monkeyfish
Posts: 1234
Joined: 18/9/2006
From: Under the sea
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It's not actually good. At all. In fact it's really bad. But it does have a certain something. It's sort of that it's uniquely bad. It's not really like all the other predictably shit action movies starring Vin Diesel types. This one is appealingly bold and ambitious. It really wants to create something new and original, a whole original sci-fi fantasy universe. And that kind of originality is something that is all too rare in Hollywood blockbusters these days and Chronicles should be praised for that. But the big problem is that it has the hubristic ambition and then doesn't seem to follow through with the required effort. Some of the visual design is very impressive but there's no sense of a whole world behind it which was the genius with Lord of the Rings and even Star Wars, it's all in the background details. Names like Necromongers and Furions aren't just cringeworthy in themselves, they smack of a certain lack of effort, what I like to refer to as Poochie Syndrome where the writers have come up with an obviously shit name as a stop gap and then not been bothered to replace it with a decent one. Similar with terrible lines like "It's been a long time since I smelled beautiful".
Also, whatever else you think of the film on its own. It is a problem that it completely jars with the first film, that Pitch Black seems to exist in a different universe. Although it is never particularly expressed in Pitch Black, it seemed to me that it was set in what was, essentially, a futuristic version of our universe and creatures like the monsters in that film were as unknown and freaky to the humans in the film as they would be to us. But, come Chronicles of Riddick it seemed that they existed in a universe where the supernatural was an everyday thing. It wasn't like Chronicles expanded on a mythology touched on in the first film, it seemed to take a character from one place and transport him to a completely different one.
This sort of fantasy sci-fi thing is such a hard thing to convincingly pull off, take yourself too seriously and you end up looking stupid, pretentiously posturing in a world of silly names and sillier outfits, don't take yourself seriously enough and you end up with Flash Gordon. Chronicles of Riddick doesn't have the lightness of touch needed to get beyond its inherent silliness. It's desperation to be seen as having this Shakespearean quality is absurd. With material like this, ironically Vin Diesel comes out as the better actor than Judi Dench, who is all at sea with the nonsense they give her.
It had a couple of well done moments and the final fight was quite cool, but undiscovered classic it certainly isn't. I will say one thing for it, the ending did leave me curious as to what was going to happen next. It's sort of a shame it didn't do well enough/wasn't good enough to get its planned series of films.
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What became of the Empire Script Challenge?
Bring it back, I say!
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RE: Chronicles of Riddick - misunderstood?!?! - 
I found it to be as funny as the others but the action was lacking. Chan is far to old for that shit now. It was harmless. 
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