valis2 | Today's movie subject: Chronicles of Riddick. (Reply)

I saw this movie a few days ago, and...well...I would never bother renting it again, unless it was so that an entire group of my friends could sit and poke fun at it with me. (Sorry,

deepforestowl!)

The Oddity of Chronicles of Riddick, otherwise known as I'll Never Get Those Two Hours of my Life Back Again.

The most remarkable theme of this movie is the Spaceballs truism "Even in the future nothing works!" Over and over again we see remarkable futuristic technology alongside tin-cans-and-a-string. Though the mercs have the ability to track their ship to another planet, for some reason there are no defensive devices built into the ship to prevent it from being stolen. Apparently no passwords, keycards, or retina scans are required to operate it.

There is a ship full of mercenaries tracking Vin on a frozen wasteland planet. The crew of the ship actually have to physically haul themselves onto the outside of the craft in order to shoot at Vin, which is quite a liability, as it gives Vin the ability to make an Impressive Clinging to Ship and Waiting for a Foolish Merc to Appear shot. (I also want to mention that, if they had any sort of infrared Vin would have been screwed, because they would have noticed him scrambling to get on top of the ship.) What do they do in space? What happens to the gunners when the ship leaves atmosphere?

So Vin pilots his stolen ship across the galaxy to a planet called Helios, which is where the bounty on his head originated. He tracks down the poor actor from the first movie who unluckily survived in Perfect Dark with Vin and Jack and forces him to engage in a conversation with him. The guy has a daughter, and a wife, and a beautiful voice. As usual, we have the ridiculous "Young Child Utters Meaningful Questions" cliche, laced with "Young Child's Question Disturbs Hardened Gary Stu's Well Protected Heart".

Then the Necromongers land. Their ship is like the Snake Tower from Conan, long and tall, with heads at the top. This ship is so badass that it isn't content to just land. It has to actually spear the planet in phallic fury.

So now about the Necromongers. They apparently have been wandering around the universe, Dalek-like, taking over random planets and such, trying to "convert" everyone to their religion. I still am having difficulty trying to decipher said religion. It appears to involve half-dying, so that, once dead, you can go to a really cool place. You get marked with the religion's symbol and hang in a rather creepy manner for awhile. They are led, or at least the military forces are led, by one Lord Marshall. His reward for having become the director of furious phallic spearing is to be allowed to wear the coveted Most Ridiculous Headgear in Existence. The headgear faces all directions at once so that everyone can be treated to a view of its awfulness. Karl Urban shows up, with all smoldering intensity intact, and is given a terrible haircut and extensions. He's been forced to wear armor that looks like the costume designer from Dynasty worked on the shoulderpads.

There are slaves that accompany the troops that have a giant magnifying lens strapped to their faces. Their only job is to sniff out, using some form of infrared, the local population so that the troops can capture them. Yet again, technology that is bizarrely impaired. Wouldn't it be easier simply to have a device that scans the area and...oh forget it. It is interesting that the infrared detector's speed is tied into the importance of its quarry, thereby imparting extra tension when it attempts to find a main character and it detects extra slow.

The Necromongers have a scene with a big batch of people kidnapped from the local populace. A random man from the local populace has a lovely speech, complete with everyone in the background nodding and looking intense, about how their religion prevents them from bowing down to the Necromongers, and how they'd all rather die than accept the Necromonger "religion". How convenient for him, because he is immediately killed. The rest of the people apparently think to themselves "Jeez, that Lord Marshall guy wasn't kidding!" and immediately bow down and accept the Necromonger "religion". I was surprised at how quick and easy it was.

Vin is so damned uberawesome that they take him into the ship...oh, sorry, he deigns to enter the ship, and is taken to a room of psychics. There are three psychics, apparently enslaved, and they try to figure him out, but because he's a Stu they are really impressed and their brains nearly overload. During this interrogation he is chained to the floor somehow. The Lord Marshall realizes that there is some sort of harebrained prophecy that describes Vin and could spell the Lord Marshall's destruction, because he sends in people to kill him. He unchains Vin first, which is a major handicap for the people sent in to kill him. Vin, of course, is the last survivor of some really Stu-like race of beings.

