Pitch Black/The Chronicles of Riddick

I haven’t written much here for awhile, until today, and going over categories I saw “movies” and said to myself, “I must write about a movie”.

This isn’t a post about a movie though. It’s a post about TWO movies. Joined into one post, as they can be since writing about them after both have been released on DVD and they are connected since one follows the other … sequel you know 😉

I love both these films. I have seen them both on DVD only. We rented Pitch Black after Chronicles of Riddick was first out in the theatres, when I looked up info on that movie I found PB. So my first view of it turned into an uncountable amount of views. We returned it to the rental store, sadly.

When CoR came out on DVD we bought it that very day. Uncut Director’s, of course. I have view this one an uncountable amount of times as well. More though, since it’s “owned” from first viewing.

In the past month we also bought the re-released PB. So I’ve enjoyed this movie again.

Pitch Black is a rich Sci-Fi tale, very dark (Pitch Black, afterall) but full of hope for the future, compassion, hard determination, and anguish, and Richard B. Riddick is an awesome anti-hero.

This movie surely doesn’t appeal to everyone. It’s hard core Sci-Fi. Some call it “horror”. How silly that is.

The beginning of the movie is enticing, as the crew is awakened by a “freak unknown accident”, the scenes of how the ship lands are particularly delicious, and the stage is set for the ending of the movie. “I would die for them”.

The glass of the captains viewing window shattering is really cool, for lack of a better descriptive.

As the story progresses the theme plays out of desperation, survival, hatred, fright, and hiding. So many of these emotions and elements in more than one character. As an unknown begins to take victims, things are thought, said, and felt. Things change when it’s found that something happened to the last people on this crashed planet. Geologists, where’d they go. Riddick is blunt. They never left, it’s obvious. THEY didn’t want to see that, but SHE knew it was true too.

So she was frightened aknew about the coming darkness. Fearing it coming soon. Others saying it wouldn’t be soon. It came sooner. They weren’t ready. Riddick, who is he? Murderer, escaped convict. Johns was taking him to a Slam. That’s why Riddick was on the ship, as a prisoner. Deal was struck that Riddick could be free and help with the plans to get off the planet.

Good thing.

The mystery of the “things” taking lives was semi-solved once darkness hit.

Riddick with his shining eyes … “Beautiful,” he said. Yes, it was, the “things coming out at dark”.

One must know the landscape. A desolate red planet. No growing things. When they went as a party scouting they saw trees in the distance, twisted ugly trees, dead looking, but “past life” at least. When they got closer, over the rise of land, they saw it was no such thing, but ancient looking skeletal bones of some huge creatures, littered about, elephant-like.

They found the buildings where a Geologist camp was set up. The mysteriously dissapeared humans that had been there before. There was a skiff there. The only thing to get off the planet with.

The ship that had crashed had come apart in sections. It was quite a distance from the geologist camp. So when dark hit, they were still at the ship, getting the things together they needed to get the ship off the ground, namely: batteries.

The future is a neat place. The old skiff could use the batteries they could pull from the more modern ship that had crashed. I have no trouble beleiving that. Things should be totally modular in today’s market even, though they aren’t.

So the rest of the movie, the bulk of it, is “after the light goes” and what happens and who gets off the planet.

One by one they go down, until the end is near. “I would die for them” comes out as Carolyn and Riddick wrestle over leaving without the remaining survivors who are tucked away hiding from the “things”. Carolyn came looking for Riddick. Riddick left them in the hiding place to finish pulling the batteries to the skiff. The batteries are big heavy things that he had been pulling via some ropes and such connecting them. Carolyn was shocked to find Riddick in the skiff with it powered up, door closed, in captains chair. She stood in the head lights and stared at Riddick.

Riddick full of compassion opened the door and mocked her, telling her though that he admired her survival instinct. He taunted her to get on the skiff and go with him, forget the others.

Her earlier story is that, on the downward journey of the about to crash ship, she’d tried to eject the passenger portions of the ship, and said “I won’t die for them”. She couldn’t get the ship aright, it was too heavy. She dropped loads until she had to drop the passengers or nothing more. She did it. But the system jammed and it wouldn’t release the passenger segment. She had guilt over this later, when it came out that Johns knew. Johns was posing as a cop, sort of. But wasn’t. It was found out he was just a merc. Bringing Riddick in for the money. He had his own other secrets too, but Riddick ferretted them out.

