‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ or — It’s Been a Long Time Since I Smelled Ludicrous?
It’s easy to see why ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ (2004) was a critical failure on release as David Twohy’s decision to follow up his lean, stripped back, low-budget, sci-fi creature feature ‘Pitch Black’ (2000) with a big-budget, theological space-opera left many bemused people wondering “What the hell was that?!” (it would be as if Ridley Scott was stupid enough to make an ‘Alien’ movie that had nothing to do with the original whatsoever in tone or subject-matter but instead was a pseudo-philosophical… ah).
And ‘Chronicles’ certainly makes itself an easy target for ridicule from the get-go with pretentious waffle about “Necromongers” and the “Underverse” that’s even more laughable when spoken aloud and so off-putting you can imagine the audience mentally checking-out before the movie’s even begun. That’s a shame because if you can push past (or maybe more accurately, revel in) all the faux-Shakespearean, Brobdingnagian art-deco, cosmic baloney you’ll discover ‘Chronicles’ delivers one thing exceptionally well, and that’s consistently inventive entertainment.
Twohy, an experienced script-writer, achieves this by keeping everything nicely varied. So it starts off in man-hunt mode before becoming a planetary war epic, then it’s a space-opera that morphs into a prison break piece followed by a race-against-time chase which culminates as a revenge flick. There’s always something new and exciting thrown at you but what’s even more surprising, or down-right shocking, is how well, in the director’s cut, Twohy holds it all together.
This could be because despite all the grandiose world building and ambitious monumentalism ‘Chronicles’ has, at its core, a similar structure to a Western (there’s actually quite a bit of Leone — double-crosses, individuals caught up in larger conflicts, revenge against a mysteriously teased figure — to be found here) so despite the potential for sprawling tangents it remains relatively focused and tight (Zack Synder, take notice!) so by the time they’re out-running the sun on Crematoria I’m fully sucked-in.
Even when the film comes perilously close to potentially grinding to a halt (specifically when Karl Urban and Thandiwe Newton start hilariously Macbeth-ing at each other) it’s executed with such delicious conviction and knowing earnestness it never loses any of its carefully accumulated momentum.
This means that unlike some of the sci-fi/fantasy movies that followed — ‘Jupiter Ascending’ (2015), ‘Valerian’ (2017) or especially the lumbering ‘John Carter’ (2012) — ‘Riddick’ never buckles under its own galactic weight of astral self-importance or inadvertently reduces itself to a tiresome, po-faced slog.
Yet what really makes ‘Chronicles’ so much fun is that it’s obviously the work of a filmmaker who, off the back of an unexpected success, was given a shit-tonne of money and total creative freedom, recognised the rarity of their situation and so fiercely seized that opportunity with both hands because Twohy is absolutely swinging for the fences here. Also, a few dated effects aside, not only is all the money up on screen but you can feel Twohy and his team doing everything they can to further expand the scope and scale by wringing out every last available drop.
Still, let’s not get carried away as this is still a gloriously daft (“I’ll kill you with my teacup”), logic-defying (how can a planet with no water or vegetation produce oxygen?), spectacularly stupid (is that prison 29 miles underground or only a few feet below the surface?) slice of lunacy. But in an age where we’re constantly complaining of being served-up the same old stuff, films seemingly afraid to take risks or suffering from a lack of imagination ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ can feel like a breath of fresh air… even if that air, just like this movie, shouldn’t technically exist.
