How Riddick can be better than Chronicles of Riddick
By Ben Johnson
Not too long ago, I sat down with a buddy of mine, glass of bourbon (neat) in hand, and we popped in a DVD. The movie in question was a quasi-sequel to a sci-fi film called Pitch Black, which was an under-the-radar hit back in 2000 and did a whole hell of a lot to launch Vin Diesel’s career. It was a natural decision to take the supremely badass character Diesel played and put him front and center in his own film, giving him more to do and expanding upon his story. Unfortunately, what we were given – and what my friend and I suffered through that fateful night – was the confusing mess of a movie called The Chronicles of Riddick. The character is getting a third chance to shine this Friday with the release of the creatively titled Riddick, so now seems like as good an opportunity as any to reflect on the (many) mistakes the previous movie made and the new one needs to avoid.
The most significant problem Chronicles had was making the mythology of the universe surrounding Riddick waaaaaaay too complicated. The filmmakers lost sight of what worked so well to sell audiences on Riddick in Pitch Black – a dangerous, mysterious man who can see in the dark and kill you without a second thought – and completely abandoned it in favor of a convoluted, sweeping story that just did not fit the nature of the character.
That over-reaching ambition might be forgiven if it was possible to at least make sense of any of the proceedings, but alas, it is not. There are some of the goofiest costumes I have ever seen on film, Judi Dench playing some sort of ghost/wind person, and a plot involving a humanoid alien species looking to, I imagine, destroy the universe – I honestly don’t know for sure. There is a political struggle among the villains involving a Macbeth-type power play that adds nothing to the story and only serves to muddy the waters of an already all-over-the-place plot. But the worst aspect of Chronicles is the addition of a prophecy that makes Riddick a kind of hero of destiny – he’s the last of his race, his planet having been destroyed by the main baddie because it was foretold that a child of that race would one day kill him. So basically Riddick is Harry Potter. It all winds means that the movie devotes too much time to exposition when there could have been so much more “Riddick punches a man/alien/wall/mountain.”
Based on the trailers I’ve seen, Riddick looks like it will bring the character back to his simpler roots, namely stranded on some barren planet with a horde of deadly alien creatures trying to kill him and others, this time a group of bounty hunters who have been pursuing him. That all sounds relatively similar to Pitch Black, though instead of just a ragtag group of crash survivors, this film will have the tried-and-true “the hunters become the hunted” element going for it. Even if Riddick retreads every single beat of Pitch Black, though, it will be a significant improvement over Chronicles. Riddick is a character that works best as a dangerous anti-hero who has to work with others to save himself, not someone destined to end an inter-galactic conflict. If the filmmakers have learned anything in the nine years since Chronicles, Riddick will give the title character a chance to simply be badass, without all the issues that weighed down his previous film.