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Just went to see today, being a big fan of the character I felt obligated XD Good news first; Its a better movie than Chronicles but lets be honest, its hard to be worse than Chronicles. This is by no means an outright terrible movie. If you like Riddick enough as a character the moments of Riddick grade awesome are present enough to entertain and if you just want a pop corn flick, this will probably pass for an afternoon of fun.

The bad; Really its a fairly generic sci-fi action flick with the expected levels of bad ass, the mandatory "this movie needs sex appeal to cover up the bad parts," and moments of insane plot stupidity (Santana may be the worst bounty hunter since all those mooks on the Star Destroyer who weren't Boba Fett). And mooks describes the cast of this film other than Riddick fairly well. I felt like the film honestly tried to hard to be the brooding man vs monster flick of Pitch Black (without the charm of Riddick's first on screen portrayal) and the wangst of Chronicls of Riddick. The tone of the film loves to bounce between these two but never manages to harmonize them at all. I actually found all the stuff lifted from Pitch Black and thrown in just to be there kind of annoying actually (especially come the radical shifts in tone between the films opening, middle bits, and the last thirty minutes or so).

After seeing the film I'm honestly of the opinion that Riddick's character is at his best when he isn't in the spot light. His funnily kind of like Predator from the first film; he really only works when he's in the background, acting where his motivations and schemes aren't readily apparent. This film lost most of its tension for me because I knew from the get go that the chumps weren't going to last very long, and had no real reason to care that Riddick was gonna gut them one by one.

I give it a 6. Anyone else seen it yet?

I haven't seen it yet, but planned on going this weekend. I loved Pitch Black, and Chronicles is always enjoyable for a mindless Saturday night action movie at home.

Now, I have one question:

Do they explain any of the events after Chronicles? Or is it a prequel?

 mega_bassist wrote:
I haven't seen it yet, but planned on going this weekend. I loved Pitch Black, and Chronicles is always enjoyable for a mindless Saturday night action movie at home.

Now, I have one question:

Do they explain any of the events after Chronicles?

The film doesn't go into major detail or anything but it explains how we got from Chronicles of Riddick to Riddick in the first 20 minutes.

 LordofHats wrote:

 mega_bassist wrote:
I haven't seen it yet, but planned on going this weekend. I loved Pitch Black, and Chronicles is always enjoyable for a mindless Saturday night action movie at home.

Now, I have one question:

Do they explain any of the events after Chronicles?

The film doesn't go into major detail or anything but it explains how we got from Chronicles of Riddick to Riddick in the first 20 minutes.

I'm alright with this. After the end of Chronicles, I've always wanted some kind of closure .

Saw the movie last night. It was okay, worth renting or downloading but don't bother seeing it in theaters.

The creature design was interesting and unique though.

 LordofHats wrote:
may be the worst bounty hunter since all those mooks on the Star Destroyer who weren't Boba Fett

Bossk and IG88, your argument is invalid.

I'm just running with the first reference I can think off And Bossk is lame >.<

It looked like a carbon copy of Pitch Black, which I felt to be a huge turn off from wanting to give my money to it.

However, if there is closure from chronicles I might just watch it. And I guess I'm alone in that I liked chronicles.

Its quite alot like Pitch Black - which given I enjoyed that film lots meant I enjoyed this one alot too

There is very little reference to the second film that I recall except for explaining how he got to the current world.....

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its quite alot like Pitch Black - which given I enjoyed that film lots meant I enjoyed this one alot too

There is very little reference to the second film that I recall except for explaining how he got to the current world.....

Don't get me wrong, I liked pitch black too. But with all the games and films to use as references, we another movie that looks exactly like pitch black in story and setting. I find it hard to support such a lazy project.

Yeah. The second film is resolved quickly and swept away.

That's cool they manage to wrap up the events of Chronicles and not just drop it.

I had a talk with my brother about this character the other day and I came to the conclusion that this essentially is our Conan the Barbarian archetype, but in space. He is basically nomadic, there are stories about him and adventures to be had in a untamed world (or universe). Essentially this is why I like the character and will probably see the movie on DVD.

I

I enjoyed both PB and CoR. I'm thinking this needs to be seen.

I enjoyed it. If you liked Pitchblack, you should like this one.

I thought the Alien designs were pretty neat as well.

In my opinion, it was the worst of the series, but not a bad film.

PB was the best, CoR was decent, and Riddick was watchable but I really hated how they just threw away Richard's role as Lord Marshal so quickly. I was hoping we'd see way more than we did about his conquests as a good guy running a civilization of genocidal half-dead ghost warriors, other than him slamming tons of hotties every night and getting smashed by himself on his throne.

Santana was detestable, the dialogue was weak pretty much all-around, and the initial plot of Riddick training for weeks/months to beat that water scorpion was really lame. Just run by, it takes forever to do anything and the exit from the valley was like ten feet away! He manhandled the bugs from PB on a whim when Fry and Jack were in trouble yet this slow-ass scorpion with no balls requires training and preparation? No.

I'm on the fence about this, but leaning towards catching a matinee. I love love love the Riddick character, but the reviews for this have not been kind. I too need some CoR closure though.

And Pitch Black is one of my favorite movies of ever.

I'd love to see it, but I thought Chronicles of Ridiculous was far and away one of the most disappointing movies ever. Making Riddick an alien was probably the biggest letdown I can think of in a sci-fi flick. Worse that Th Matrix II and III put together. Worse than Jar-Jar Binks.

I'll catch it on HBO but til then I'm going to give it a pass. Still, good to hear it wasn't as awful as the last one.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I'd love to see it, but I thought Chronicles of Ridiculous was far and away one of the most disappointing movies ever. Making Riddick an alien was probably the biggest letdown I can think of in a sci-fi flick. Worse that Th Matrix II and III put together. Worse than Jar-Jar Binks.

