Originally published 7/1/04
The Chronicles of Riddick
Director: David Twohy
Writer: David Twohy, based on characters created by Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat
Producers: Scott Kroopf and Vin Diesel
Stars: Vin Diesel, Colm Feore, Dame Judi Dench, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Alexa Davalos, Keith David
Let’s start with the obvious – one of the biggest problems with creating a universe from scratch is that it takes a lot of detail work. This explains what’s most disappointing about The Chronicles of Riddick, David Twohy’s sci-fi adventure, which tells the continuing adventures of the anti-hero from his memorable B-movie Pitch Black.
In that movie, the circumstances required no more than accepting the existence of a planet where multiple suns meant that night only came once a generation – and when it did, you were better off not being there. This movie asks a good deal more of you in its two hours, and I’m not just talking about overlooking that bad beaver pelt wig Riddick (Vin Diesel) is wearing in his first scenes.
So many details feel vague, or contradictory, or just plain missing, and I expect that Twohy’s chronicling ambitions outstripped the audience’s patience, and that we’re left with a truncated version as a result. I can’t tell if a 3-hour version would have explained it better. And I really can’t say, having seen two hours of it, that I would be eager to watch an hour more.
It’s not that there isn’t ample imagination on display. I enjoy the fearsome specter of the Necromongers, an army of cult-like warriors who travel from world to world, converting everyone they can, killing the rest, and scorching the surface of planets with statue-shaped bombs that have a sort of German-Expressionists-In-Space terrible majesty to them.
Where things get fuzzy is in what happens to the captured in the conversion process, which leaves them…dead? Undead? Possessed? Drugged? It feels like an amalgamation of these – the only thing I’m sure of is those little puncture marks you get on the side of your neck. At various times in the movie, members of the converted seem either a) wholly and mindlessly assimilated into the Necromonger society, b) aware that they are not who they once were, not thrilled about it, but not able to do much about it, or c) actually able to do something about it, if they try real hard. I’m an observant enough moviegoer – I know when the pieces fit well (The Sixth Sense) and when the pieces are clumsy and arbitrary (Signs, nonetheless saved by great directing), so when something just doesn’t hang together, I’m concerned.
What about their leader, the Lord Marshall (Colm Feore), who is described as a “holy half-dead” and can rip your soul out. Did he get his powers from his visit to the “Underverse” (where the Necromongers are headed)? Or was it the previous Lord Marshall who went there, and this Lord Marshall assumed his powers? And if the Underverse is so great, why did he leave? What do they think they’re getting when they get there? They talk longingly about becoming “fully dead”, which I could explain to them several ways to achieve and save themselves the trip.
I guess the practical upshot is that a whole lot of marauding and converting is going on, and there’s a prophecy that only a Furion warrior will be able to kill the Lord Marshall and stop his destructive march. And so Imam (Keith David), the Muslim Holy Man Riddick rescued from the dark planet, sees the Necromonger fleet coming for New Mecca and, on the advice of an Elemental (Dame Judi Dench, doing her best to bring dignity to a character who is vague in both purpose and literal form), dispatches bounty hunters to find Riddick, who may be the only male Furion left. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that megalomaniacs who hear a male from a certain race will kill them tend to be thorough about getting rid of that race’s male children, and that at least one always manages to slip through the cracks.
Riddick, the glowy-eyed expert in fighting and escaping from things, is as surly and eager to stab people as ever, but eventually he…well, it’s hard to say if he ever really cares that much about the millions of innocent lives at risk. But there are a convenient progression of wrongs done to people he does care about, and it’s enough to propel him through the requirements of the plot to its sequel-ready conclusion.
In many ways, it’s as if everyone conspires to help him be the action hero. Let’s ask a simple question – if you were a Necromonger, armed with a cool laser gun and a spear, and the Lord Marshall ordered you to kill Riddick, who’s conveniently trapped in a pit below you, would you a) shoot him with your laser gun, or b) jump in the pit and try and stab him with the spear? Even an Imperial Stormtrooper could have answered that correctly, although true to form he would not have hit anything useful with the gun.
At one point, Riddick makes a rather ludicrous escape from a Necromonger stronghold, knowing only that he wants to go to the planet Crematoria. Kyra (Alexa Davalos), the other survivor of the dark planet, is being held in a “triple max” prison deep below the surface. Who should turn up the moment he completes his escape but a bounty hunter who wants to take him to Crematoria. Riddick smirks, like the appearance of that guy (who he had every reason to believe was dead) was part of his plan all along.
Kyra is a welcome addition to the story, she was a little girl pretending to be a boy in Pitch Black, and she holds Riddick accountable for running out on her after she grew to need and idolize him. Now she’s a surly, stabby bounty hunter herself, stuck in a prison which doesn’t have much food or discipline, but does seem to have no shortage of belly shirts and eye liner. Now that her character is old enough to act on any grown-up impulses she might have, Davalos brings a hardened sexuality to the role which manages to overcome the fact that she’s made up to look like an Oil of Olay model hanging around an auto garage.
Most closely, The Chronicles of Riddick borrows from Dune – we spend much of our time in a desert environment, the Lord Marshall’s combat style looks suspiciously like the weirding ways, and despite all the futuristic technology, most conflicts end up being settled by knife fights for one reason or another. But Twohy carves out enough distinctive territory to make his story memorable as its own thing. Just, unfortunately, not a complete, or completely coherent, thing. It’s all in the details.