Chronicles of Riddickulous (pt. 2)

 I realized that after some of my more recent posts that I may have come across as an Islamophobe or Muslim hater. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think Islam is a retarded, dangerous, and socially destructive institution that promotes ignorance, blind faith, xenophobia, and unquestioning obedience to self-asserted authority: I think all religions are retarded, dangerous, and socially destructive institutions that promote ignorance, xenophobia, blind faith, and unquestioning obedience to self-asserted authority.

And to be fair, the Imam in this film is the only character that's acted like a halfway decent human being thus far, apart from giving away the survivors' location to the escaped homicidal madman by screaming praise at an invisible man that lives in the sky.

We left off with giant space bats attacking our team of survivors who have locked themselves in part of the crashed ship while pitch blackness happens outside. Toolbox dies because she mistook "Stay down!" for "Run around drawing attention to yourself!"

One member makes the seemingly impossible deduction that the giant space bats may just be what killed fucking everything. Even though 'everything' seems to be 'giant space elephants that survive by eating dirt, since there are the remains of exactly one form of native, not-cave-dwelling life in this particular ecosystem. They then hush each other to listen to the bats make woop woop noises. Imam Al-Genius realizes that this is how they 'see'. Just like earth bats, only embarrassingly over-simplified!

The Archeologist then has another anxiety attack while random Muslims break into and lock themselves inside of a smaller room of the ship that promises to be harder to both defend and escape from. The aliens immediately begin punching holes in the walls with their hole punch appendages while one of the survivors cuts their way deeper into the ship.

Diesel wanders off and finds an alien (which looks like a cross between a bat, a hammerhead shark, and an alien from Alien, just to establish the level of originality on display,) and is soon joined by idiot Muslim child #8. They seem to be safe as long as they remain perfectly still, so the child panics, runs off and is inhalfitated after making it almost ten feet. Diesel uses this opportunity to flee back to the others who blind him and the pursuing alien with their flashlights. They manage somehow to bring one of them down by firing wildly in every direction.

Regrouping, they begin hatching a plot to find a way to drag the remaining batteries back to the ship with enough light to not be viciously and instantly destroyed by cartoon monsters.

John and Carolyn argue at length about whether to lock themselves in or make a run for it. Y'know, the exact same conundrum that was used in Night of the Living Dead and reused in every stoner circle since.

They decide to make a break for it, with Diesel and his magic implants scouting ahead. This works exactly zero times over the course of ten feet. After killing another sharkbat, they regroup and mill around. Fucking again.

While gathering more batteries, Diesel barks orders about formation. They FINALLY make a run for it.

This movie has an uncanny ability to be frenetically paced and tediously dull at the same time. That combination should only be possible on the inside of the kitchen in a fast food restaurant.

Outside, we find the survivors running (well, creeping unhurriedly,) forward, with aliens circling just outside of the light. The Archeologist, realizing he hasn't done something suicidally dumb to endanger the entire group in almost ten minutes, stops moving to better focus on the cutting torch running out of fuel and drop one of the flares he was carrying. Murder Child tosses aside his own light to run after it, which is exactly what I would do if I'd rather film child brutality than build tension.

Shit breaks out and the Archeologist unplugs the running lights. Obvious suicide.

After making torches from the remaining booze they debate their course. We discover that Murder Child is a girl. I'm not sure what bearing this has on the plot, as Diesel's explanation was delivered in his usual unintelligible whisper, but I think she's doing that thing where women bleed from their peehole, which is attracting the monsters via their naturally evolved ability to smell non-terrestrial blood and know what it is.

Carolyn decides to turn back, playing the Democrat by never thinking beyond the immediate future and constantly changing her mind. John now wants to push on, adopting the Republican stance of ad hominem attacks and stonewalling whatever the opposing team wants to do regardless of whether it's what he wanted to do as well.

John reveals that Carolyn attempted to kill the entire ship, which might have been an interesting bit of storytelling if it hadn't happened while they were stranded on a plain with monsters closing in. As is, no one worries overmuch about this, having far bigger problems at this point.

