I saw The Chronicles of Riddick, otherwise known as Vin Diesel’s Last Chance, last night at a free preview.
Pros:
Awesome art direction and costumes.
Thandie Newton playing Lady Macbeth
Karl Urban (Eomer form LOTR), whose huge, muscled body makes Vin Diesel look like salittle girl by comparison, as Necromonger Macbeth
Colm Feore as The Lord Marshal
The heat wave incinerating the convict
The battle scenes Cons
Vin Diesel trying to show off his limited acting skills–his attempt to show grief just makes him look like he needs to go to the toilet
The CGI space wargs
Judi Dench’s role (She was great as always, but superfluous, I thought)
All in all, it was a spectacularly entertaining piece of mindless fluff. The basic plot involves an army of religious fanatics called the Necromongers spreading out in a jihad to kill or convert every race in the galaxy. Vin Diesel gets kidnapped by bounty hunters who have been hired by the Muslim mullah from the first film to save his planet from the Necromongers, and off we go. Despite plot holes you could drive a truck through, the FX, particularly of the giant space ships that look like medieval sarcophagi, are stunning and the movie moves along at such a fast clip that you have no choice but to turn off your mind and go along for the ride. After finishing my medium-sized Diet Coke, I was desperate to tap a kidney, but I didn’t want to miss a second of the film.
If you don’t like big, dumb summer movies, then stay away. For everyone else, this is space opera on a grand scale that’s well worth your $9.50.
If this film does well, the producers are planning to shoot a pair of sequels back-to-back. Since that just about guarantees that friends of mine will be working for the next year, I urge everyone to see this film
You know, Riddick displayed such a great extent of cunning in Pitch Black I knew very early on that he would survive (though I did initially mistake him for the ‘crazy evil badguy’ characteristic of other survival horror films). Predictable? Yes, but there was something cool about him- very anti-hero, given both his past and his temperament.
Let me know when Karl Urban hugs you. Vin Diesel is a mere puny girlyman by comparison to that muscular demigod. I was like a compass pointing north watching him.
Who knew this thread would be so hormone-drenched?
The trailers look interesting, but it hardly even seems to belong in the same sci-fi universe with Pitch Black (and I’m consciously using “sci-fi” to differentiate it from serious science fiction).
I may be nuts, but I’d like to see Diesel take on a straight dramatic role. Or a comedy – not an action-comedy, but a goofy, character-driven comedy.
For straight dramatic role, go find the twenty minute short film he wrote and acted in called “Multi-Facial” and an idependent film called “Strays”. He’s also signed on to do a romantic comedy called “New York Giant” soon.
I can’t wait to see this movie, I love big, dumb summer blockbusters. However, gobear, based on the hi-lited section of your quote above, do you think there’s a chance that Muslim groups will protest the movie and try to stir up much hatred and discontent?
I just like the fact that the villains in the film are the “Death Fuckers.” Sounds more like a motorcycle game than a group of religious fanatics
I’m interested in this movie, but like Baldwin said, it just doesn’t seem to fit into the same world as Pitch Black. That had a great Western feel to it that I wish they would have stuck with, but instead, it’s like a live action version of Final Fantasy the Movie.
Still, I’m sure I’m going to see it; I liked the character of Riddick, so I’m curious to see where the road takes him.
Aren’t the villains called “Necromongers”? That would mean “Death Dealers”. (That’s real convenient, in fact; kinda helps me figure out who the bad guys are. Shaolin Soccer was good that way, too; I was pretty sure that “Team Evil” would turn out to be bad, and I was right!)
