{"id":82846,"date":"2018-05-17T23:50:41","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T20:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=82846\/"},"modified":"2018-05-17T23:50:41","modified_gmt":"2018-05-17T20:50:41","slug":"chronicles-riddick-barely-makes-sense-doesnt-matter-slightest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/entertainment\/chronicles-riddick-barely-makes-sense-doesnt-matter-slightest\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chronicles Of Riddick barely makes sense, and that doesn\u2019t matter in the slightest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chronicles Of Riddick\u00a0<\/em>(2004)<\/h2>\n

In\u00a0The Chronicles Of Riddick<\/em>, the bizarre incongruences and gaps in logic that often plague your standard-issue Hollywood spectacle have an unexpectedly enjoyable bent. In the strange sci-fi universe where Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) is perpetually on the run from those who want him captured or dead, little makes sense\u2014and it\u2019s all to the film\u2019s benefit.<\/p>\n

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The 2004 film lacks narrative coherence or a satisfying story, but what it does have is a flamboyant and unyielding sense of style, brought to gonzo life by its lumpen star and shoot-the-moon director, David Twohy. Twohy is responsible for writing and directing all three installments in the\u00a0Riddick<\/em>\u00a0series\u2014Chronicles<\/em>\u00a0is the second film, following 2000\u2019s\u00a0Pitch Black<\/em><\/a>(co-written with Jim Wheat) and 2013\u2019s\u00a0Riddick<\/em><\/a>\u2014<\/em>and with the middle installment of his franchise, the genre craftsman allowed himself to run wild, conjuring up the looniest and most needlessly complicated mythology this side of\u00a0Bright<\/em><\/a>. Whereas\u00a0Pitch Black<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Riddick<\/em>\u00a0are both sharp, self-contained stories trafficking in pulpy sci-fi tension,\u00a0Chronicles<\/em>is an unholy monster of space opera insanity and near-Barbarella<\/em><\/a>\u00a0levels of campy fun. It was largely scorned upon release (including by us<\/a>, though its \u201cloopy charm\u201d gets acknowledged), but the ensuing years have seen the proper development of a cult fan base attracted to its lunatic tone and buzzsaw machismo.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Universal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trying to summarize the entire extravaganza would be an exercise in futility\u2014Dame Judi Dench begins as the film\u2019s narrator, only to have the job taken over 15 minutes in by Diesel\u2014but the basic beats of the plot make a kind of sodden archetypal sense. Riddick has been on the run for five years since the events of\u00a0Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em>when he encounters mercenaries hired by a source on the planet Helion Prime. Taking a ship there, Riddick encounters Imam (Keith David), a man he saved in the first movie, who sent the mercs to bring him back in order to help protect Imam\u2019s planet from a murderous society of religious fanatics called Necromongers. An army of devotees who kill or convert the inhabitants of every planet as they make their way across space to a place called Underverse (don\u2019t ask), they soon arrive on Helion Prime, where Riddick is captured. It\u2019s revealed he\u2019s a Furyan, the last of a race of warriors, prophesied to kill the head of the Necromongers, Lord Marshal (a grandiloquent Colm Feore).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s more than enough plot for one movie, but part of the madcap fun of\u00a0Chronicles<\/em>\u00a0is how it zig-zags merrily around the universe, dropping and picking up narrative threads pell-mell. Riddick escapes the Necromongers only to be captured by a bounty hunter and sent to a prison planet, delightfully named Crematoria. There, he encounters the kid he saved in the first film, now a young woman named Kyra (Alexa Davalos), for an entire subplot about their rekindled friendship. The middle act ends with Riddick leading Kyra and several others on a prison break, only for Kyra to be captured by the Necromongers, which brings on the climactic assault of Riddick storming the lead warship, killing the Lord Marshal, and unintentionally becoming the king of the Necromonger faith as a result. That doesn\u2019t even begin to take into account a subplot involving a Machiavellian Necromonger couple (Thandie Newton and Karl Urban), or the whole bizarre role of Dench as an \u201cAir Elemental\u201d who can phase into a ghostlike incorporeal form at whim, yet somehow ends up in chains against her will.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Universal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If it sound confusing, it is. But none of it really matters, because the whole endeavor is a feature-film excuse for Diesel and Twohy to engage in a game of \u201ccan you top this?\u201d scenery-chewing vs. scenery-fetishization. Twohy\u2019s dialogue has always been hot- and cold-running pulp, and in Diesel\u2019s gravelly mouth it takes on a beyond-heightened bent, every other line a chance to wax macho-portentous. (Lord Marshal,\u00a0after Riddick kills Irgun, a main Necromonger henchmen<\/a>: \u201cIrgun\u2014one of my best.\u201d Riddick: \u201cIf you say so.\u201d) Diesel\u2019s tough-guy posturing is intentionally outsized, cinematic proof that the world\u2019s toughest and most humorless guy can also be the world\u2019s goofiest. Similarly, the florid set design and massive CGI spectacles are rarely in service of anything other than themselves. Twohy treats \u201cgoing big\u201d as an aesthetic and a tone simultaneously, never missing a chance to goose scenes to ever more absurdist heights. Yet despite all that, the movie feels weirdly personal, the idiosyncratic result of a very specific vision.<\/p>\n

Sure, it\u2019s all equally likely to collapse into a jumbled mess in the minds of a viewer as to provide any real indelible images\u2014when everything is cranked to 11, it can become indistinguishable pretty quickly\u2014but thanks to the self-serious style pushing through the looking glass into arch, camp irreverence (as well as Twohy\u2019s undeniable skill at staging clear, engaging action),\u00a0The Chronicles Of Riddick<\/em>\u00a0becomes a pleasurable watch, nonsensically droll and outlandishly gratuitous, even with an unfortunate PG-13 rating. It lacks some of the strange psychosexual subtext that makes the other\u00a0Riddick<\/em>\u00a0films so fascinating (I\u2019ll never forget realizing the hero\u2019s name is literally \u201cDick B. Ridic\u201d), but in its own daffy way, it makes a compelling virtue out of the typical incoherent summer blockbuster bloat. Maybe someday we\u2019ll even get\u00a0that next\u00a0Riddick<\/em>\u00a0movie and TV show Diesel promised us<\/a>.<\/p>\n