Short Movie Review: The Chronicles of Riddick
I was warned that if I disliked Pitch Black (and I did) that I might not enjoy Chronicles of Riddick, the next in a series of sci-fi movies starring Vin Diesel as a glassy-eyed convict with a heart of gold. Well, surprise surprise: I dug it. Maybe this is just a quirk of my tastes—I did say in my Pitch Black review that I’d put up with crappy filmmaking for a mediocre sci-fi movie, but not a mediocre horror movie—and so perhaps I was more forgiving this time around. I wanted spaceships, laser guns, interstellar travel, and weird pseudo-humanoids, and this delivered. The concept—”half-dead space travelers committing genocide one planet at a time on their quest to Hades-as-parallel-universe”—was much more interesting to me than “stuck on a planet with light-fearing monsters.” And actually, I thought the writing was much tighter here (still cheesy, but more endearingly so), and the visuals often pretty impressive. My only real complaints are that it was too long—about a half hour should’ve ended up on the cutting room floor—and that we’ll probably never get to see the sequel they’d obviously hoped to make.
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Dude. Jason. You’re crazy.
Necromongers, man. Necromongers.
By Tom on 10.14.08 5:03 pm
If you’re going to criticize this movie for use of a term meaning “death dealer,” I insist you also criticize the other luminaries of science-fiction and fantasy to have made use of it: monster and boob painter Frank Frazetta, vampire/werewolf cinema classic Underworld, and the slightly less reputable mystery novelist Isaac Asimov.
By Jason on 10.14.08 10:36 pm
You know, the only thing I remember about Underworld was two hours of Kate Beckinsale in leather. And despite that I’m still pretty sure that it wasn’t good.
Though I will agree that Underworld director Len Wiseman is a luminary, if only because somehow he managed to come out of that married to Beckinsale.
By Dan on 10.15.08 10:44 am
Two things:
When I first wrote that comment, I referred to that movie as a “vampire/werewolf sociopolitical analysis,” and I regret not making that clear the second time around.
Also, the reason I wrote that comment more than once was that our spam plugin repeatedly skipped moderation and sent it right into the “definitely spam” folder. This is despite that WordPress didn’t even ask me my name (the digital equivalent of being hailed as you walk into Cheers, I figured), recognizing me from being logged in from before.
That is how bitter this blog is about Isaac Asimov.
By Jason on 10.15.08 10:53 am
I love the idea that DOOMBOT (removed from its contributors) really didn’t like, say, the Foundation Novels and so it’s really bitter about Isaac Asimov.
By Chris Collins on 10.15.08 12:07 pm
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