It's a sci-fi movie made relatively recently with a relatively good budget. So why not watch it? Hey, even if it was awful, at least I'd get some sci-fi action. That's what I was thinking going into the movie. Maybe it helped that I had low expectations, but I actually really liked Pitch Black. First off, it has a cool title. What more could you want? Well...
The main character, Riddick, is one of the best concepts for a sci fi hero I've heard of in a while. He's a criminal who just got caught again and is on his way back to prison when the ship he's on crashes and he gets loose. Yes, I know that's not original, but stay with me here. He's also had an operation done to his eyes to make them metallic so he can see in the dark prisons where he lives. It also helps that he's really buff, fast, and has a questionable moral character.
The other characters in Pitch Black all manage to add something to the movie. The merc Johns who's bringing Riddick in knows how tough Riddick is and is pretty good at what he does himself, but he still ends up making a lot of dumb decisions that lead to a sticky end. Fry, the docking pilot of the ship that crashed tries to help the passengers survive, since she is the highest-ranking person still alive. But the whole time in the back of her mind is the realization that she tried to dump the passengers out of the ship while making her crash landing to lighten the ship's load. There's also a bunch of Muslim pilgrims who add a bit of the exotic to the crew, a wimpy British paleontologist, some prospectors (including Claudia Black, who plays Aeryn Sun in Farscape!) and a young boy named Jack who thinks Riddick is cool, and who later turns out to be a girl. Sorry if I gave that away, but oh yeah, this contains spoilers.
The planet they're on is, of course, inhabited by scary man-eating aliens who bear more than a passing resemblance to the aliens in Aliens. The good news is that they hate the light and the planet is constantly in light, thanks to more than one sun shining on it at once. The bad news is that every 22 years there's an eclipse during which the aliens come out and start eating everything on the planet. And honestly, with that 22 year window, what are the chances that our heroes would crash hours before the darkness? Uh...
The whole appeal of Pitch Black is that Riddick is a dangerous murderer, but since he's the toughest one of the lot and the only one who can see in the dark the others have to trust him to help them out. There's also a lot of moral dilemmas surrounding all the main characters. Fry wants to get out at all costs, but can't bear the thought of having to make a decision that could kill everyone again. Johns wants to use Riddick to get out, but then leave him behind when they leave. And of course Riddick wants to be evil and self-serving, but accidentally starts to like Fry, Jack, and the leader of the pilgrims, Imam.
This movie has a lot of thrilling scenes, and those scenes actually manage to be somewhat diverse. There's the scene where the ship is crashing, where they've crashed and are trying to find water and avoid Riddick, and of course the scenes when they're trying to get away from the aliens or just hide from them. Instead of relying on just a single way to thrill the audience, Pitch Black uses these different kinds of action to mix things up a bit and make sure nobody gets bored.
I should mention that the dialogue in the movie really isn't all that great, and some of the logic in the movie will have you scratching your head. It's a pretty wild set of coincidences that sets up the movie, after all. Are we really meant to believe that these guys crashed on the planet not only just before the aliens awoke and the darkness came, but right next to the abandoned camp where they find a way off the planet? It's a pretty large planet, after all, and unless the whole thing is dotted with abandoned camps Riddick should start buying lottery tickets.
The image that Pitch Black leaves you with is the little huddle of people gathered around the power cells, moving toward the ship that will get them off-planet, surrounded by aliens just out of sight in the night, with Riddick up in front of them, not in the darkness but not fully in the light either. Civilization, chaos, and the one man who stands at the boundary. Pitch Black is far from a poetic movie, but that one image is worth spending a bit of thought on.
The Chronicles of Riddick
After Pitch Black was such a pleasant surprise, certainly the sequel would be worth watching, right? Honestly, the only reason I watched Pitch Black was because Chronicles had just come out and I wanted to see that, but Pitch Black came first. So Chronicles of Riddick would be really cool! Or so I thought.
Fact is, for just as surprisingly good Pitch Black was, Chronicles of Riddick was that bad. The villains are no longer cool CG aliens lurking in the darkness but dumb "legion of terror"-looking guys called, if you can believe it, Necromongers. *groan* They are introduced to us talking about the various "'verses" or universes, one of which is apparently the "Underverse," a sort of afterlife which we never even get to glimpse but these Necromongers all serve. Oh, and the leader of the Necros is said to be "half alive and half something else." Right.
Dame Judi Dench, who is usually so cool, is woefully miscast as the weird alien Elemental, a sort of air-creature who gives mysterious advice and tells us of the prophecy that a Furyan will kill the Necromonger leader. No points for guessing who the Furyan in the movie is.
Anyway, it turns out that now Imam is a religious leader in New Mecca and took out a contract on Riddick's life. No, don't worry, he hasn't turned against Riddick, he just wanted to get Riddick's attention so he can ask him for help in stopping the Necromongers before they arrive on his planet. And right on cue, with almost no fanfare, the Necromongers arrive and pretty much sweep aside all resistance in a couple of special effects shots. They also kill Imam, but his family gets to survive. That's something, right?
Just when it all seems too much for Riddick to ever fix the situation, the merc Toombs, who first took Imam's contract to get Riddick, shows up again and succeeds in capturing him this time, taking him off to a prison planet and away from the real events of the show. Fortunately for the plot, Jack from the first movie is on the prison planet and she meets up with Riddick and we learn that she's tried to become like Riddick but now hates him because she thinks he's full of crap and worthless. Oh, and the prison planet has cool creatures living on it that the wardens use to hunt the prisoners for some reason. We also get a scene with Riddick killing a guy with a teacup, then the guy's goons running away when they see he still has a tiny can-opener that he could attack them with.
Of course the prisoners escape, but then they have to run over the lava wastes to where the only spaceship on the planet is in its hangar. Meanwhile the sun is coming up and if you get caught in its rays you burn up rather painfully. One long run and a Tarzan-swing later Riddick and Jack (who is now called Kyra, don't get confused) meet up with some Necromongers who were sent to get Riddick because of that prophecy. Riddick gets beat up but some dream lady shows up and places a handprint on his chest to show that he's ready to fulfill the prophecy.
Then it's time for the big showdown. Oh, not that it matters, but there's a Necromonger who wants to be top dog and he's played by the guy who played Eomer in Lord of the Rings. He and the boss's wife have a thing going on, hoping to kill the boss and be in charge because "You keep what you kill." But, aw darn, it's Riddick who kills the boss, and the movie ends with him apparently being put in charge of it all. Oh, and we thought Kyra was brainwashed by the Necromongers but she throws it off just in time to save Riddick and die. Darn.
Hopefully the third Riddick movie will go back to the strengths of the original, back when Riddick was still scary instead of being a caped do-gooder who saves the universe. We also need a lot more chances for Riddick to take advantage of his being able to see in the dark because, well, that's kind of his thing.