Chronicles of Riddick

Title: Chronicles of Riddick
Rating: 2/5
Genre: Action, Sci Fi
Starring: Vin Diesel, Colm Feore, Karl Urban, Judi Dench

With the recently reviewed ‘Pitch Black,’ it only feels natural I should conclude with the wholly unsatisfying sequel. With a far larger budget under their belt they continue to explore the universe that we find our anti-hero trapped in, and whilst they do indeed succeed in exploring it we find ourselves limited to a large number of effects shots of the various planets. Rather than explain the worlds and the characters nature, we instead find that their big budget has gone on elaborate use of CGI, which whilst impressive leaves a lot to be desired.

Once more Riddick (Diesel) is thrust into a dark world he tried to distance himself from, set about a decade after the original events the world once again calls upon him, the last survivor of his alien race of ‘furyons,’ destined to overthrow the religious armies of the necromongers on their unholy crusade, converting worlds to their cause and killing those who refuse. With a reprise in role for the Muslim holy man and mercenaries hot on Riddick’s tail, he seems to find himself caught up in a situation out of his control, constantly striving to what he must in order to survive.

Before I said I was disappointed by Diesel’s acting in ‘Pitch Black,’ but here he feels more typecast than ever. His ability to see in the dark severely underplayed, his actions less thoughtful than ever as he is thrust against a seamless barrage of enemies he must face. With the occasional appearance from Judi Dench as Aereon – an air elemental – and the bland necromongers showing little of their character beyond the occasional snippet of generic dialogue and special effects. With Colm Feore as a thoroughly unconvincing ‘Lord Marshal,’ leader type character, and faithful lap dog Vaako who’s hair style says more about him than any of his acting did. Twinned with this is his devious wife played by Thandie Newton, and Riddick’s love interest in Kyra (Alexa Davalos), beyond what they severely lack is their capability to at any point to prove themselves; the script simply doesn’t allow for it, and that’s the main issue here.

Part of what made ‘Pitch Black’ strong was not the location, which was quite basic, but rather the small snippets into the characters backgrounds. Many of the characters here feel ripe for such exploration, not least the devious ‘Lady Macbeth’ character, manipulating her husband for no observable reason. Or the history regarding the Lord Marshal – the only person to have visited the final destination of the necromongers – who’s only personality comes through the use of blurry CGI to show he isn’t quite human any more. Then theres Riddick himself, what has he been doing this past decade? The love interest Kyra, too could do with explanation of her past but instead we are required to take on faith that these characters are all one dimensional. When each character can be easily summed up with a single word, irrespective of the film genre, it’s not a good thing.

At first glance it could at least seem that many of the characters and worlds could be somewhat original, until we realise that everything treads that fine line between ‘influence’ and ‘stolen.’ From the prison that feels remarkably like every other prison film, except perhaps more cavernous, the escape through the blistering heat a repeat of the prequel through the dark, the air elemental from every fantasy novel and film since ‘Lord of the Rings,’ the main planet feeling like an Mayan themed ‘Coruscant’ from Star Wars and even the necromongers which form an integral basis for the film feel like a carbon copy of the ‘Goa’uld’ from ‘Stargate.’

The world presented feels as though it could be grandiose in scale, and whilst I applaud his efforts to create a new mythos – something which I have yet to really see done lately – shooting for a ‘Star Wars’ epic, but the result is that everything has been ‘dumbed down’ and stated explicitly in order to run through so quickly in order to get to the action that it loses any shred of credibility it could have built up. It simply tries to do so much that it succeeds in doing nothing well, too many one dimensional characters introduced and become instantly forgettable, so many worlds that consist of one word descriptors ‘This one is religious, this one is icy cold, this one is scorching hot, etc etc.’ With news of a sequel in the works, supposedly intended to cut back on the scale to more ‘Pitch Black’ like size, I await with baited breath to see if history will repeat itself and produce another failure.