Pressing on, John and Diesel separate themselves from the rest of the group and plot the death of Murder Child to use as bait. Eyeballs eyeballs eyeballs. Diesel decides John would make better bait. John doesn't immediately understand because he's an idiot.

John SHOULD HAVE won this fight as well, given that he breaks Diesel's arm two seconds into the scuffle, but since one of Vin's superpowers  is magically having whatever exact superpower he needs at any given moment, he instantly recovers. John ends up losing the fight and being eaten by aliens.

The Imam suggests a nice prayer. Vin points out that that's a stupid idea. Nobody points out that sitting around in an open space while the light runs out is also a stupid idea.

Making it to the canyon, which is infested with aliens, they make a dash for it. Or they would if they didn't stop every three feet to look around. It's fucking aliens. Aliens are what there is to look at. Or would be if there was any light beyond the torch range. Mostly they're stopping to look at the film's run time and make sure it drags past the 90 minute mark.

One of the aliens, playing possum, trips up one of the interchangeable Muslims while Diesel, sick of these people's inability to run at any speed that isn't stop, forges ahead. He then turns back when Murder Child is attacked by an alien.

He then, somehow, despite repeatedly losing fights that involved sneak attacks against a dopesick heroin junkie, kills the alien single-handedly.

Most worstly delivered, wooden line thus far in the movie: "Did not know who he was fuckin' with."

FINALLY they start moving again. For about five feet. Again. This time the wounded Muslim has to be carried by the Imam while it starts raining. Just like on Earth! Water in the desert! Praise Allah!

The wounded Muslim is killed and the remaining survivors crawl into a cave. Diesel remains outside to drag the 300 pounds of batteries through the mud to the ship alone.

Back in the cave the last torch slowly burns out while aliens gather outside in the only scene in the entire movie that could possibly be considered tense. This doesn't last long as they happen to be in a cave with glow-in-the-dark slugs, which become new torch fuel.

Carolyn takes the first bug torch and follows Diesel while Murder Child and Imam gather enough slugs to make another torch. 

Carolyn makes it to the ship just before Diesel takes off and demands they return for the others. Diesel throws her some lights and tells her to make up her mind.

They scrabble around in the mud for a bit before returning for the others. The Imam gives the credit to his God, not Carolyn or Diesel, who were the ones who did all the work.

They dash back towards the ship armed only with the bug torches and not the lights from the ship that Diesel very pointedly threw to Carolyn, for some reason, and we're treated to the one line that is required by the US Army to be in every action movie from 1998 on: "Move move move!"

Diesel gets separated and decides to hide in the creatures blind spot directly in front of it, since knowing that the creatures had a blind spot and where it is wouldn't be an impossibly lucky guess. This works well until another creature happens along. He eventually makes it to the ship with the help of Carolyn's talents as a meat shield. Carolyn dies.

Onboard, Diesel kills the engine and lights and waits for the swarm of aliens to cover the ship for easy vaporization when they take off, reducing their numbers from infinity to infinity minus a couple.

Fin.

Oh, except for the fact that now they're now lost in space 22 weeks from where they were originally going with no food or water for the journey and no evident means of sending a distress signal or making contact with other humans. But still, small victories.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this movie could have been worse. The acting was mostly competent, except for Diesel's goddamn muttering, which resulted in having to turn the volume up whenever he spoke, then immediately back down when something boomed as soon as he finished.

The main problem I had was that, like Ghosts of Mars, this movie seemed to have no idea what kind of movie it was supposed to be. Of course, it was made in that terrible window of the late 90s/early 00s when any new intellectual property was required to span several genres to increase demographics.

As an action movie it didn't really work, since nothing really seemed to be a threat to Riddick, as he seemed to be treated like Superman when it came to superpowers, only without Superman's weakness to kryptonite and magic. In order for sci-fi/action movies to work the good guys really need to be hopelessly underpowered. Take Predator, where we had an invisible alien armed with 400 different space weapons and could jump over trees fighting a commando armed with mud, spears and crude booby traps. Or Aliens, where the good guys were placed in a claustrophobic maze surrounded by hordes of stronger, faster, and stealthier enemies that were well-camouflaged and had a knack for ambushing the humans in ways that humans aren't equipped to plan for. Not to mention that even killing one meant death by acid.

