The Chronicles of Riddick-Isn’t Necromongering Legal in parts of Asia?
“Alright people gather around. We’ve got a dead body on our hands and I intend to find out what the hell happened here.” The Chronicles of Riddick, what gives? The sequel to Pitch Black should have been a huge hit, but all we got was a huge thud.
The story follows Riddick from the Pitch Black movie as he is attempting to break out of prison. Ah, but if it was only that simple. What Chronicles of Riddick dishes out are the cryptic, far too cryptic villains called Necromongers. Necromongers, doesn’t sound like the kind of guys you want to fall asleep around, wake up with more than a black magic marker mustache. These Necromongers are not fun guys at all, they picked up a new faith, as in religion, while in the Underverse. You’re probably already guessing that this isn’t one of those, “hey man here is a flower, we are all love,” kind of religions. No, this is one of the “Convert now or I will kill you,” kind of religions, old-time religion. Riddick, who is a Furyan, learns that he is not the only surviving Furyan and that the Furyans and Necromongers appear to be at odds. Thus, Riddick becomes embroiled in the entire Necromonger conflict as well as some very Shakespearian palace treachery. Yikes! Studio executives said yes to this script!
Confused? I took it easy on you, there’s more. There’s way more. Not surprisingly here is where the problem lies. This movie, its confusing. There is way to much of “whose that? what is that? Why did that happen?” If you bring a young child or an old person, one of two things happens: they die or you die.
The second major reason this film tanked at the box-office was a really simple one, the title. Lots of folks say Pitch Black, which in a lot of ways was a simple and straight-forward, fun escapism. Visually interesting, sci-fi but not so outlandish that the normal guy couldn’t follow what was going on. David Twohy, who directed and wrote Riddick, had the very basic problem in that many people who saw Pitch Black, just didn’t know the sequel was being released. People are so busy and so distracted in modern society they often just don’t catch this sort of info, even if you carpet bomb them with ads and more ads. That aside, the Chronicles of Riddick was such a radical departure from the tone of Pitch Black, that audiences were simply left feeling as if they had been somewhat baited and switched. There needed to be some sort of transition film first, preceding Riddick. Combined with the fact that the movie is, in all honesty, confusing, and you have a film that lost a significant amount of coin and probably did a fair degree of damage to Vin Diesel's (Riddick) career. Don’t believe me? Rent the Pacifier, I f-ing dare you!
Forget everything you’ve just read for a moment. Twohy, might ultimately, be a force to be reckoned with in the future. I like it when filmmakers are ambitious and more importantly the control freak MBA’s that run the studios allow them to be ambitious. Here is what they attempted. In order to fully appreciate the movie and establish continuity from Pitch Black to Chronicles of Riddick, you needed to play the video game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and watch the animated short piece, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. I did both and the video game was actually very good and received excellent reviews overall. There is no doubt that one can “flow” into the Chronicles of Riddick much more easily after having this expanded exposure to the Riddick universe, but it shocks me that they believed this was going to work. Peter Jackson might have been able to pull something like this with Lord of the Rings or Lucas with Star Wars, but Twohy and Pitch Black simply did not have that kind of name recognition or interest.
Let’s say you did play the game and watch the movie. Guess what? You would still be confused as hell. There lies the problem. The movie looks awesome, the effects are awesome, Vin Diesel gives a great performance as Riddick, Judi Dench is awesome, Colm Feore as the main Necromonger bad-ass is awesome, but the movie isn’t awesome.
Story D
Acting B+
Visuals A
Originality/Innovation C-
Enjoyability Grade D
Home Theater/HD Factor A (Just turn down the sound as the flick looks incredible.)
Overall Grade C-
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