The Chronicles of Riddick was not as good as I wanted it to be, but it was also not as bad as I feared it might be. It’s the perfect Warhammer 40K movie; there’s very little pure good in the world, the antagonists have psionic powers, and there’s lots of blood and guts. If you can’t take a guilty pleasure in spiky bitz, it’s not a good movie for you. If you can, then it’s worth the viewing.
As promised, David Twohy created a huge mythology to inform the movie. None of it is particularly explained, because the payoff needs to wait for the rest of the prospective trilogy, but you can tell there are bones beneath the musculature of the story. Sadly, the only real connection to Pitch Black is Riddick — while both movies are interested in questions of faith, I wasn’t ever really convinced they were taking place in the same universe. I kind of liked the non-supernatural universe better.
Vin Diesel is excellent. Alexa Davalos, who plays Jack from Pitch Black all grown up, is really good. Everyone else is pretty much OK.
I’m hoping this makes enough to greenlight the two sequels, but I’m kind of suspecting that it won’t.
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Yeah, it was a fine action movie.
I tended to feel like the universe was deeply goofy, and if they spent a lot of time expositing on it, it would have been more apparant. But it was mostly a backdrop for an action movie with good characters, was very pretty, and had action scenes that were interesting enough.
The one scene of flashy-flashy bits was as annoying this time as the one in Pitch Black was the first time, though.
I’d also add Judi Dench to the Good list on acting, but it’s hardly a surprise that she’s good in her role. The role itself was part of the goofy bits, though.
Far better, IMO, than movies like Underworld, not as good as Pitch Black. I hope there are more too.
Early estimates are around 25 million for the weekend. It did well on Friday but dropped off a lot on Saturday, which is a bad sign.