Scribe Reviews: RIDDICK [spoilers, spoilers, and more spoilers]

“There are bad days, and then there are legendary bad days. Today was shaping up into one of those.”

Yep.

The third installment in the RIDDICK franchise (let’s face it; this isn’t a trilogy)

opens on a pretty familiar scene: A sun-scorched planet, a beat-to-hell Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel, as if I needed to tell you), and instant death under every rock in the desert.

Flash back: Remember how CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK ended up all Conan-in-Space with Riddick on the throne as the lord commander of the Necromongers*? Well, lo and behold, the goth jerks with the hard-ons for death have betrayed him. Vaako (Karl Urban) has lost the proto-space-mullet but kept the guyliner. Riddick, as ever, is trying to find his way back to his home planet Furya, and Vaako’s all like, “Hey, dude. I gotcha, bro. Let’s go.” Why Riddick would believe him, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just that sentimental about home. Or maybe the writers needed a dramatic way to dispose of his whole King of the Death-Dorks mantle. Whatever…

I mean, seriously, even Riddick looks like a jerk in his Death-Jerks outfit.

Cut to said sun-scorched planet. Riddick and Vaako step off their ship, and it dawns on Riddick, “Oh, duh. You double-crossed me,” and then there’s the fight, and Vaako leaves Riddick for dead. “You keep what you kill,” and all that Got-Death-Jerk crap.

Before I go on, though, can we just stop for one second and ask ourselves why ANYone would EVER assume that leaving Richard B. Riddick without making absolutely sure he’s dead is a good idea? Like, for serious, y’all. The dude survives EVERYthing. Giant, killer darkness monsters? No prob. Impenetrable jail pit from hell? Been there; done that. Twice. Necromongers? Are you kidding? And remember that time he outran sunrise on that nuclear-blast-furnace planet after escaping from that inescapable jail (again)? Why the hell would you assume falling from a cliff would get him? I mean, rocks? Seriously? You think a little tumble and some dust are gonna get him? I’m starting to question Vaako’s reasoning skills. His ascent to new lord commander of the Dead-Stuff-Douchebags really doesn’t bode well for them. But I digress…

So, now that Riddick’s alone on some hell planet with death in every shadow or pool of water, the stage is set for a return to the original themes of PITCH BLACK… Riddick says as much, himself, “I got civilized. So now we zero the clock. Just me and this no-name world. Gotta find the animal inside again.” I found this particular line pretty telling. Not only has Riddick realized he’s gone astray from what’s kept him alive through all his ordeals, but the writers have admitted – in that one tiny little voiceover – that CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK took a wrong turn. Whereas PITCH BLACK is a work of simple, primal beauty in its low budget, high-concept way… CHRONICLES gets entirely too civilized. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard someone complain that it was like an entirely different film, completely unrelated. Sure, Riddick’s there, and yeah, Jack shows up, except she’s not even Jack. She’s “Keira”, and her hair is entirely too pretty for underground jail. She should’ve stuck with shaving her head to emulate ole Hubcap Eyes. In short, CHRONICLES went a little afield. To put it mildly.

RIDDICK, on the other hand, returns to form. It’s almost an apology. Man vs. Nature comes back in a big way. This time it’s not the darkness that brings out the baddies, but the rain. If there’s a unifying theme in PITCH BLACK and RIDDICK (other than something about honor and savagery vs. civilization), it’s this: Nature is gross, and trying to kill you.

So, as I was watching, enjoying the hell out of myself and all the Diesely goodness, something occurred to me… If this had come out as a sequel to PITCH BLACK with no delay and without CHRONICLES in between, I would’ve been pretty disappointed in RIDDICK. I mean, Vin Diesel’s doing what he does best, with his monologuing, and his not-so-hard-to-look-at physique. He even makes friends with a CG hyena/wolf/thing. And Katee Sackhoff  (playing Dahl) adds five points to just about anything she’s in (but I’m a little prejudiced here. I wanna be Starbuck when I grow up). And we get to meet Johns’ (remember that bounty hunter jerk with the morphine habit? Yeeeaahhh) dad, who’s actually pretty badass and a good guy. All that aside, I’d kinda rather see the original… Except that’s not the case. CHRONICLES did happen. Years have passed. And, oddly enough, this is a good enough apology, a decent enough return, that I want them to keep going. I want Riddick to get home. I want to see it happen. I want him to stay savage, though I know he actually has a heart. I want another sequel, and I want Katee Sackhoff to kick some more ass.

