Zombie Column: Riddick

There are many, many people who are probably making the Riddick-ulous pun right now, so I won't be joining them (just standing beside them and pointing it out a lot). Unless, of course, I wasn't referring to the adjective, but instead the spell from Harry Potter, able to turn a bad movie into a good one. Sadly, my magic is just not that strong, and Riddick remained as it was.

We saw the movie up at CrossIron, although not in the fancy 3D UltraAVX theatre. Riddick wasn't in 3D, so I guess they didn't want to waste the extra money they could charge on it, or something. Still, good theatre. Previews for the week were Oldboy, Runner Runner, and 47 Ronin (which had a surprisingly long trailer). I could go for Oldboy (even though I know all the spoilers for the movie it remade) and 47 Ronin, because who doesn't like Keanu Reeves or Japanese martial arts movies with supernatural actions scenes?

Riddick opens with the titular character abandoned on some desert world (a little more varied than Tatooine, but not much. More like Geonosis, actually). There, he battles the elements and the predatory native creatures, all of whom seem to want to kill him. And that's all he does for about the first third of the movie. It's boring. Wow, is it ever boring. There's a brief flashback to the Necromongers, and then it's back to camping on death world. Whoo.

After that, he goes exploring onto the slightly nicer part of the world. It's more of a tundra than a desert. He comes across a Merc station (put there by who knows to house and re-supply any mercenaries that need it). Then he sees a rainstorm and decides that enough's enough, time to get off this rock. The only problem is that the only way off involves being captured by bounty hunters, so Riddick calls them over from whatever planet they were on.

Two bounty hunter crews arrive, and there's a lot of setting up, and patrolling, and Riddick gaining intelligence by staying far away and staring at them. Then there's some offscreen killing, and some really lame action and then the movie ends.

So, this movie is terrible. The first part is slow, and the second part is slow, and the third part is slow and lame. I can understand now why it took so much trouble to produce (Evan was telling me Vin Diesel had to mortgage his house to get the necessary funds). I mean, who would have looked at this script and said "Yeah, I want to make this. It stars an action hero with cool powers in an action hero franchise, only this time, he doesn’t do any action!"?

Is there anything redeeming about this movie? Well, after this, they won't be able to make any more. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, since I liked Chronicles of Riddick (I'm the only one). So the chance for another one of those is gone. But if they wanted to make more movies like this one, then it's a good thing they won't be able to.

Other than that, there are one or two chuckles to be had. Also, for fans of Battlestar Galactica, Katee Sackhoff is in it, and it's always nice when TV actors get roles in movies. I mean, she's in a completely unnecessary topless scene, so maybe it's not so good either. The movie had already earned it's R-rating with topless scenes in the flashbacks, we don't need famous actors doing them just for funsies.

All in all, I'm ranking this as a Free on TV movie. Not the absolute worst we've seen (Hi, Last Airbender), but probably ranking somewhere between Wrath of the Titans and Faster.