A transport ship passes through the tail of a comet in a deserted trinary star system and crash lands on a rocky hellscape of a moon, orbiting an enormous ringed gas giant. Only a handful of the 40 passengers survive, mostly due to the navigation officer refusing to let the first officer dump them in an attempt to make a better landing. (The captain was killed in his cryo-pod by some of the micro-meteorites that punctured the hull.)
But the nav officer didn't buckle his seatbelt, so he didn't survive. Which leaves First Officer Fry (Radha Mitchell), a couple of prospectors, an antiquities dealer, a teen traveling alone, a priest (Keith David) on a pilgrimage with his three sons, and a bounty hunter (Cole Hauser). Oh, and the bounty hunter's prisoner, one Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel). Murderer, escaped convict. Emphasis on "escaped," because he's on the loose.
Of course, the satellite they've landed on is pretty inhospitable. No visible water, no trees. No nightfall, as there's always either the red-orange pair or their blue third wheel in the sky, if not all three. There are skeletons of enormous creatures in a vast plain, but no sign of any living specimens, or any other life. Maybe just let Riddick stay escaped? An entire ashtray of a planet to himself.
They find a mining outpost, abandoned. This solves the water issue, and if they can get some power cells from their ship, there's a dropship that will at least get them off this rock. If they can get them before the planet's remaining inhabitants come out to feast.
Is this Vin Diesel's big break? Iron Giant was the year before, but it was an animated movie so his voice was in it, but necessarily him. Saving Private Ryan the year before that, but he's a supporting character. The birth of the legend that is Dom Toretto is still a year away. I don't think Boiler Room did much for him. Riddick as a character relies a lot on Diesel's physical presence. That he's a big guy, that he can glare intensely, or offer an unsettling smile. It fits with Riddick's initial monologue about how the only part of your brain still aware in cryo-sleep is the low, animal part, and that's why he's still awake.
Because Riddick is, or is playing at, an animal. The "shine-job" on his eyes, allowing him to see in the dark, that glow like those of an animal with tapetum lucidum. The way he gently encourages Fry to come closer, then lunges like a guard dog on a chain. The bit where he covertly cuts a lock of her hair and sniffs it. Dislocating both his shoulders to escape, like a fox chewing off its leg to escape a snare. He speaks with his body; you can't trust the voice because he's trying hard not to let anything slip that way. Everything is a growled accusation, or a smart-ass remark delivered with a sneer. When he tries to mockingly laugh at Fry's accusation that he's afraid, he can't even manage a convincing laugh (he also leans back a bit, like she jabbed at him with knife or something.)
All that works to Diesel's strengths. The few moments where he needs to emote a little more, not so much. OK, really it's just the scene when Fry dies and he tries for a distressed?, anguished? cry of 'Not for me!' Actually, the part right before that, when Fry is trying to stand him up and get him walking, is good, and it relies on body language. Riddick doesn't try to lean on Fry for support so much as collapse into her arms. Which could be exhaustion after dragging all those power cores, fighting Johns, killing some of the creatures. But he flings his arms around her, and with their relative positions, Fry has to do the same. They end up in an embrace. Not romantic, more like a comforting hug, something it doesn't sound like Riddick - 'found in a dumpster with an umbilical cord around my neck' - has gotten much of in his life.
I enjoy the look of the landscape, especially in the scenes when the blue star is shining. Everything washes out to this almost blinding white, like everyone is directly under an incredibly bright spotlight. It really makes the planet seem dry, like there's so much heat sweat would evaporate instantly. Along with the bleached skeletons they find, and those immense, termite mound-like, spires the creatures make, that look so formidable, but are easy to break through. Just dry as dust.
Some of the CGI isn't great, the green screens when the characters are in the foreground of shots with the planet or the stars are jarring. The creatures' hands always seem strange to me, though I guess they're meant to have evolved for grasping, so the teeth or tail can deliver a finishing blow. The biologist in me wonders about the creatures evolving wings on a planet with such thin air, but maybe the heat creates updrafts to keep them aloft.
Even after the eclipse begins, though? But it doesn't seem like that prison planet from the second Riddick movie, where one side is an inferno, the other an ice box, so there must be some normal heat retention. The creatures are very thin, though I don't think their bones are hollow like a bird's, given one was trying to headbutt its way through a skeletal backbone to get at Jack. As always, the biology and climatology of worlds in Riddick movies fascinates me.
The story revolves around the Fry/Johns/Riddick trio. Fry, who was prepared to make a ruthless decision to save, at best, 2 lives at the cost of 40, and is now struggling to save the survivors as a form of penance. Johns, the lawman who is ultimately self-serving and dishonorable. Riddick the criminal that has given up on things like trust or support because the world has never shown any to him.
Johns makes Riddick an offer, help them escape this planet, and he'll go free. An offer Johns has no intention of honoring. Riddick surely knows this, but is willing to play along. Fry is the one in the middle, the other two tugging her their way (even though their ways are the same.) Riddick mentions Johns' morphine habit, that he didn't offer any to let the nav officer die in peace. Johns mentions Riddick can pilot a ship like the one they plan to use, that's how he made his last escape, and the crew didn't survive.
It isn't so much Fry's decision is relevant to how things play out between Johns and Riddick themselves. The two meatheads were always going to settle that personally. It's more what decision she makes. Does she honor the deal with Riddick, because he's honored his side? Does she leave him to die, because she fears he'll kill her? Does she make the choice to save herself, and abandon the survivors alongside Riddick? Prioritize her own, higher, chance of survival, versus the lower possibility she can save the others?
She's already done that last one once, and had her unwitting, prospective victims thank her for saving them. It eats at her. Mitchell moves through the movie like someone carrying an invisible 50-kilo sack on her back. Constantly exhausted, hair stuck to her forehead in a way that has to be irritating. Leaning against things or away from people. The guilt eats at her more every time she's praised, and drives her to desperation to try and save people she quite likely doesn't even really care about, when she has only the vaguest idea what she's doing. Fry understands ships enough to know how they can get the one they find in the air. Everything else? She's winging it. That makes having all these people rely on her even worse, especially when unforeseen circumstances - the rain, Jack's monthly cycle - create complications.
Johns and Riddick are the only two (alive) that know the truth. Each of them use it, too, in different ways. Johns uses it to undercut Fry when she tries getting on her high horse. The charming, noble protector veneer Hauser gave Johns up to then falls away, and we see someone that fights to win, whatever it takes. Maybe he learned that from Riddick shanking him in the back, or maybe it's something he always had.
In contrast, Riddick is gentle. He tries to coax Fry onto the jump-ship, to forget about Jack and Imam, and leave with him. Maybe there's a hint of mockery in him to start, but as the conversation progresses, I think he comes to first pity, then resent, her. In the former, it's how broken she seems about her inner conflict. Wanting to survive, but not wanting to hate herself for abandoning people. So he encourages her to do what he would. Survive. Even offers her a hand, then steps out of the ship to guide her in.
Eventually though, the fact she won't leave them digs at him. It's a little like The Killing Joke, only instead of it being a "one bad day" thing, Riddick wants confirmation that given the choice, other people would make the same decision as him, and think only of themselves. If Fry does it, then Riddick is fine. It's not just him, the universe really is as selfish and terrible as he claims as he sees it when he and Imam discuss God. But when she keeps insisting on going back, that means maybe it's just him that's the asshole. You don't have to always distrust kindness and cloak yourself in cynicism. Instead of Riddick pulling her into his way of seeing things, she pulls him the other direction.
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