From Sept 19, 2013
SCORE: B
I liked this Riddick movie, but I pretty much like anything sci-fi and I've liked all the Riddick films, so you can take my review with a grain of salt if you wish.
This one is a little more back-to-basics... maybe a little too back-to-basics. The last half of this movie is so similar to 2000's "Pitch Black" that it's almost a remake. I think that the reason for this was that there was a lot of backlash over what the filmmakers did in "Chronicles of Riddick". They took it in a completely different tangent to the original, which you'd think would be a GOOD thing, but I think people just wanted more of the same. And so with this second sequel, the filmmakers give the audience more of the same.
This one DOES pick up where 'Chronicles of Riddick' left off, which I appreciate. From reading about the film, it almost seemed that they were disavowing Chronicles. But I actually thought that movie was pretty good. Still a 'B', but pretty good.
It's cool to watch Riddick as he's stranded on a desert world, bleeding and dragging himself with a shinbone that's at a 90 degree angle. He has to fend off alien dogs, alien scorpion thingies, set his own broken leg, etc.
He makes a friend with one of the alien dogs that has heterochromia (two different colored eyes). Their scenes are good.
The CG is decent in this film. Not the best, but even "not the best" is way better than years ago. I don't really know what critics are bitching about.
I read a lot of critics who said that there aren't any characters to like in this movie. I totally disagree. You like Riddick and I do think that there's some good character development with him.
Also, the point of the Riddick movies is that this convict is almost always a better person than those around him, who are supposed to be good/better people. In the first film, the hero-type guy was a morphine addict who wanted to sacrifice a kid (Jack) to the monsters so he could get away.
All-in-all it's just fun to watch Riddick kill people, which sounds terrible of me, but that's pretty much why one watches a movie like this. Although one of the ways Riddick kills one of the merc is cool, but COMPLETELY impossible to do physically... but then again, that's why one watches a movie like this. It was like that scene in "Transporter" 2 or 3 where he's got a bomb on the bottom of his car, so he drives in such a way that his car becomes airborne, flips, and manages to catch the tiny bomb on an even tinier hook dangling from a winch. You watch it and say to yourself, "Riiiiiiiiiiiiight... Ridiculous."
