Riddick review

I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen Pitch Black or The Chronicles of Riddick (because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day) so went into Riddick completely blind and came out unimpressed. I know what to expect from Vin Diesel, he’s never going to bowl me over but I’m also not going to bash him for not being Sir Anthony Hopkins (i.e. a good actor. He was the first that sprang to mind). I like his character in The Fast and The Furious franchise, I get why he’s popular. This film is fairly simply if you know the backstory from the previous two (if you don’t, you’re screwed). Riddick has been abandoned on a planet which is only inhabited by flesh-eating, giant scorpions. His weird, beady eyes are only useful for seeing in the dark (which he needs once), so when he sees danger coming, he calls for help. The only ‘help’ which comes is two teams of bounty hunters who both want him dead, one wants money, the other wants vengeance.

There is one female in Riddick. Oh no, wait, two. Except the first one (singer Kerri Hilson cameos here) is a prisoner of the bounty hunters, raped and tortured. She is let go, only to be shot dead within seconds. The other, Dahl, is a lesbian. She doesn’t “f*** men”, especially those who try to sexually assault her (as one of the crew members does). But when Riddick says that she’ll be begging him to have sex with her (he says it in a far cruder way, immediately dropping him from anti-hero status to utter idiot), she doesn’t disagree and at the end, she almost actively encourages it. Is she a lesbian or not? Or is Riddick just so irresistible that he turns her? There’s a fantastic article from Helen O’Hara, who writes for Empire magazine, here about the prevalence of misogyny in space, it’s really worth a read.

The misogyny, sexism and complete lack of women is difficult to overcome but if you do, there’s not much else left for you. It’s a basic film in terms of visual effects. The alien dog adopted by Riddick is sweet but an obvious ploy to show that Riddick has a heart. Plus, Sully from Monsters, Inc. looked more realistic than this dog. We are aligned with Riddick from beginning but this switched when the others guys turn up. Why was I watching obnoxious people talk about how they want to kill Riddick for an hour? I didn’t need that. Also, the predators should have been more varied – there are only so many times you can be freaked out by big bugs.

Sorry VD (lol), Riddick didn’t push my buttons. I wasn’t bored, which I thought would be the predominant issue but there was too much to keep up with and for an action sci-fi, there wasn’t nearly enough action for my liking.