It failed as a horror movie because the entire premise was barely explored. Which is a shame, since darkness is such an easy fear to play to. I mean every store in America sells nightlights because of it. Strange noises in the night, wondering if that shadow just moved, creeping forward and freezing, knowing that something awful is right behind you. If the filmmakers had abandoned the action movie bullshit and focused more on atmosphere and tension than child murder and cheap boo moments it probably would have been a much better film.

The pacing was atrocious. I can't remember any movie that managed to be this busy and still have almost nothing happen. It's like someone started out with six plot points, filmed those, and then filmed another hour of footage around those. Then took that hour, cut it into 15 second long bites and rearranged them until it looked like a 100 minute long film trailer. For a perfect example: revealing halfway into the film that John wasn't a police officer, but a heroin addict bounty hunter. That entire subplot could have been cut and it would have had absolutely no effect on the rest of the film.

The message of the film seems to be 'shit happens.' Or more accurately, 'sometimes shit will go way out of its way to happen to you specifically.' Other than Carolyn's heavy-handed sacrifice to save Riddick to atone for attempting to kill the entire ship, and Riddick turning back to help Murder Child despite being a stereotypically ruthless and self-serving criminal, there was no real exploration of theme or morals or beliefs. Which seems weird, since they went out of their way to mix a group of very religious people in with a group of very secular people, and very religious children, at that. And if there's anything religion is good for, it's invoking emotions and teaching lessons via the interplay of light and darkness and childlike innocence. The Imam would occasionally make a wise-sounding comment, but those never had any bearing on anything else and wound up just making the Imam look dense.

Chronicles of Riddickulous (pt. 1)

Pitch Black was an action/horror/science-fiction train-wreck from 2000, brought to us by the writer responsible for such gems as Critters 2: The New Batch and Waterworld. Despite being a terrible encocklement of the worst parts of knuckle-dragger action porn and self-indulgent art film it managed to spawn two indirect sequels starring Vin Diesel's character Dick B. Riddick, the character every 13-year-old Shadowrun fan wishes they could be.

We open on a slow pan of a space ship that is totally not like star wars.

Vin Diesel's voiceover informs the audience that cryosleep causes most of the brain to shut down, except for the primitive side. I'm not sure what side of the brain he's talking about, but he says that's why he's still awake. I'm not sure if this means that Vin Diesel's skull only contains enough brain to keep his vital signs on, or if he's mistaking cryosleep with something that isn't "freezing someone for transport over long distances." Of course, it could be both.

Diesel is currently in transit with 40+ civilians, one of whom is "some Arab hoodoo holy man probably on his way to New Mecca." Which is a mean way to say “Islamic fellow.”

There is also a woman that Diesel can smell, despite them both being in cryosleep, in separate sealed chambers. She smells like sweat and leather and tool-belts. So, ladies, if you really want to know how to turn your man on then definitely spend more time hanging out at a tannery.

Diesel's real problem, he informs us, is a blue-eyed devil named Mr. John who is taking Diesel back to mumble mumble by way of mumble mumble but has made the mistake of mumble mumble mumble. Diesel is plotting a cunning escape. Don't know if you picked up on that.

Just then several somethings shoot through the ship, breach the hull, and trigger the alarm. A futury computer screen informs us that the hull breach has caused the gravity to fluctuate wildly and that Capt. Mitchell, Nav Officer Greg Owens and Docking Pilot Carolyn Fry are being un-cryoed. More somethings shoot through the ship, killing the Captain.

The Nav Officer and Docking Pilot fall out of their cryopods into a comical heap, where they both immediately panic.

After some sciency sounding nonsense the docking pilot informs us that they're losing air, in case anyone watching along at home doesn't know what 'hull breach' means, or what happens when you poke a hole in a space ship while it's in outer space.

