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[bryant]

The Chronicles of Riddick was not as good as I wanted it to be, but it was also not as bad as I feared it might be. It's the perfect Warhammer 40K movie; there's very little pure good in the world, the antagonists have psionic powers, and there's lots of blood and guts. If you can't take a guilty pleasure in spiky bitz, it's not a good movie for you. If you can, then it's worth the viewing.

As promised, David Twohy created a huge mythology to inform the movie. None of it is particularly explained, because the payoff needs to wait for the rest of the prospective trilogy, but you can tell there are bones beneath the musculature of the story. Sadly, the only real connection to Pitch Black is Riddick -- while both movies are interested in questions of faith, I wasn't ever really convinced they were taking place in the same universe. I kind of liked the non-supernatural universe better.

Vin Diesel is excellent. Alexa Davalos, who plays Jack from Pitch Black all grown up, is really good. everyone else is pretty much OK.

I'm hoping this makes enough to greenlight the two sequels, but I'm kind of suspecting that it won't.

Comments

[chrysoula.livejournal.com]

My hope and reasonable expectation is that the box office take won't be enough to greenlight them, but that once it comes out on DVD, it will gather a much larger following. I know Vin likes comparing it to Fellowship of the Ring, but I think it's a lot more like Star Wars.

Though it'd be nice if it did do well enough in theaters to immediately greenlight the others. I was strongly reminded of an excellently intriguing Sci-Fi tv-show pilot, with the amount of backstory and setting sketched out but not filled in. And where it ended... wow. The final image of Vin was wonderful.

[chrysoula.livejournal.com]

They should include a concept trailer for the other movies on the DVD release for this one!