The Chronicles of Riddick

-Unrated Director’s Cut

-Universal (2004)

Summary

Vin Diesel will kick… your… ass!

My Thoughts

Vin Diesel reprises his role as the biggest bad-ass of them all (I guess) in The Chronicles of Riddick, which is the pseudo-sequel to Pitch Black. I was never a huge Pitch Black fan, but I did sort of like it. The only real connection between Chronicles and that previous film is a couple of characters so you don’t have to worry about seeing Pitch Black if you haven’t already. Chronicles of Riddick begins with the titular character being hunted down by some Mercs, who are basically bounty hunters. It turns out that they were hired by one of the two survivors from Pitch Black who wants Riddick to help him against some horribly evil planet conquering aliens called the Necromongers. After some reluctance (what anti-hero says yes right away?) Riddick begins his ass kicking career against the alien bastards. The Necromongers make for some pretty chilling and powerful villains, with their creepy and stylized technology and décor. They really work for the film, and if they’d have been any less interesting, The Chronicles of Riddick would have been a major bore. Chronicles evolves into a poor man's Dune with a lot better special effects work. Riddick, it turns out, is essentially the overused and tired cliché of "the one." Thankfully, they never refer to him using those exact words. There are a ton of thrills and chills in the film. The plot is fairly well done, although you better be paying attention pretty closely if you don’t want to get lost.

The acting is fairly well done, with Vin Diesel playing the character I’ve seen him play in every movie I’ve ever seen him in. Range is not his specialty. I particularly liked the performances by Colm Feore as the Lord Marshal, and Karl Urban as his loyal soldier Vaako. I always give a lot of credit to actors in sci-fi epics such as this. Over half the lines seem so ridiculous when spoken in real life that it's amazing that the cast doesn’t laugh when delivering dialogue.

Since this is the Unrated Director’s Cut, you might want to know what makes this edition so special. Well, there are a few scenes that make the film even more confusing. Yay! You know, whenever I see that a film is unrated, I think there are going to be boobies. Sadly, there are no boobies within this film. What you do get is loads and loads of action and some pretty great visuals.

The ending left me with a few questions that I'm sure will be answered in the eventual sequel. It also made me realize I just watched "Conan the Space Conqueror" because that's who Riddick is when you boil it all down. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the film. I liked Chronicles despite the problems with it. If there was any film that is the perfect brain candy with a semi-decent plot, it’s The Chronicles of Riddick.

Extras

This is a pretty snazzy edition with plenty of extras for that whole nerd family out there. There are some nifty motion menus that come in two different flavors for your DVD browsing enjoyment. To start with the main course, there’s the audio commentary featuring director David Twohy, and actors Karl Urban and Alexa Davalos. Its pretty standard, but a good watch for those who are really into the film. It also helpful to let you know which scenes have been reinserted into the film.

The “Deleted Scenes” are just that. I found them useful for providing some back-story. The only one I really liked was the one featuring Tooms getting killed, because it featured an awesome Pitch Black reference and Tooms… well, getting killed.

“Virtual Guide to The Chronicles of Riddick” is basically a bunch of info on location and alien races in the film. It’s nothing special, but some good info for those interested in the film. Next up is the really long, but cool “Tooms Chase Log” that’s a diary of the bounty hunter Tooms and his adventures before he captured Riddick. This is a pretty decent extra, but I can’t stand this Tooms guy at all.

“Riddick Insider” is your standard “watch for the cue and see facts about the film” stuff, while “Visual Effects Revealed” is, as the name implies, a mini-doc about the visual effects. Its okay, but way too short and doesn’t touch on as much as I would have liked.

“Riddick’s Worlds” is both a nifty Vin Diesel guided tour of the sets and a handy look at 360° look at many of the sets.

Also included on this edition are DVD ROM extras, and demo for the Xbox game Escape from Butcher Bay that’s only playable if you put the disc in an Xbox, of course.

Score

Film: 8.0

Extras: 8.0

Edition: 8.0

Bonus Disc

The Best Buy release edition of Chronicles of Riddick came with an extra special bonus disc that features some more content for those Riddick obsessed fans out there. There’s actually a lot of stuff on this freebie disc including three featurettes entitled, “Riddick Rises,” “Keep What You Kill,” and “The Creation of New Mecca.” They are all pretty decent mini-docs and I don’t know why they aren’t in the regular edition of the film. There’s also something called the “Interactive Production Calendar,” which I really liked. It features snippets about the making of the film. What’s really great is that it features people that you never really see in these types of things, like a bit of an interview with some crazy old stage painter woman and a spotlight on the scooters they used to get around the enormous sets.

Score: 8.5

 -Paul