The still-panicking Nav Officer manages to get the windows open just in time to crash into a planet. Which is convenient, considering space contains mostly nothing and lots and lots and lots of things that aren't planets with what I imagine is going to be a breathable atmosphere.

After some more technobabble, Carolyn decides the best course of action is to dump the passengers in order to make a safer landing, proving that in the future everyone is an asshole. This upsets Owens. As it should. 

While Owens does things to stuff to try to save everyone's ass Carolyn pulls the "Eject Humans" lever, which doesn't work. Something then breaks off of the side of the ship and smashes the front window, hopefully killing Carolyn in the rain of shattered space glass, metal, and space ship destroying heat and pressure.

It doesn't, and at this point the director decides to go 'art movie' for a minute with flash cuts to eyeballs and sepia filters and countdowns.

They crash like a motherfucker. But luckily they land on some relatively soft sand dunes and the atmosphere is indeed breathable. People begin milling around.

John, realizing his gun is missing, goes to look for it. He is then attacked by Diesel and saved by luck. He brags about this while walloping the helpless Diesel with a baton.

After a very busy sequence of finding survivors, they stumble across...someone...with a pole through his chest. He dies very noisily while dramatic music plays. I think it may be Owens. Still, it's WAAAAY too early to begin demanding sympathy for your throw-away characters, movie.

Outside, our Muslim friends wash themselves in the probably not dangerous dirt and pray to  probably New Mecca, but is really just 'up.'

The toolbox-smelling lady congratulates Carolyn for saving their lives. This is obviously being done to set up some "she tried to kill you" twist later. Everyone agrees about how wonderful Carolyn is, with an almost pathetic display of gratitude.

Back in the wreck, Vin Diesel is handcuffed to a thing with a blindfold and gag. We're informed that Diesel is only dangerous to humans.

Opening an Egyptian sarcophagus(?) the survivors find that the liquor survived intact. Since bottles are known to be far more sturdy than two foot thick steel crossbeams. Hooray.

The Imam, who won't be partaking of the miracle hooch, is convinced that there is water somewhere in the desert if they can find it. Which is usually true on Earth, provided you don't die before finding it. Other planets may be different, and I'm sure this won't occur to the filmmakers.

Vin Diesel, who seems to be able to see through his blindfold and hear solid, unmoving objects behind him, dislocates his shoulders and rotates his arms in an arc of about 290 degrees to get his bonds through the conveniently cut pillar he's been chained too, he then picks up the cutting torch he magically sensed earlier. Seems like that might tear a muscle.

Outside, John finds Diesel's handcuffs.

Inside, the survivors Rambo-up with the ships supply of guns and the sarcophagus-liquor-cabinet guy's collection of priceless antique spears and tomahawks. This is to defend themselves against skull fucking on the part of Diesel.

Back outside on Planet Sepia Filter, the archeologist draws attention to the fact that there are three suns, which as every one knows requires at least a masters degree to spot. There is a short theological debate on whether this is a blessing from Allah or not. After more pointless bantering the group sets off to either find Diesel or water or both or neither.

Shifting to the part of the planet covered in a blue lens we find Diesel has picked up the survivors trail and is stalking them by the cunning strategy of following the large group of people yelling “Shut up!” at a man chanting in Arabic at the top of his lungs and throwing rocks to drive out devils.

John almost shoots Carolyn for sneaking up on him. A random child almost murders the archeologist with an attack boomerang. The point of these scenes is to establish that in the future all humans will be murderous, unlikeable psychopaths, as evidenced here.

Carolyn, John, and the comically out of place Muslims (Which consist of the Imam and about a dozen children,) approach what look to be trees but turn out to be an elephant-alien graveyard. The Imam points out that this is yet another thing that happens on Earth, since if half a dozen impossible things have happened in the last fifteen minutes, anyone left watching won't mind a dozen more.

