Riddick (2013) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

651

This character keeps popping up. You can’t get Riddick him.

The adventures of Riddick continue in a third film that returns to the roots of the franchise while telling another new and interesting story. Riddick is once again set against indescribable odds and manages to come out of it all relatively unscathed.

First Impressions

The trailer looks like a return to form as Richard Riddick is once again trapped on a planet filled with monsters. But this time he’s using them to help him. A group of bounty hunters is looking for him, but everyone knows that they won’t last long against a guy who can see in the dark. It’s Riddick against humans, monsters, and the environment. Anyone taking bets?

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

A voice-over from Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) says that some days are worse than others. He is injured and stranded on an unnamed desert planet where he must defend himself from vulture-like birds, jackal-like dogs, and a particularly dangerous aquatic creature that has a stinger and venom like a scorpion and is called a Mud Demon. He sets his damaged leg and holes up in an abandoned temple, remembering how he got here. It’s been five years since he became Lord Marshal of the Necromongers, and his lack of belief in their cause has his followers doubting him. Vaako (Karl Urban) reveals that he remembers the location of Riddick’s home planet, Furya. Riddick travels to the planet (which Riddick soon realizes is not Furya) with Krone (Andreas Apergis), a scarred Necromonger who attacks and leaves Riddick for dead.

In his new home, Riddick heals and adopts a jackal-creature pup as a pet. He discovers he can take doses of the Mud Demon venom until he is strong enough to fight one guarding the way out of the mountains where he’s stuck. He finds a settlement and activates a homing beacon so he can get a ride off this planet. A mercenary named Santana (Jordi Mollà) arrives with his crew of six others. Riddick sees the man release a female prisoner to “lighten the load” and then shoot her in the back, just because. He yells at Riddick that he will put his head in a box, since he’s worth twice as much dead then alive. Santana is shocked when a second ship arrives, carrying a man who is not identified at the time, but turns out to be Boss Johns (Matt Nable), the father of the bounty hunter Riddick encountered in the first film.

A message scrawled by Riddick in the shelter lets them know he will trade their lives for one ship. Each crew removes one power node from their vessel and locks them behind an explosive lock. That first night, Riddick’s predator traps kill Rubio (Neil Napier), while he kills Nunez (Noah Danby) and drags away Falco (Danny Blanco Hall). Santana now asks for Johns’ help, but he will only accept Santana’s crew following his orders, passed through Dahl (Katee Sackhoff), his second in command. Johns, Moss (Bokeem Woodbine), and Lockspur (Raoul Trujillo) ride into the desert and locate Riddick’s cave. While this is happening, Riddick sneaks back into the camp and leaves a message on the power node cabinet: “Fair trade.” Johns believes that somehow Riddick stole the power nodes and is using them as leverage.

Opening the cabinet reveals the nodes are safe, but that’s what Riddick wanted all along, and he steals the two devices, burying them in the wasteland. A massive thunderstorm is coming, so Riddick meets with Johns, Santana, and Diaz (Dave Bautista) to parlay and discuss terms. But when he is double-crossed, his adult jackal dog attacks Santana, who kills it, and Riddick is brought down with four tranquilizer rounds, barely. Chained up, Johns questions Riddick about his son, but the fugitive is less than chatty. He tells them that it’s not him they have to worry about, indicating the approaching storm. Frustrated, Johns allows Santana to decapitate Riddick.

Suddenly, the rain starts, and Mud Demons begin emerging from burrows under the ground. Lockspur and Moss are killed immediately, while Johns begins to uncuff Riddick, who promises to help. Freeing one foot, Riddick kicks Santana, who drops his machete. Riddick kicks the blade, decapitating Santana, as he had promised to do earlier. Outside, Vargas (Conrad Pla) is bitten by a Mud Demon, revealing their venomous nature to all. Riddick agrees to help Johns and Diaz get the power nodes from where they’re hidden, and the three set off in the dark rainstorm, avoiding hundreds of creatures. At the hiding place, Diaz double-crosses everyone and attacks Johns before coming for Riddick.

Riddick pulls out a hidden sword and kills Diaz. Johns and Riddick make a stand against the encroaching Mud Demons, having no serviceable bike left to return. Riddick is stabbed by a Mud Demon, which punctures his heart. Johns takes the two power nodes and runs back to the ships, leaving Riddick to fend for himself. Surrounded and outnumbered, Riddick fights off the creatures until they begin exploding, one by one. Johns has returned on the ship, and he and Dahl save Riddick. Riddick reveals the truth about Johns’ son, and the bounty hunter lets him go. Returning to the Necromonger ship, Riddick kills Krone and asks a concubine if Vaako is alive or dead. She answers, “Both.”