All the right people, and some of the wrong ones, die… Riddick tells you exactly how the final act is going to play out, and you don’t mind one bit. Right down to Dahl asking him “real sweet like,” which doesn’t make all the sense in the world… But as a hot-blooded hetero female with eyes, I’d hit it. So I ain’t mad.

And don’t get me wrong, I liked CHRONICLES. I had no problem at all letting PITCH BLACK stand alone and departing entirely into a whole series of Conan-in-Space goodness. But it just feels so good to bring it on back to the original. Keep it up, guys!

"I'm gonna ride it like I stole it."

MOMENTS OF NOTE:

-I noticed two very interesting BLADERUNNER nods. When Vaako’s kicking Riddick around in the film’s first fight scene, he says, “It’s a long way to come…for this." His delivery and stance reminded me a lot of Roy Batty: confident, cocky, ruthless, and totally doomed (sure we don’t see it in this one, but you know it’s coming. Riddick don’t play)…

-Then, as she’s waiting on the other bounty hunters, Dahl opens the slatted blinds and cocks her head, staring out a window. In that moment, she doesn’t even look human. Her hair, her posture, and the slats’ shadows across her face are so reminiscent of Tess that I can’t help but think it was a very deliberate visual reference. Not a big deal. No major thematic things going on there. I just thought those moments were kinda cool. Sue me…

-When the bounty hunters find the cave where Riddick’s been hanging out, they see a bunch of cave art (actually the second time we’ve seen this. Looks like this planet used to have some primitive culture, and like they got pretty well exterminated. The only signs of life around are the hyena/wolf/things and the horrendous scorpion mud dinosaurs. Guess that’s what happens when you get giant, venomous scorpion dinosaur monsters popping up out of the mud every time it rains). Amongst all the caveman stuff, FURYA is scrawled across the ceiling. Riddick went all CROATOA on them. Cute.

THINGS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER:

-The CG hyena/wolf/thing could’ve been a little less Avatar and a lot more gritty. The monsters, shrouded in rain, mud, and night, came off a lot better than Riddick’s new lil buddy. He just looked a little too Disney for my taste.

-There’s this moment when the jerk of the bounty hunger collective (Jordi Molla) gets all rapey on Dahl. First of all, I have a big problem with it when writers jump straight up and pull the rape card when they want a woman threatened or traumatized. It’s lazy and way overused. Also, she’s already kicked his ass a couple of times, and I believe she could do it again. But then he gets her in a super compromised position. Then Riddick shows up behind them. The scene cuts, and when we come back, there’s a bloody message smeared on their locker, and Dahl and Rape-Jerk are staring daggers at each other across the room. “I had to fuck him up again,” she says off-handedly to Johns Sr… Did Riddick step in and save the girl? Did he just use their fight as a good distraction and go for leaving the message? We’ve already seen that he won’t let a woman or kid get hurt if he can stop it. I dunno. That part just seemed a bit off, both rough and ambiguous. But maybe I’m just dense.

-And, finally, Dwayne Johnson is not in this movie, and that – as some of you may already know – always makes me just a little bit sad. But I’ll get over it.

Overall, I’d say go for it. Or don’t. Go watch PITCH BLACK again. That works too, except in the end of PB, the cute blonde Riddick’s been fight-flirting with the whole time gets a giant tusk through her torso and dies. In this one, you don’t see it, but you can be for damned sure that Dahl lives and gets nekkid with Riddick. So, really, a lot of your decision should be based on how you feel about the survival rate of blondes.

As always, further discussion is super welcome in the comments section.

Cheers!
-Amelia Shackelford

*A name I still kinda have to laugh at. I mean, seriously? I don’t think I’d giggle any harder if they’d called them Death Huggers. But Conan-in-Space isn’t exactly about subtlety, I guess.