Owen investigates by pointing his gun at everything except the not-well-hidden Diesel, and then getting sloshed with Carolyn on space hooch. Diesel watches from five feet away. Not even around a corner or anything. He's just standing immediately to their left like a waiter waiting for them to decide what to order. Assuming they order SKULL FUCK!

Diesel then, I swear to God, cuts Carolyn's hair with a jagged rock while she confesses to John that she tried to kill everyone on the ship and Owens died stopping her. Somehow Carolyn doesn't notice the large convict standing directly behind her smelling her hair, adding situational invisibility to Diesel's list of ill-defined superpowers.

One of the children find a toy robot from the 1950s, implying that either the aliens had Buck Rogers as well, or they're not the first humans to pass this way. They soon come upon a presumably human settlement, conveniently in the one random direction they decided to explore. The Imam proudly proclaims that there was water here, utilizing the absolute upper limit of his reasoning skills: Someone built these buildings. Those someones must have needed water. Therefore there was water here. Praise Allah!

Carolyn then yells at a dark room for a while before opening a window, while outside the Imam magically finds water in the desert by pointing at a man-made well that God obviously put there just for him.

Carolyn, after finding a model of the solar system, stumbles upon an abandoned space ship. Allahu akbar!

Back at the wreck, Archeologist, Murder Child and the lady that smells like a toolbox panic, and amid many goofy camera tricks almost kill another survivor with a pickaxe. The survivor is then immediately shot repeatedly by a different survivor mistaking the first survivor for Diesel, who watches the proceedings from the top of the ship 50 feet away, again, somehow invisible.

Back at the encampment (I'm not skipping around or anything. Every scene in the movie is about 8 seconds long,) Carolyn begins explaining how they can get the space ship working and is silenced by John, who hears gunshots.

Switching back to the wreck again, we find Shooter returning to the hole he was digging before wandering off and shooting a survivor. The hole now has a small, triangular shaft running into it from the side. This is clearly the work of burrowing space gnomes, which are just like burrowing regular gnomes only evolved on another planet. The survivor wisely crawls halfway inside the shaft and is promptly eaten.

Toolbox, Archeologist and Murder Child hear his gunshots and immediately run, assuming the shooter has 'mistaken' one of them for Diesel again.

At this point the cuts are coming so fast that Toolbox, while running in a straight line for about 50 yards, looks like a skipping CD sounds. It's like an epileptic is trying to film what a seizure feels like.

Toolbox finds Shooter's bloodstain right next to Diesel, who runs away and directly into John. Diesel is beaten badly up, again, and during the one-sided ass-stomping his welding goggles come off and we learn that Diesel is extremely photosensitive. Which is nice that they explained, since welding goggles were even more impractical than ski goggles.

Inside the wreck Carolyn interrogates Diesel by informing him that she will be playing Good Cop in this feature. Diesel mutters something that sounds like an anatomy lesson and beckons Carolyn closer.

Carolyn then comes much closer, since even though she's the smartest person here she's still an idiot, and is almost attacked by Diesel and we finally see Diesel's eyes, which appear to have cataracts that were installed by a doctor in prison.

This. Just two goddamn hours of this.

Back at the hole Carolyn begins poking around in the shaft covered in the blood of the missing Shooter. She eventually comes to a larger chamber with many shafts running out that should be familiar to anyone that's ever played a video game with a dungeon. Aliens pop in and out of frame in the background and dash in front of the camera just like in every alien movie since Alien.  Carolyn finds Shooter's foot and loses her flashlight, rendering her blind in the moderately well lit cave. She climbs up a shaft in an attempt to escape but, lacking the kind of higher brain functions that link cause to effect, forgets to unclip her tether and can't make it out.

Back at the shaft entrance the men bravely do nothing. After an extended flurry of flashcuts where nothing happens the survivors hack a hole into the shaft Carolyn is stuck in and pull her out.

Carolyn is almost pulled back into the cave, having still not unclipped herself. One of the survivors does it for her.

Back in the wreck John takes a stab at interrogating Diesel. John offers to let Diesel go in exchange for his help, and then shoots Diesel's chains off.  Tough guy banter.

