The Chronicles of Riddick
dir. David Twohy
Universal

Though there are exceptions — The Godfather Part II, Toy Story 2, Aliens, the Bad Girls X-rated franchise — they're the kind of exceptions that prove the rule: Sequels suck. A corollary: A sequel's awfulness is proportional to the amount by which the budget of the second exceeds that of the first. Chronicles of Riddick proves both points and should serve as a cautionary tale about how and why sequels go so horribly wrong — but it ain't likely.

The first Riddick film, Pitch Black, was a sort of sleeper back in 2000. The picture is fairly low-budget and did OK, thanks to good word of mouth and some critical acclaim. It's an unpretentious, stylish and not particularly original B movie about space travelers marooned on a nearly nightless desert planet. Among the travelers is Riddick, a convicted murderer being transported by a bounty hunter. Having spent half his life in gloomy hellhole prisons, Riddick had arranged to have his eyes tweaked so he could see in the dark. This comes in handy when the local double sunset occurs and the planet's nocturnal predators come swarming after their visitors. It was Aliens, only with a then-unknown Vin Diesel in the Sigourney Weaver role. But it had lots of action, a bomber crew of scurvy but readily distinguishable characters, some sweaty babeage (courtesy Radha Mitchell), voraciously uncomplicated antagonists and snappy dialogue in service of a relentlessly noirish outlook. For instance, a holy man asks Riddick if he believes in God; he answers, "You don't spend half your life in lockdown with a horse-bit in your mouth and not believe. And you surely don't start out in a liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around your neck and not believe. Oh, absolutely I believe in God. And I absolutely hate the fucker."

Even sophisticated cineastes were charmed by Pitch Black because it clearly didn't aspire to be anything more than a crisp rendition of the genre. It got a B-plus, maybe an A-minus, for modesty and neatness.

Between the first Riddick and the second, of course, Vin Diesel became a bankable commodity in such schlockbusters as The Fast and the Furious and XXX. The Pitch Black team (writer/director David Twohy and writers Jim and Ken Wheat) set up the sequel, and this time they'd have a lot more money to work with — reportedly over $100 million. It's easy to see where the budget went and it wasn't to plot, original ideas or dialogue. Chronicles is all spectacle: costumes, sets, extras and, above all, CGI. In this effects pastiche of every sci-fi movie from Alien to Armageddon, everything looks really, really big, especially the flying armored skyscrapers in which this year's baddies arrive to subjugate planets throughout the galaxy. They're "Necromongers," religious fanatics bent on converting every human in the universe to their faith and killing those who won't kneel on command. This might seem interesting, with echoes of the sensibility that gave us Pitch Black, but nothing much comes of it. The Necromongers' credo is never elucidated beyond their taxidermistic motto: "You keep what you kill."

By accident Riddick is drawn into reluctant conflict with the Necromongers. "Not my fight," he says, and skulks off when told by the psychic and translucent Aereon (Judi Dench's first role where she takes her name from a chair) of the Necromongers' lethal evangelism. But, to continue the Aliens homage, the baddies then threaten the "Newt" character (here called Kyra and played by the very womanly Alexa Davalos) and Riddick's paternal instinct kicks in. Like the epic heroes that precede him, he zig-zags across the universe, breaks into prison and does battle with convicts, guards, bounty hunters, some really cheesy CGI dog-lizard-lions, Necromongers and even tough-yet-helpless Kyra herself, all the while dispensing Clint Schwarzenegger tough-guy one-liners.

It's fast-paced, very loud and utter nonsense, even compared to the first. Sometimes the denizens of this universe fight like kung fu samurai, sometimes like Conan's barbarians, sometimes like the space marines in Aliens. They definitely cop some moves from professional wrestling. But nobody ever pulls out a grenade launcher and wastes the guy with the battle ax, Indiana Jones-style. This is a distraction on par with the mullets on some of the Necromonger men, although neither is quite as attention-diverting as Thandie Newton's Lady Macbeth in a push-up rubber dress; the movie could have distracted us with her more often.

The large, mostly male, Saturday-night crowd with whom I saw Chronicles didn't seem to mind its Aristotelean deficiencies one bit. They voiced spontaneous, unsolicited accolades both during and after the film. And the sparkle of the dialogue, the spectacle of the action sequences and the film's charismatic Dieselness will likely translate intact for the international market. One doesn't need to be Aereon to foresee a threequel.

— David Essex (djessex@earthlink.net)