So last night after much pleading and cajoling my brother let me borrow season two of ALIAS. If only you could see me rolling my eyes. At least Reporter Boy grew some balls and some sense and is actually keeping a low profile. I'm sensing he's a goner, in part because of his change of heart and in part because he finally shaved. It's not a good sign. Also, Vaughn needs to get laid so he and Sydney can stop spending 15.739% of the show making moonie eyes at one another. This also goes for Jack, who is not making moonie eyes at his ex-dead-wife-spy-woman but instead gazes upon her with a mix of pained heartbreak and constipation. But at least he still kicks some ass. And he actually has a heart to break. And finally Sydney, GET ANOTHER FUCKING JOB AND STOP YER BITCHIN'!!! Geez Louise, "Now I can finally be truthful to you about myself because you were tortured and had your face bashed in and some ribs broken and teeth pulled and I barely saved your life and now you're going to have to pretend to be a drug addict and your life is ruined but at least now I can be honest with you *sniff*." WHATEVER!!!! ARGH!!! And season three doesn't come out until September.
But this isn't why you're here. You want to know about Vin Diesel's rock hard abs.
Unfortunately you don't get to see them. He pretty much keeps a tank top on the whole time. But unlike VAN HELSING, this movie kicked a ton of ass, ran real fast over to where all the ass landed, and then kicked it again. It was a total immersion experience, with awesome art direction, a story and tone that harkened back to the brilliance of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Nick Chinlund, and lots of ass kicking.
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, which is either a typo or an allusion to the fifty sequels sure to follow, begins five years after the end of PITCH BLACK. You'll remember--unless you've chosen to totally block that particular film experience from your mind--that PITCH BLACK was that movie with that hot chick from FARSCAPE. Which was how the film was known, THAT MOVIE WITH THAT HOT CHICK FROM FARSCAPE, before Vin Diesel became the huge star and media darling that he is today, because if they'd made PITCH BLACK today instead of back then it would be known as THAT MOVIE WITH THAT AWESOME BALD-HEADED ASS-KICKER, YOU KNOW THAT GUY I'M TALKING ABOUT, THE ONE THAT WAS IN THE MOVIE WITH THE CARS, NO, THE GOOD ONE ABOUT THE CARS, NOT THAT CRAP WITH NICK CAGE. So in that movie (PITCH BLACK) Diesel played Riddick, a total badass evil dude everyone was afraid of, but it turned out he had a heart of gold even if he totally denied it, because he was totally trying to save everyone even though they hated and feared him. And he kicked a lot of ass. The best part about the movie was that everybody got the shit kicked out of them and killed, even the people you totally thought would live. This also happened in the totally awesome Thomas Jane pre-PUNISHER movie, DEEP BLUE SEA, one of many underrated killers-from-the-deep movies that came out around the same time, including DEEP RISING, LAKE PLACID and VIRUS (these are crap, but they're AWESOME!!!) So at the end of PITCH BLACK, Riddick escapes with some priest dude (which I totally don't remember, so I'm going to have to watch it again) and this girl who was pretending to be a boy named Jack. But then she got her period which totally ruined the disguise and made her an easy target for all the menses-sniffing monsters.
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (can you imagine the titles of the sequels? this is going to be insane; it's going to be like, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, PART TWO: RIDDICK IS LARGE AND IN CHARGE and it's totally going to take forever to type all that out) starts five years later, with Riddick being chased by these mercenaries after the bounty on his head, placed there by the priest dude he saved to get him to come to the priest's planet to save it from an invasion of the Necromongers, a religious cult intent on bringing about a total conversion of everyone in the universe and the creation of something called the Underverse, which they never show but if you go there you get special powers, one of which is the ability to get your ass kicked and handed back to you on a platter by Vin Diesel. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Lots of stuff happens, and then it turns into a whole different movie, and then Riddick catches up with Jack who's now a badass hot chick with the very lame and unthreatening name Kyra, and then more stuff happens and then there's a big fight and Riddick kicks all sorts of ass.
But then the ending is very melancholy. Which you wouldn't expect from an action film. And that's what makes this film so awesome: it's a character study of a man reluctantly called to fill a role required by his destiny, who recognizes his role and his need to assume it but struggles with an inner conflict born of his antagonism toward all authority and his ambivalence toward taking his place within that authority. As I alluded earlier, these are similar themes explored in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and then endings of both films are similar, as well. This is another reason why this movie is so awesome: it resuscitates a long struggling (if not dead) genre and reinvigorates it by situating it in another space/time. There are plans to make KING CONAN with Triple H from WWE, but after seeing this it's totally unnecessary, except as a visit with a favorite character.
Not to mention the fact that THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK gives you plenty of cool shit to look at. The costumes are AMAZING, as are the sets, with lots of screaming faces and statues of bodies writhing in torment. And it may seem like two different movies, but it comes together brilliantly in the end.
For now, I will completely ignore the one insanity (I'm sure there are more; I was just basking in the gloriousness of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK) that if you're on a planet with a surface temperature of 700 degrees, parking your ass in a bit of shade ain't going to help you much. Not that I've ever been to a planet with a surface temperture of 700 degrees, but I have been outdoors in Ohio in the summer, which is pretty much the same thing, what when you take the humidity into consideration, because as we all know it is the humidity more than it is the heat.
I will have to watch PITCH BLACK again to see which one I preferred, but really, they're apples and oranges. PITCH BLACK is ass-kicking leaning toward horror, and THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK is ass-kicking leaning toward Society of Creative Anachronism reenactment. In a good way. If there is such a thing.
Now, my suggestion for THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK TWO: WHAT, DID YOU NOT GET YOUR ASS KICKED ENOUGH THE LAST TIME? More nudity. And they totally need to cast Grace Jones as a bad guy. It'd totally be like ALIENS VS. PREDATOR of the cool-as-hell ass kickers!!!