Riddick

Riddick is the third film in a trilogy featuring Vin Diesel’s eponymous intergalactic antihero with the night vision eyes. The first in the trilogy, Pitch Black, was a good little piece of sci-fi horror. The Chronicles of Riddick—the bombastic sequel that looked like Roman sword-and-sandal epics, medieval fantasy, the Star Wars prequels, and countless other better sci-fi puked in a bucket—was not. It's one of those movies where you wonder just how anyone could have thought this would be a good idea, let alone warrant a sequel. But apparently there was enough of a following for Diesel to mortgage his house to fund a third entry (seriously). Seems fitting that such a film would come after Labor Day’s unofficial cap on the summer movie season.

This one finds Richard B. Riddick alone on a desolate planet, having been left for dead by the Necromongers he conquered in the last movie. For a while, it plays like a space version of a standard castaway story (one of many elements of the picture that’s been done), as he lives off the land, battling all sorts of creatures and befriending a space coyote (no, not The Simpsons kind). But after a while, he finds and sets off a beacon that attracts two teams of mercenaries: one led by a man (Matthew Nable) seeking to tie up loose ends with Riddick, and another less competent gang looking to claim the bounty on his head. Predictably, they underestimate the man they’re hunting, and become the hunted themselves.

Yeah, pretty dopey, and very much derivative of other movies. The second half is basically the same story as the first Rambo movie, just on a different planet. And in addition to the one I already pointed out, the plot borrows liberally from too many sci-fi stories to list them all. Even the finale seems to recycle the creature action of Pitch Black. And yet, I can’t really fault the film for any of this. There were a lot of reasons Chronicles was bad, but the biggest was that it took every one of its idiotic, ripped-off components seriously. This, on the contrary, knows it’s nothing more than a B-movie, and has a good time accordingly.

Riddick is supposedly a notorious figure in this universe, a legend only spoken of in whispers, but you never quite get that feeling from Diesel. He doesn’t come off as very evil, just overly cynical and apathetic, so much so that he’s laughable. To give us an idea of what makes him dangerous, the series features several moments where he silently, stealthily appears and disappears, stealing or sabotaging things without the other characters even noticing when he’s right behind them. This worked in Pitch Black to make him scary before eventually putting him in the heroic role, but in Chronicles (where his heroism was never in doubt), it got old fast. Apparently, the filmmakers realized both had overstayed their welcome, because Riddick instead utilizes these for comic effect. Every line of nihilistic narration and inane dialogue, from Diesel and the rest of the cast, sounds intentionally written to be so bad it’s funny, rather than trying to sound dramatic and dropping like a brick. And Riddick’s skills are used less to establish his badass credentials than to just mess with his hunters. Both, quite amusing. As for the mercenaries, most of their screen time consists of arguing with each other or getting hurt or killed in funny ways. But this also looks intentional, like the villains cast (featuring good players like Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, former wrestler Dave Bautista, and Jordi Mollà) is aiming for comedy instead of real menace. It’s almost becomes sitcom-ish, but the special effects and fight sequences (nothing outstanding but decently thrilling) undercut it enough so things don’t get too goofy.

This is as dumb as any of the bigger blockbusters we saw this summer, but it knows it and embraces it instead of pretending like it’s anything more. And it’s probably more entertaining than most of them for that.