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| Thursday, February 24, 2005 03:14 PM |
| Movie Parade |
 by Fëanor |
There's some movies need reviewing, so let's get started.- First of all, I finally got around to watching one of the Netflix movies that have been lying around the apartment for, like, a month--The Chronicles of Riddick. In case you missed the story on this one, it's the sequel to a little sci fi/horror thriller that came out a while ago called Pitch Black. Pitch Black appeared from the ads to be another lame Alien clone. It even starred action guy of the moment Vin Diesel, who appeared to be just another dumb hunk of meat with a bag of hammers where his acting ability was supposed to be.
But appearances can be deceiving. Pitch Black is actually a fantastic little movie--an engaging, tightly-paced, character-driven blast of a flick. And Vin Diesel is actually a smart guy and a talented actor.
So I had high hopes when I heard there'd be a sequel. And when the ads made it look like writer/director David Twohy was moving the story into sci fi epic territory and creating an action/effects extravaganza loaded with crazy alien characters and incredible visuals, I got even more excited.
But then Chronicles of Riddick got awful reviews, and my expectations were lowered until when I finally saw it Tuesday night, I wasn't expecting much. And, frankly, I didn't get much. CoR is a mediocre mash-up of sci fi epic cliches and portentous dialogue, with the occasional startlingly original idea sprinkled in to keep your hopes up. Most of it is ridiculous, unbelievable, and confusing. But the visuals are quite incredible, and the ending is absolutely excellent.
What went wrong? How did the makers of Pitch Black come to this? Here's my hypothesis: after PB did so surprisingly well at the box office, the head honchos at whatever studio threw gobs of money at David Twohy and said, "Give us a sequel! We don't care what it's about, just as long as it has that Vin Diesel character in it."
Given his head, Twohy went mad with power. The film--loaded with flashy effects, slow motion, and characters trying desperately to sound witty and wise when they actually just sound like they're talking out of their asses--is awash in a sense of its own importance and cleverness. Even Twohy's introduction to the film on the DVD is rather portentous and arrogant.
CoR made me realize what a thin line the original Star Wars films walked. Lucas created a universe with a sense of history and weight to it. He dropped you down in the middle of whole new worlds, stories, and conflicts and slowly opened them up to you. You didn't know what the deal was with all those aliens, or why that one dude was wearing a big suit and a breathing mask, but you knew what you needed to know to follow the story, and everything else felt like it belonged, like it made sense somehow, like there was a story behind all of it that was coherent. When you meet Boba Fett in Empire Strikes Back, you learn immediately that he's a bounty hunter. You don't know why he's wearing that armor, but you know from the fact that the Empire hired him that he must be good at his job, and you know from the fact that Vader singled him out for the "No disintegrations" warning that he's a heartless bad-ass who'll stop at nothing.
But in CoR, you're constantly meeting characters about whom you don't even know enough to figure out how they fit into the story. A fantasty story shouldn't come to a complete halt and explain all the background and everything to you, but it needs to tell you enough (or, better, show you enough) so that things at least make sense. Let's take Judi Dench's character, Aereon. She's an Elemental. What's that? Don't know. Some kind of alien magic thingie. What's she there to do? She seems to be trying to stop the brutal religious cult known as the Necromongers who are going from world to world and killing everybody who doesn't join them. But how does she try to stop them? Well, first she draws Riddick into their path by putting a bounty on his head. Then she just kind of...hangs around. And who does she hang around with? The Necromongers!! She says wise, meaningless phrases to them, and they spit back wise, meaningless responses, and that's it, until she makes some final, stupid comment near the end of the film. She's an almost completely pointless character.
And then there are the Necromongers themselves. What is their religion about? What is the Underverse, this sort of mythical paradise/parallel universe they want to get to? Can they control the dead, or not? Or are they dead? Or maybe they're half-dead? How come they supposedly convert or kill everybody, but then when they get to Helion Prime, they conveniently forget to kill or convert a few of the secondary characters?
