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Sunday, June 20, 2004

I liked Pitch Black so much that I went and watched The Chronicles of Riddick this week. The fact I had a free movie ticket for buying Pitch Black didn’t hurt either.
The movie started off with some guy in dreadlocks being chased across a giant frozen thumbprint by a ship with two people strapped to its wings. They are shooting nets at this guy that is just skipping along and leading them into the only cave on the whole frozen thumb, oops I meant planet. Once in the cave, dreadlock dude starts cutting flyboys wing harness, and the people safe inside the ship decide to open the door and have a look-see. Surprise, the rest of the crew gets tossed out, and now dreadlock dude and the captain have a nice chat. Find out that it was a mercenary chasing Riddick for a bounty that was on his head.
Now for the rest of the movie I am left wondering many, many things. Why did he just toss everyone, and not kill them? How is it this mass murder that everyone feared in the first movie suddenly become so squeamish about slicing someone? How did he figure that the holy man in the first movie is the one that placed the bounty on his head? Why is he pumping kool-aid into his blood stream? Did I just miss the explanation when I sneezed?
So Riddick goes to a new planet and finds the holy man. I’m guessing he was listed in the galactic phone book. Now we learn that planets are being wiped out by an army of necromancers, and some prophecy indicates that Riddick is the only person able to defeat them. We also find out that Jack got in trouble trying to find Riddick. They are interrupted by the INS. “We know there is some for'ner in there; we can see that our world is going to be invaded by a huge ass army, but damb it, we need to arrest him and deport him back where he came from.” What fallows is almost the only time Riddick uses his night vision, and again there is an absents of killing, just tossing threw walls.
Soon after all this the invasion begins. Ships that look like giant statues plummet into the grown and release hundreds of fighters. Drop ships fly over and zap solders topside. The resistance light up the sky with AA fire, and fighter ships clash. This looks so cool! A group of troop that had just zapped down are all running down a street, protecting a guy with a pool. What fallows just leaves you in wonder. What the hell was that? Was that them playing ‘King of the Hill?’ What purpose did that have? What are these things that look like Gollum with diving helmets on? Why is this town the only place shown being invaded? Are there no other cities? It had so much potential to be a cool invasion.
Later the town folk are gathered up, including Riddick. I do not remember how they caught him, so it means it was lame, or it was yet something else left on the editing floor. The head honcho tells them that he is on a quest to an under-verse. Being the nice guy he is, he needed to invaded them and tell them of this wonderful place that he has seen. If you refuse to join his religion he will pull your soul out of you. This info of cores is not shown to the rest of the planet on 52’ plasma TVs from the ships. No, the only place in this whole world is this little town. Beside, the people would start fighting with a renewed purpose and overthrow there captors, to have control of the remote for the TVs. What is the purpose of invading? They show no strip mining of the planet to make new ships. No massive slave labor. No drilling for oil. No harvesting of crops. No forcing them to watch 'I love Lucy' reruns till they break. Just invade, convert people, nuke, and leave.
The rest of the movie just goes all over. You are left with more questions than answers. There are some cool fighting, but it has very little to do with Pitch Black. It has very little to do with anything for that matter. You could watch this with never seeing the first one and enjoy it just as much. Of all the things you are left wondering, you are never left wondering if Riddick will help save the people. I am hoping when it is released on DVD they add like 5 more hours of stuff they left out, but I doubt it.

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