The survivors walk...somewhere. The only way to distinguish the sets is by the color of the lens filter which is now sepia in what I believe is supposed to be the blue or normal colored areas. More flash cuts of eyeballs.

Carolyn gets power back on the ship but informs the crew that they'll need to haul a lot of batteries to get enough power for take off. Outside, the anachronistic Muslim children begin emulating Diesel by wearing cargo cult welding glasses. Still, more practical and less crazy than religion, amirite? Diesel finds a pair of glasses trampled in the dirt in another blatant example of heavy-handed symbolism.

    PRODUCER: "You do realize that 15% of this movie is close ups of eyeballs right?"

    DIRECTOR: "Seeing things is important!"

    PRODUCER: "Yeeeeeeaaaah, I think we've established that. Repeatedly."

    DIRECTOR: "When you can't see things it is hard to see!"

    PRODUCER: "Look, the name of the film is Pitch Black and your main gimmick is having a character with robot eyes. I think we've established that darkness will play a role in this film."

    DIRECTOR: Eyeballs are what we see with!"

One of the Muslim youths sneaks into a locked building with a person-sized hole next to the door.

In another building the survivors establish that the encampment appears to have been used for geology. The survivors wonder where the original team is.

Something is not right in the locked building.

Whatever killed Shooter must have killed the geologists, points out Diesel. Everyone says fuck a lot, to remind the audience that this is all very grown up and mature. They notice that one of the children is missing.

In the locked building nameless child #3 manages to get the shutters open and is immediately swarmed by space bats. Which are like regular bats but in space. #3 panics and locks himself in a dark room where I'm sure he'll be safe.

The crew, shooting the lock and the area where #3 was standing moments ago enter the room and are swarmed by space bats that eventually leave via a pipe in the middle of the room. #3's body is found with an extreme lack of skin and eyeballs.

While the Muslims bury #3, John, Carolyn and Toolbox throw a flare down the pipe and discover a fuckton of human bones. They find the last core sample from two years ago.

Carolyn, back at the solar system model discovers that a total eclipse does occasionally happen, and given how the film has treated probability so far it will surprisingly be any minute.

In the ship, Carolyn questions the wisdom of John's plan to fuck Diesel over at the last minute. Considering Diesel has already displayed superhuman hearing, the ability to see through solid objects, turn invisible, and smell perspiration through two hermetic seals, the wisdom of even having this discussion seems questionable.

Outside of the ship, Diesel is shaving his head with engine grease and a jagged piece of metal. John exits the ship and almost throws up for some mumbled reason and admonished Diesel for having a knife.

Inside the ship, Diesel teleports in to inform Carolyn that yes, the guy with all of the cybernetic implants DID hear their conversation. He then makes some raperish comments before suggesting Carolyn ask why John is sick and leaving by opening the only door, confirming that he can, indeed,  also teleport.

Cut to John shooting drugs into, yes, his eyeball. Carolyn is upset by this, as he's using the ships medical supplies, which seem to be morphine and nothing else. Turns out John isn't a cop but a bounty hunter, although why this seems to make such a huge difference at this point is unclear. Muslim children then burst in yammering in Arabic.

Stepping outside the survivors realize that the total eclipse is conveniently about to happen.

The survivors drive back to the wreck, which is either 10 yards or 10 miles away, depending on what the plot calls for, and begin grabbing things while dark begins to fall.

After nightfall the jeep they were driving dies, being solar powered. Obviously an intergalactic civilization would never have thought to install batteries or some kind of back up system in case they ever had to drive somewhere at night.

Aliens begin spewing out of the caverns by the thousands. Toolbox gets eaten for not listening to directions. Everyone else lives. Praise Allah!

Diesel takes his goggles off and we get to see the world through his eyes,  which looks like too many Photoshop filters.

At this point, 15 minutes of movie and 45 minutes of padding into the film, the eclipse becomes complete, rendering the surface of the planet...PITCH BLACK. Except that we can still see things.

Next time: HORROR MIGHT HAPPEN!