There's tons of stuff like this in the movie. Riddick has a recurring dream/memory of some woman who tells him about his future. Don't know who she is; from context, I'd guess she's some kind of mystic from his now-ruined world. But how does that work? Don't know. In one pivotal scene, she touches him with some kind of mystical blue light which ends up saving him from getting killed somehow. How does that work? Don't know. No explanation. Don't know who the woman is, what the blue mark is exactly, why it saved him, anything.
I'm not even mentioning the highly improbable race across the face of a planet whose dark side is supposed to be around 300 degrees below zero, and whose light side is around 600 degress above.
But despite all of this, I actually found the movie quite entertaining. It's got some really clever and funny sequences--especially between Riddick and the Mercs who are after him--some fun, impressive action, great effects and visuals, and competent acting. Most of the time the characters talk like they're in a college play--their lines sound very impressive and wise, until you stop to try to understand them and realize they're just pretentious drivel that means almost nothing--but some of the dialogue does actually manage to sound witty or clever or appropriately epic.
And then there's that ending. (Spoilers ahead.) Riddick kills the bad guy in a really cool way, and then he ends up sort of taking his place. You're not sure where it could go from there, or what Riddick might do. He's always been a morally ambiguous character--that's what's really interesting about him--and now we're left with this majestically ambiguous and open-ended conclusion. Will he end up simply continuing the work of the Necromongers, spreading death and terror across the universe? Or will he try to order them to disband? And then there's that image of him, a warrior criminal sitting uneasily on a throne he didn't particularly want, but was seemingly fated to win. It reminds me of the ending of one of the greatest action/fantasy films of all time, Conan the Barbarian.
So, yeah. This review got a little out of hand. Seems like a lot of words to waste on a film I didn't particularly love and didn't particularly hate. But there you go: Chronicle of Riddick. It's...something.
- In other movie news, this should go without saying, but Dungeons & Dragons is a really bad movie. Out of some twisted sado-masochistic desire to hurt all of us--including himself--very, very much, Yagathai brought the film to movie night last night, and we sat there and howled through the entire thing--literally. Seriously, we missed most of the dialogue underneath all our yowling and yammering and whining. My God, it's a terrible film. You'll find it with a rating of 0.5 out of 4 in my movies list, but that's only because I reserve the 0 rating for films that fail in every conceivable way that a film can fail. In D&D, the camera-work was competent, in that the lens was in focus and pointed in the direction of what we were supposed to look at most of the time. Also, the story made a general sort of sense. Other than that, I can't say anything good about the film. (UPDATE: Upon further consideration, I decided that D&D was worthy of the 0 after all, and I updated the movie list accordingly. Thinking back, I realized that the story didn't really make much sense after all, even in a general way, and that the camera work wasn't nearly good enough to make up for everything else.) Almost every plot development, character, bit of dialogue, piece of music, set, and costume in the film was a rip-off or cheap imitation of that respective element in some other, better film. The direction, editing, continuity, acting, special effects, and dialogue were all universally terrible.
Many a good actor was put to shame by appearing in this film, including, most spectacularly, Jeremy Irons. But Irons was also the most entertaining thing in it, since he seems to have decided to just totally ham it up and play it like a comedy or a satire. He gesticulates his way wildly through the film, flinging his eyebrows and hands about with a reckless abandon that is just astonishing. He also roars and hisses his dialogue in a way that is most unnerving. And then there's Bruce Payne as his possibly even more melodramatic, over-acting sidekick, the guy with the blue Slurpee stain on his lips.
The scariest part is, as I said during movie night, somebody (in fact, almost certainly more than one somebody!) at some point thought all this was a good idea.
And really, that's about it for that. I can't bring myself to waste any more words on D&D, especially after I already wasted so many words on Chronicles of Riddick. Just know that it is an utter travesty.
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