I suspect that I enjoyed and admired The Chronicles of Riddick so much primarily because I expected so little of it; I hope I don’t diminish anyone’s pleasure with this rave. Do not read about this film. See this on the big screen while you still can. It has been surprisingly unpopular and I only caught it because the Anonymous Economist nagged me to to go to one of the few remaining one-night showings in Cambridge with him/her because no one else would.
There is nearly nothing new in Riddick. It steals from half-a-dozen science fiction movies and a couple of the Bard’s plays. (He’s hardly in a position to complain, being a thief himself and, for that matter, dead.) Nearly everyone in the cast speaks in a portentous, gravelly voice. It is relentlessly macho. It is camp in the sense of “failed seriousness”, but also camp in the same way that a polished Broadway musical is camp.
It is a magnificent spectacle, dominated by terrible vistas of destruction. The suicidal cult of the Necromongers is a thousand-storey, dark pewter metaphor for Islamism—“Convert or die!”. The plot is at once obvious and unpredictable in its critique of regime change. There is symmetry and poetry to the story and the script. The fight sequences are inventive. A crackling playfulness animates the details.
I don’t want to give anything away, so I will offer one example of this last quality in the hope of persuading you that this work is more than popcorn and worth six quid of your hard-earned to see widescreen. Judi Dench plays an “Elemental”. She is simultaneously Greek chorus, probability distribution, Ann Clwyd, and talisman of British theatrical “qualidee”. She is a translucent, fluttering presence, winking in and out of substance, drifting on air currents. At one point, by some subtle means, she is imprisoned. As she sits and reflects in her captivity, she amuses herself by blowing across her fingertips idly. They flicker and smear like bright smoke. In a film of noisy, broad strokes, this little wonder is one of many mischievous, muted asides.
At the end, for the first time in years, I heard smatters of unironic applause in a cinema theatre.
[…] m seeing HellBoy with the Anonymous Economist’s posse. It was the perfect reverse of my experience with Riddick. That one was supposed to be expensive rubbish; this one was supposed to be […]
I went expecting Battlefield Earth, so was pleasantly surprised.
Well, I want to like you Damian, but being an interwebthing person I read some reviews when Chronicles of Riddick came out. And, you see, I totally agree with her about Pitch Black.
Maybe when/if I see it on telly, I’ll tip my hat to your good taste. But I doubt it too much to risk a fiver.
Mr Backword, as my father is wont to ask – do you want a story or an argument?
“The planet, a seemingly lifeless, endless desert under brutal assault by three suns, fortunately has an atmosphere entirely breathable by humans. The unlikeliness of humans landing by chance on a planet capable of sustaining them is typical of the kind of disregard for reality science-fiction films display, and it could be forgiven if that disregard didn’t get much worse.”
The words Science Fiction should tell you everything you need to know about its relationship to reality. What do the bat things eat when humans neglect to drop by for tea? – reviewers who need to get out more, I shouldn’t wonder, or Lars von Trier (please).
Well, Ms Mao, let me starting by taking issue with Samuel Taylor Coleridge rather than with you. I think the “willing suspension of disbelief” is the silliest conceit ever ventured by a critic. Disbelief is turned off by default. It only gets in if the story is sufficiently dull to allow stray faults beyond, “What will I eat when this is finally over?” And ‘Pitch Black’ was so dull that arguing with David Duff or being poked with sharp sticks would have been an improvement.
I know I worry far too much about science realism in science fiction, but that’s the way I am. And ‘Alien,’ which ‘Pitch Black’ was a very inferior imitation of made sense in lots of ways. (OK, it’s never going to be economic mining some mineral on a planet and then shipping it back to Earth; faster than light travel is impossible; how did the beastie grow so quickly?; and how did it adapt to John Hurt’s internal organs?)
But I’m not just like that with science. I’m like that with other films. In one like Bringing Up Baby, I can understand why Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant might be attracted to each other. But anything with Hugh Grant in … I mean, do they think we’re stupid?
…and how did [the beastie] adapt to John Hurt’s internal organs?
With a spoon.
But anything with Hugh Grant in … I mean, do they think we’re stupid?
Indeed. No argument there.
Are we up to fifty yet?
Not yet, we need Ben Mackie in here to help out.
And did I say “… stray faults …” when I meant “… stray thoughts …”? That must be my wierdest typo ever.
we need Ben Mackie
Be careful what you wish for…
BwD wrote that something or other: “…was so dull that arguing with David Duff … would have been an improvment.”
I quite agree!
PS: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
Actually, I really do agree with BwD. Part of what passes for my brain tends to wander, and wonder, at the verisimilitude of sci-fi films (and books), to the point now where I simply don’t watch them. As an amateur theatre critic (and wouldn’t you just ‘lurve’ to have me at your opening night, darlings?), I can confirm that if the performances fail to grip, I start to ‘pull at loose ends’ until the entire production unravels, a bucket of vitriol hits the magazine, and a few more friendships bite the dust. Ah, it’s a tough job being a critic, but someone has to do it!
[…] It says a lot about the state of the arts and of intellectual life in the West that, in the past couple of years, two of the most powerful critiques of the Bush doctrine have been campy space operas: The Chronicles of Riddick, which I reviewed back here and Serenity, which I recommend you watch after having seen the DVDs of the cancelled TV series upon which it is based. The latter I saw a week or so before I left Cambridge and was the best fun I’d had at the cinema in ages and—unlike most of the stuff that claims to do so—it really does make you think. As a writer for the screen Joss Whedon is up there with Billy Wilder and David Mamet—and I am not exaggerating. (Apparently Whedon is the third generation of scriptwriters in his family.) […]
[…] in Iraq and the War on Terror: Serenity (itself explicitly modelled on the classic westerns) and The Chronicles of Riddick. To summarize crudely: Serenity attacks the whole idea of well-intentioned intervention in other […]