Suffice it to say, Johns played Riddick off on Carolyn for awhile, but she didn’t trust Riddick, but also ended up not trusting Johns, and rightly. Suffice it further to say, Johns was not one of the remaining survivors at the end.

So it goes that Riddick and Carolyn ended up going back for the remaining survivors. Only two. Jack, who was really a girl, and Iman, the Holy Man.

On the way back to the skiff Riddick pulled his animal stuff out for show, and nearly didn’t end up coming back. Carolyn went looking for him and ended up being the one to not survive. “Not for me,” Riddick shouted after her.

Yes, she had said it just before going back for the others, “I would die for them.” She did. But not for Riddick, he said. See, Riddick, hardened criminal. He didn’t need anyone dying for him. He had a bad life, from birth found in a dumpster with umbellical cord wrapped around his neck. He knew God existed. And he hated Him.

But he saved two people. The Holy Man, and the little girl.

That’s Pitch Black in a nutshell, but it’s a whole lot better than that!

Richard B. Riddick is a powerful character, man of few words, but well spoken ones when they are spoken, mocking, blunt, self-serving, but ends up the hero. That’s an anti-hero. He wasn’t trying to be a hero, he was trying to be anything but that.

The Chronicles of Riddick

5 years later we find Riddick running from mercs on an icy planet where he’s apparently been hiding. He fools them and overtakes their ship. Toombs, the lead merc, is a character that shows up again to find Riddick though.

Riddick speeds away to planet Helium Prime, to seek out Iman, the Holy Man, when he learns through Toombs (prior to dumping him out of the mercs ship) that a price was on his head from that planet. No name. [of who it was] Riddick knew though.

So we go to Helium Prime and learn about the Necromongers who were coming. Riddick finds himself at Iman’s and is not wanting to help. But he hears about “the girl” and wants to know what happened to her. So when an Elemental and other Monks show up to question Riddick, he finds out they are interested in him. His story was told to them by Iman. His birth story. They knew things and Riddick wasn’t thrilled with the whole thing, of course. It wasn’t something he wanted a part of. “It’s not my fight” is his line.

But guards come and question Iman’s family right then, and to keep them from finding Riddick they go outside and are jostled about, but the guards break the door down and go inside. There is Riddick in the next room, back turned. “You aren’t afraid of the dark, are you” 😉 Ties into Pitch Black for a split second there.

Two candles lit are the only light. Once he says that, he snuffs them out with his fingers and immediately confusion breaks out and Riddick with his shine eyes kills each guard. Below in the main floor of the house a lone young guard keeps watch over Iman, and when hearing the scuffle above, he gets a frightened look on his face, his knife holding hand begins shaking as he hears someone coming out of that room, and when Riddick appears, he drops the knife and runs away. The camera doesn’t show him running all the way, but you can see him do it, little boy instead of guard, frightfully running.

So Riddick gets the info from Iman about “her”.

Meanwhile the Necromongers are getting closer. They are a Militant Religious Cult, traveling from planet to planet seeking The Underverse. They will Convert or Kill. They destroy all within their region of landing. They kill all that won’t convert.

The story is complex from here out, and basically we see Riddick and Iman and his family try to hide, but Iman dies. Riddick ends up letting himself be caught as Toombs comes after him that same night as the Necros showed up.

Riddick himself had a close encounter with the Necros though first. They know what he is. He’s a Furian survivor. Mr. Richard B. Riddick is more than a prison system convict, a murder and penal system guy. He never saw a Slam he couldn’t get out of. He was special, but didn’t know it.

The Necros and Riddick are enemies. The Lord Marshall, Necromonger leader, is especially fearful of Riddick. This leads to one of the leaders, a high ranking officer, Lord Vacko (spelling may be wrong, I can’t think of how it is right now) begins to doubt, and that necros wife Dame Vacko (same thing about the spelling above) was so pleased to further that thought and pushed as Lady MacBeth with her viper tongue and wicked ways to move up the ladder, so to speak.

So after much dealings with them, Riddick gets away and is captured by the mercs. Yeah, “What took you so long,” says Riddick to Toombs.

