This movie came out in 2000 with very little notice being given to it. It stars Vin Diesel who plays Riddick, a prisoner aboard a ship that has crashed on an unihabited planet.
At first, this movie appears to be very predictable. Riddick gets free and hides around different parts of the area, scaring the other passengers. But this movie has far more complex characters than it seems at first. Is Riddick evil? Are the other characters truly good?
The movie requires two “blind beliefs”, a term I use when something is a huge coincidence or pushes scientific reason. Two is about the max. that a good Sci-Fi movie can get away with; anymore and the movie might turn into Battlefield Earth. The two for this movie are:
The planet they land on has two suns and every 20 years, things allign and a major eclipse emmerges the planet in darkness for quite some time.
Riddick has eyes that have been “polished” so that he can see in the dark(sort of a night vision type thing).
Granted, the second one is pretty hard to grasp, but if you push beyond these two “blind beliefs”, you will find an excellent movie. Diesel does an amazing job throughout, starting with his opening narrative, “They say most of your brain shuts down during cryo-sleep. All but the primitive side, the animal side. No wonder I’m still awake.” Brilliant.
Every camera shot in this movie is critical. The color and cinematography are great. While I don’t expect this movie to appeal to everyone, it should appeal to most people. It may require two viewings or some mulling over in the mind, but I highly recommend this movie and genuinely hope to see it gain a cult status.
Oh, c’mon Montfort - these are two completely separate films. Alien has only one hostile animal-like alien and they’re on a spaceship. Pitch Black is about people stranded on a planet surrounded by many animal-like aliens. See, the differences are vast.
Now the comparisons to Aliens on the other hand…
Actually though, all sarcasm aside, I liked Pitch Black. It wasn’t a great film, but I thought it was worth the rental price and it entertained me for about 90 minutes, or however long it is, which is all I really ask from an action sci-fi film. I also liked how the good guys aren’t necessarily good and the bad guys aren’t necessarily bad.
Pitch Black was all right. Not classic material though, I don’t think it’s original enough. Yeah, Riddick was kind of cool but the plot’s a variant on “10 people get killed off one by one while they try to find out how to survive.”
Exactly. I don’t see any reason to watch Pitch Black instead of just watching Aliens again. It’s virtually the same movie only a million times better. Pitch Black, IMO, took the same script and added nothign to it, and in fact added a bunch of silliness.
Pitch Black was, IMHO, one of the better sci-fi movies to come out in recent times. Not the best by any means, but much better than I expected it to be.
I generally liked Pitch Black, but like most SF movies there was some stuff that was too hard to suspend disbelief for.
** possible spoilers **
These people just happen to crash on the planet when it’s about to go through an eclipse, which doesn’t happen but once per 20 years
The predators killed off everything on the planet, yet are still alive? What did they eat? (OK, I guess there might be a whole ecosystem underground that they can feed from, that gets its energy from geothermal processes.)
The scene with Riddick killing one with just a knife. Yeah, he’s a bad-ass, but c’mon. The thing’s like 10 times bigger than a human.
I found it to be a very solid movie. Since we’re compairing the two, I loved Aliens and enjoyed P.B. As a matter of fact Vin Diesel is working on the script for the sequel. It is no longer dealing with the creatures from P.B., but with the further ‘adventures’ of the character he played. I look forward to it since he did such a kick @ss job.
I find the idea of some kind of night-vision eye augmentation a LOT more believable (I think it’s pretty likely, eventually) than a planet that only experiences darkness once in 20 years.
The best thing about Pitch Black was certainly Vin Diesel; he absolutely dominated that movie, and when one has the option of looking at Claudia Black instead, that’s a pretty mean feat.
Fans of Diesel should be aware that the rumor on the street is that he has signed on to appear in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. It’s not in stone, but DAMN that would rock.
I liked it. It was good summer science fiction. Saw it in the theater–the feeling as the sun went out was indescribable.
I’ve always been amused by how critical people are of science fiction films. There have been very, very few science fiction films that have been good in a classical sense while still being watchable by a mass audience. I mean, what are you people expecting, Shakespeare? It’s like complaining that your bubblegum is lacking that certain refined je ne se quoix…
Well, I think there are enough quality science fiction films to belie the assumption that if you’re watching science fiction is necessarily must be stupid and brainless. I have gotten tired of hearing “turn your brain off at the door” used as a good review - my brain doesn’t have an ‘off’ switch.
Pitch Black is a good example of this. Aliens is a good, exciting, interesting movie that doesn’t insult my intelligence or demand that I overlook its glaring problems to enjoy it. If Aliens can do it, why can’t Pitch Black? If Raiders of the Lost Ark can be a fun action movie that I don’t have to be stupid to enjoy, why can’t Tomb Raider?
Hollywood has bascially convinced the public that not do summer movies not have to be smart, they SHOULDN’T be smart. And I’m sorry, but I got tired of paying for stupid crap long ago. I like science fiction, in general, but I hardly see any science fiction movies anymore, because they’re so awful, and because I have better things to do with my time and money than waste it on something I have to pretend to be stupid to enjoy. I don’t like it when people in real life treat me like an idiot, and I refuse to pay for Hollywood to do so.
I don’t mean to go off, but I just wish that people would, in general, become just a little more demanding of movies. Maybe then we’d actually get some worth seeing.
You didn’t have to overlook the glaring problems in Aliens? Which ones would you like - continuity errors, or really questionable concepts (The queen can work the elevator? In a combat situation they leave the hatch to the aircraft down? They leave their transport ship with the backup shuttle and all the nukes unmanned? A colony of hundreds goes quiet, and they send about 10 troops?) Oh yeah, nothing suspicious there.
Pitch Black was no sillier than Aliens, and pretty good fun to watch. The use of light was great, the crash scene one of the best things to have on DVD. And as for the anti hero, good work that man.
Fans of Vin Diesel should also know that he’s pretty close to signing to play Hellboy in the movie adaptation of the comic book. yeah.
I really enjoyed Pitch Black, although my friend DID say “in space, no one can hear you yawn” at the end of it. What I liked was that Riddick WAS really bad. He wasn’t ‘falsely accused’, he was a bad ass criminal and he beat up a woman in the movie for god’s sake. Hollywood NEVER lets that happen without dire consequences.
Plus, that scene in the beginning when he’s all tied up and bit gagged and restrained. I’ll buy that for a dollar. yummy.
All I can say is, I didn’t walk out of Aliens rolling my eyes. I did with Pitch Black. I like Aliens and I own Aliens and I thought Pitch Black was just yet another piece of summer sci-fi crap ground out for people who have been trained to not mind substandard movies.
And as for the anti-hero, I feel it’s time for that particular trend to be on the wane. There’s nothing revolutionary about anti-heroes. I’m more surprised these days when the hero turns out NOT to be an anti-hero and is actually somewhat heroic.
Look, with the best will in the world Sci-fi blockbusters like Aliens and Pitch Black, much as I love 'em, are going to be cheesy as hell with holes in the plot you could drive a bus through and the sort of script that is laughable at least. And that’s before we even start laughing at the comedy science they come up with.
Now you can say that Pitch Black is “sci-fi crap ground out for people who have been trained to not mind substandard movies”, which is fair enough. But to pretend that Aliens is any better in terms of hole ridden plot, cheesy dialogue, or a reliance on special effects and gore is laughably hypocritical.
So, I take it you include yourself in the snobbishly aloof terms of having been trained not to mind such substandard fare?