I'll catch it on HBO but til then I'm going to give it a pass. Still, good to hear it wasn't as awful as the last one.

Furyans, Elementals, Aquilans etc aren't aliens, they are abhuman subspecies, the beginnings of divergence from humans based on living on radically different worlds, according to Vin Diesel.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
I'd love to see it, but I thought Chronicles of Ridiculous was far and away one of the most disappointing movies ever. Making Riddick an alien was probably the biggest letdown I can think of in a sci-fi flick. Worse that Th Matrix II and III put together. Worse than Jar-Jar Binks.

I'll catch it on HBO but til then I'm going to give it a pass. Still, good to hear it wasn't as awful as the last one.

Furyans, Elementals, Aquilans etc aren't aliens, they are abhuman subspecies, the beginnings of divergence from humans based on living on radically different worlds, according to Vin Diesel.

Thought I saw a thing where David Twohy called them aliens. Still, abhuman or not, I think Riddick is much cooler as just a badass dude.

I think Vin has a very different vision of the character than many of the character's fans. Fans like me just want Riddick to be this bad ass guy who is more animal than man.

Vin wants him to be this conflicted human struggling with his baser instincts and puts way too much DnD into the character. I'm not necessarily opposed to Vin's vision, but I'd rather he synthesize it with the original PB portrayal rather than turning his back on it.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think Vin has a very different vision of the character than many of the character's fans. Fans like me just want Riddick to be this bad ass guy who is more animal than man.

Vin wants him to be this conflicted human struggling with his baser instincts and puts way too much DnD into the character. I'm not necessarily opposed to Vin's vision, but I'd rather he synthesize it with the original PB portrayal rather than turning his back on it.

That's funny, I kind of thought that what you describe as Vin's vision of the character was what was portrayed in Pitch Black. It's part of what I like most about the movie. I think that when you make him something other than human, it becomes too easy to just attach the 'that's just what [alien race] is like' label to his struggles and write them off.

But I always liked that Pitch Black had layers that weren't required for enjoyment. It worked equally well as a movie about someone struggling against their own demons and as a sci-fi action horror flick.

I guess the difference may be that Vin sees Riddick more heroicly figure than I originally interpreted the character as being. The thin blurry line between an anti-hero and an anti-villain.

 Jimsolo wrote:
But I always liked that Pitch Black had layers that weren't required for enjoyment. It worked equally well as a movie about someone struggling against their own demons and as a sci-fi action horror flick.

Yeah, for me Riddick was actually sort of secondary to Pitch Black, in that the real main storyline was Radha Mitchell's developing selflessness and empathy.

 Ouze wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
But I always liked that Pitch Black had layers that weren't required for enjoyment. It worked equally well as a movie about someone struggling against their own demons and as a sci-fi action horror flick.

Yeah, for me Riddick was actually sort of secondary to Pitch Black, in that the real main storyline was Radha Mitchell's developing selflessness and empathy.

To be fair, it's kind of hard to do a sequel about her...

hah, true.

 Necroshea wrote:
It looked like a carbon copy of Pitch Black, which I felt to be a huge turn off from wanting to give my money to it.

However, if there is closure from chronicles I might just watch it. And I guess I'm alone in that I liked chronicles.

Not alone at all. I rather enjoy chronicles as well. Though I also love Water World, and watch it regularly. So....

Chronicles is a beautiful film with some excellent concepts, sets, backgrounds, costumes and cgi. It just confused people going to see 'pitch black 2'.

I found it a shame it did so poorly as it could have launched the expanded riddick universe nicely and led to a pretty cool new scifi playground for us all.

In fact the only thing I disliked about it was the naming of the bad guys 'necromongers', instead of something cool.

The funny thing about this film is that it's attempting the kinda 'back to what made it great' approach that has been successful for many franchises. For example Star Trek: Wrath of Khan after the weak and boring Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Last Crusade after the slightly disappointing Temple of Doom.

The only problem is that Pitch Black is not a classic by any stretch. It's a solid movie; i'd give it a 7.8 (My seven range is usually reserved for entertaining Shlock/idiotic comedies), but it's not amazing. A lot of the characters act 'Stoooopid!' and the script doesn't really shine (I actually remember finding a Riddick monologue about God offensively Naive and Juvenile).

I totally agree that Chronicles of Riddick has some interesting elements and is not a total train wreck. It certainly shouldn't be written off completely, like it seems it has for this movie.

Chronicles of Riddick suffered from really crap action (Direction, choreography, effects and Narrative in all the action scenes was all terrible). Terrible pacing and a few too many characters and not enough time spent developing them. However it had enjoyably silly Space Opera mythology, outstanding Production Design and some very cool scenes, I like the weird witches Under the sheets and the bit when the 'Necromonger' (lol) takes the guys soul.

 KingCracker wrote:

 Necroshea wrote:
It looked like a carbon copy of Pitch Black, which I felt to be a huge turn off from wanting to give my money to it.

However, if there is closure from chronicles I might just watch it. And I guess I'm alone in that I liked chronicles.

Not alone at all. I rather enjoy chronicles as well. Though I also love Water World, and watch it regularly. So....

Waterworld is one of my favorite sci-fi/post-apocalypse/etc films. I've seen it like a hundred times and never get bored of it.

I didn't mind CoR at all...thought there were some pretty enjoyable parts.

As far as being different human variants....it didn't surprise me, and it doesn't really affect my opinion of the character or give me "excuses" to make for his personality/behavior.

After all, it would seem from CoR that not all the Furyans were as bad-ass as he was.

I point to the Purifier in CoR, who was a converted Furyan. He really did not seem all that bad-assed to me. Granted, he didn't fight anybody or do anything...but...just my opinion.