The story shifts then to the ship taking Riddick to the Slam, Crematorium. Riddick has his fun with the crew, making them doubt what was happening due to how well he could read Toombs and stuff. This whole scene and the following ones are interesting and you get to go into the Slam and meet many characters and see Riddick become leader once again, though it wasn’t what he set out to do. The girl is in this slam. She’s grown up a lot more. But is bad and knows it. Things go down, prison break happens. They escape and go for the one known ship off the planet, a long ways away. The planet is super hot and super cold depending on where the Sun is. In order to tolerate the temps they have to run in darkness right in front of the sunrise, so the edge of night before day. This is where many heroic things happen and it ends up that Kyra, what the girl, once known as the boy Jack then a girl, in Pitch Black, makes a hasty decision, thinking Riddick dead, and goes with the Necros off the nasty planet, thinking it her only way off. It was her doom.

Riddick had fought the ambitious officer Lord Vacko (spelling may be wrong, I can’t think of how it is right now) that is doubting the Lord Marshall’s worth as Leader of the Necro Religion. When he tried to kill Riddick, Riddicks Furian Hero Self came to life and he didn’t die. The Purifier, another Necromonger officer, was there and was there to bring a message to Riddick. He didn’t go with the other Necros when THEY left. He stayed behind, with Riddick laying there. He pulled Riddick out of the rising sun’s path, and into the hanger where the only remaining ship to get off the planet was. The Purifier took off all his “jewelry” his stuff from fingers, etc. and walking towards Riddick began talking about why he was there. Riddick, not trusting him, held him up, but this is when The Purifier revealed that HE TOO was a Furian, with the same living pulsing hand mark on his chest, the same one as Riddick now had since his near death at the hands of the other Necro.

He tells him not to go back to Helium Prime and that Lord Marshall will stop chasing him if he does that. As a Necro he hopes he won’t. But as a Furian, he hopes he’ll refuse to not to. And with that, he kills himself by walking out into the firey environment of the massively heated planet, and dissolves into flames as he walks. Why does he do this? As a Necro you must stay in that “necro dead but alive” state until “your due time” in order to “see the UnderVerse”. By committing suicide he was dying “before his due time” and would then not be a Necro, just dead, and that is what he desired being a Furian first, and doing things “in the name of a religion that was never his own”.

So this Necro thing is a major horrible cult and even it’s own leaders are not “on board” 100%.

So of course Riddick, alive and turned on as a Full Furian Warrior now, goes back to Helium Prime and goes for the Lord Marshall. A fight ensues. Who prevails?

It’s the Necro way, You Keep What You Kill.

This is the last line of the movie, from Riddick, as he finds himself in the position of sitting in the throne after killing, yes, the Lord Marshall. A difficult feat, but one he learned how to do by the end. Last shot is a closeup of Riddicks mouth after saying that, as a slight smile begins to appear … cut.

That is a short digest, way more not mentioned than is above.

I write this to just write about the movie, as well as the Pitch Black synopsis. My review? Good movies, both of them. PB great. CoR greater.

What’s so great about these movies is: They are films. Screenplays put into film. No novels, books, comics, nothing. Meant to be movies. PB was PB. No CoR was planned per se. CoR picks up with a 5 year gap inbetween stories. (there’s an anime that is out which covers that period of time) It’s ingenious how they stepped from PB to CoR. It’s really cool, and really just too hard to explain my thought on it all in this post. I just wanted to spell it out so that some folks that haven’t heard of it might and be interested.

There’s some “cuss” words, but not much. All in all it’s good sci-fi that action/adventure folks might like. PB for hard core sci-fi fans, and CoR for them AND other folks. My Dh like CoR, but not PB. The flavours are totally different. Riddick is the same, yet not. But it’s because he’s on one planet with different folks and situations on Pitch Black, and in CoR his real meaning in life is broadened and awakened and the story is spread over an immense plane of space and ground and different cultures and such.

Application can be made to salvificness, but it’s just something one must view for themselves and get the meaning from themselves. I’ve had no one to discuss this film with, besides my husband, so I am not seeking to reveal my innermost thoughts on this film here for now.

The DVD’s of both movies have good extra features. The interviews and commentaries and other extras are enlightening. I get the idea from these that I must tell y’all that saw CoR in the theatre but not on DVD that you MUST get the director’s cut version of the film and see it to make sense of it. There’s great stuff in it that wasn’t in the theatrical version, says Mr. Tewey, and it’s what puts the vroom into the movie, IMO.

It’d have scratched my head at much in the theatre, I think. I have that view since I know the movie forwards and backwards as a whole piece in the directors extended cut version, and know which pieces are NOT in the theatrical version.

The DVD is worth the rental, but mostly worth the buy. My opinion. My synopsis of both movies above. Not anyone elses.