut suspense movie it was because Diesel was kept somewhat in the background -- he was a menacing presence who played off other characters doing their best to keep him in check, wondering when this ruthless killer might snap. Now he's unquestionably the main character, with no filter, and he loses some of his edge (though to be fair, Pitch Black was a fairly hard R, while Riddick seems to be striving for a PG-13).
On the whole, the movie is dogged by uninteresting characters and an overly ambitious scope. Honestly though, with completed visual effects and judicious editing (there were some jarring moments, where the camera holds for perhaps twice as long as it should), it could be redeemed. I'd give it a 5.5 right now; serious tweaking could get it up to a 7.
If you use this, please call me QuestionMark
Thanks, QuestionMark. Nice work.
"Moriarty" out.
