Underverse. Underverse. Underverse. Such a wonderful
word. It more than makes up for the crappyness of "necromongers", a
'faith' that wins its converts by threatening them with death, and then
subsumes their will by means of pain (brainwashing the spiky way).
It turns out that Riddick is a "Furian" - apt description, don't you think? - and the reason why he was half-strangled at birth was a general massacre of all Furians, the only race that managed to stand up to the Necromongers thirty years before. Why such a drastic reaction? It seems that there was a prophecy that a certain Necro commander would be killed by a Furian; this commander subsequently became supreme high lord marshall and took steps to ensure his own longevity. Of course, he didn't factor in the force of nature that is Riddick...
So, apart from having to deal with a somewhat suicidal bunch of mercenary bounty-hunters and a persistent Elemental, Riddick has to avoid a horde of silver-clad, armetted, halberd-wielding uber-soldiers and their snakeskin-clad women, who turn their attention to the worlds of Helion - ah well, the universe had to end sometime. It's just that they went and made Riddick mad, and now it's personal - and my money's on the ornery outlaw with the temper of a toothless grizzly and the killing efficiency of a leopard. Even the lizard-hyenas were scared of him.
The thing I like about the actor - which carries through into the character - is the intelligence of the man. You can see the eyes moving, studying, analysing, while the brain presents options. It's amazing, to meet someone's eyes and not know what they're thinking. I think I'm in love - and I'm only being half-way facetious. At last, an actionman-antihero with a mind. I'm captivated. Of course it's nothing new - as soon as I saw Pitch Black, I knew he would go places. The only question was *when*.
Riddick has this amazing habit of doing-in lesser character actors in ingenious and amusing ways. Push-ups and teacups are involved. Don't ask. Death by teacup - never saw that one coming. My only niggle was that he didn't seem discomfited as much by bright light in this movie, as it caused him extreme pain in Pitch Black, and was really the only way the evil Merc, Johns, could control him.
I would've thought, with all the brouhaha about how Vin went out of his way to get Dame Judi as "Aereon", the Elemental, that the character would play a far greater role in the movie. I suppose they couldn't let the running-time get too long, or the plot too involved, in case it bombed; if it doesn't bomb, and I doubt it will, the extra background and plot-threads will no doubt be filled in through the rest of the trilogy. So we just have to wait, painfully, the way LOTR kept us hanging for two consecutive years (and left out the Scouring of the Shire). I did enjoy Thandie Newton's brilliant Lady Macbeth character, which she played with absolute relish. "Vaako" (Karl Urban) reprised his role as a Rohirrim warrior (yep, I thought I saw him before... in horse-armour). The hair gave me a clue - I loved the mohawk, long and gelled like a, yes, horsemane, and ending in fine tiny bead-tipped braids. Lovely. I may steal it.
The big snag with movie fantasy is that the alien cultures are never as complicated and interesting as in literary genres. You don't have sabre-wielding Albans or sandworm-riding Fremen, for example. And all the evil empires are vaguely Starwars-shaped. At least there weren't any wise-cracking droids in this movie; if there were, Riddick would have killed them. And eaten Jar-jar Binks for lunch. Whoopee. I do hope that we see more of the Elementals, and get a better grasp of how the necro-verse works - you don't see any of their children, for example. And Helion was just a bad copy of Morrocco with a whole lot of nice sweet extras carrying woven blankets around, as if that's a foreign culture in itself.
All in all, this movie was thrill-a-minute; while I did find that the plot wasn't as deep as I would've liked, the addition of the Macbeth-esque subplot was an enjoyable one. Don't expect more than a scifi/action/thriller movie; this isn't art-house, it's for the Hollywood market, so expect a few additions of "dumb". However, Riddick's fearlessness, and his ability to kill henchmen with kitchen utensils, was very entertaining. I do notice that they've cleaned up the character quite a lot; he had no qualms about leaving helpless people behind to be eaten by monsters in Pitch Black. Maybe his experiences really did change him... So, anyway, when I wasn't sighing over the way Riddick's muscles moved, I found myself practically biting the chair-back in front of me with excitement. There was also a slight twist at the end, so don't be too surprised. You keep what you kill; as long as you don't have to clean it, is all I'm worried about.
Official site: http:\\www.thechroniclesofriddick.com. Takes a while to load, but well worth it. Unfortunately there are a couple of bugs, but as it's so big and interesting, this doesn't surprise me.