The Lord Marshall is only half-dead. There is a dagger hilt protruding from his back, which is an interesting effect. It makes me wonder if he forgets about it occasionally when he goes to lean back in his throne. "Ouch!"

Karl Urban has this gorgeous chick who is apparently in a relationship with him, and has gone all Lady Macbeth on him. At one point in the movie while in completely separate rooms they use two of the psychics---oh, you know it's coming, wait for it---to speak to each other. Yet again I wondered...do they not have walkie-talkies? Why are they using the Psychic Network? I hope they're at the very least sending royalty payments to Dionne Warwick, she might need them.

The mercenaries come back and grab Vin, taking him to a prison planet. Vin cockily mentions that he's been to nearly every prison planet in existence. They take him to the worst. I can't remember what it's called...Crematorium? They land and lower Vin in a very sexy lowering-by-chain scene. Vin, Stu that he is, cannot stand to just be passively lowered, and frees himself from the chain and jumps down. He immediately encounters a man who says cryptic things about two classifications of people in the prison. He also wears a wedding ring and says emotionally "I can't remember my wife's name" while fingering the ring. The prison is a big pit with several levels, and there are cages along the walls.

Then we meet Jack from the first movie again, who has grown up, and should honestly be called Jill. She inexplicably has a beautiful mass of curly hair that is shoulder-length. In a prison. Filled with men. She's the only woman I saw there. And she has this huge mass of hair. Doesn't she worry about lice? Or giving the men a convenient hand-hold? It looks like Pantene Pro-V is dispensed to her every day somehow.

The purpose of the cages becomes apparent when the prison guards release huge, red, computer-generated savage dog/sabre-tooth tiger blends on the prison populace. Everyone scrambles to get into a cage and lock it. Everyone except Vin, who, as a Stu, gets to put his Soothing Touch talent to good use, and ends up with a New Buddy for a moment. Based on this interaction I expected that the movie would use the normal Economy of Characters premise and have the Red Dog return to kick some butt on Vin's behalf, but no, their only purpose was to reveal his True Inner Badass---even a lowly CGI canine understands the folly of trying to attack Vin.

There is a prison break. It has to be one of the most bizarre prison breaks ever. I won't even go into the mercenary subplot, or How to Get the Mercs to Stick Around so that Vin has More Targets. The part that astonished me is the dash across the tortured landscape portion. See, I voluntarily watched a special that showed behind-the-scenes footage before the movie came out, and during this special everyone gushed about running across this set that was designed to appear like the Floor of Hell while machines floated tremendous quantities of ash-like substance into the air. None of the stuntmen/women could see where they were going and people actually ended up twisting ankles and injuring themselves. I thought, all of this pain should translate into a thrilling sequence. Oh no. Instead it's Guess Who That Is Running Madly Through Ash. Is it Vin? Is it Jill? Is it the wedding-ring guy? Who knows? It could be Satan himself, for all I could tell, though I think his agent would've procured him a better movie.

The wedding-ring man, for no possible reason, suddenly says that he does know his wife's name, and reveals that he never really forgot it. Oh, I was wiping tears away. Of laughter.

Then Vin's Hidden Stu Power is released when they are all captured, and Jill is taken, setting up the next Stu moment. Yes, despite the anti-Stu behavior that Vin continually tries to engage in---the No, I Really Don't Care behavior---it turns out that he (gasp!) really does care. No, really. Now Vin is pissed, and he takes off for the Necromonger ship, to have a showdown with the Lord Marshall.

Vin shows up, and the nearly-interesting Lady Macbeth subplot pushes Karl Urban into the front, forcing him to attempt to kill the Lord Marshall. Vin, however, is the only Stu that can really kill LM, because of the convenient prophecy. Then, as a "wild" card, they pull out Jill, who has been converted to the Necromonger "religion", and is offered as a tasty treat---er, an emotional hostage situation.

Vin is Teh Brutal Killing Machine, and thwarts Karl Urban's attempt to become the next LM, which actually pissed me off a little. Jill proves that she was "just joking" about being a Necromonger and gets a spike through her midsection in thanks, which allows her to die in a Noble Mary Sue Moment. Then the movie ends, presumably working us up for Riddick 3: The Search for Intelligent Life in the Riddick Movies, but in actuality it made me yawn and wish that I had been reading fanfic instead.