“Like I said, it ain’t me you gotta worry about.” – Riddick

History in the Making

Riddick is the third film in a series about Richard B. Riddick, an escaped convict and murderer. The first film was entitled Pitch Black and released in 2000. It was an early film for Vin Diesel, helping to launch his career, along with The Fast and the Furious. The events of that film are relatively important to the plot of this film, though it’s not required viewing for understanding the motivations of Boss Johns. That said, Riddick has more in common with Pitch Black than it does with the middle film of the trilogy: The Chronicles of Riddick. Released in 2004, the film intended to build a world (and universe) in which these characters live, introduce the Necromongers, and create more of Riddick’s backstory with his link to Furya as the last member of his race. Riddick’s quest to discover the planet of his ancestry continues in this film, culminating with the sense that any new film will have him finding Furya, but also coming face-to-face with Vaako and the Necromongers once again. As of late 2024, the fourth Riddick film is reportedly being filmed and is to be called, appropriately, Riddick: Furya.

All three of the films were directed by David Twohy, who has a long history of science-fiction work. Besides the films in the Riddick series, he also wrote and directed Timescape and The Arrival, two moderately successful films. He also wrote the sci-fi films Critters 2: The Main Course, Waterworld, and Imposter, as well as the Harrison Ford action film The Fugitive. With Riddick, he strives to tell a new story while keeping the style of the film within the realm of the previous films. As mentioned above, Riddick is more like Pitch Black than The Chronicles of Riddick. It’s smaller and takes place in one primary location–the unnamed world of “not Furya.” But this film also tries on some other styles, including the space Western, and a subtle noir thriller.

With Riddick drawing on situations and characters from an early film, a comparison can be drawn to an unexpected source of an 80s (and 90s) action adventure film: Die Hard. In this viewing of Riddick, the inclusion of a relative of the antagonist from the first film serving as the antagonist of the third film struck me as oddly familiar. It’s the same pattern that Die Hard and Die Hard With A Vengeance utilized to much success. In the first John McClane film, Hans Gruber attempts to steal millions of dollars of bearer bonds from Nakatomi Plaza, only to be defeated by McClane. In the third film, a mysterious new criminal attempting to rob the Federal Reserve in Manhattan turns out to be Gruber’s brother, Simon. Suffice it to say, McClane defeats him as well. With Riddick’s story, he is beset upon by William J. Johns, a bounty hunter in the first film, and Johns’ father, Colonel R. Johns, in this film. Both are antagonists, but unlike McClane, Riddick doesn’t outright kill William. He protects others from being killed by young Johns, injuring the bounty hunter, who is eaten by the aliens on the planet. Boss Johns wants answers from Riddick, and ends up becoming an ally in a twist to the trope.

Genre-fication

As with Pitch Black, Riddick feels a bit like the James Cameron thriller Aliens, but a little less so. It’s certainly a large group of individuals defending themselves from an incoming horde of alien creatures, but only in the latter half of the film. The initial third of the film is a survival story as Riddick survives the assassination attempt and then struggles to escape from the mountains. After that, he is the predator stalking the bounty hunters at their station, picking off three separate men. So in that way, it’s part Aliens, part Enemy Mine, Screamers, Predators, and oddly enough, Castaway rolled into one film. But Riddick also owes its plotline and style to more than just science-fiction epics.

It’s probably not a surprise to say that this film is a Western in space. Aside from the flashback and the epilogue with the Necromongers, Riddick’s time on the planet is right out of a spaghetti western. He is attacked and left for dead in a desolate environment where he must survive by finding a source of water and avoiding natural predators. Two rival factions of bounty hunters come to collect the money on his head. One group that dumb and disorganized, against a group of well-armed and intelligent ex-military. Riddick uses the environment around him to hinder the group’s progress until he can get what he wants, which is a way off the planet. They ride hover bikes instead of horses, they dig up buried power nodes instead of the treasure, and there’s even a member of the crew who’s overtly religious, who tries to convince others that they’re doing the wrong thing.

Most viewers probably can see the Western influences in Riddick. But do you notice the similarities to noir Detective thrillers? Let’s start with the voice-over from Riddick. His narration as the camera pans over to his apparently dead body is something out of Sunset Boulevard. His quips to other characters are always very matter-of-fact, in a Phillip Marlowe-like way. He says that he is going to kill Santana five seconds after he gets out of the cuffs, and he does exactly that. He also makes a lewd comment to Dahl that she will be straddling him (in a sexual way), but only because she asked him to, “sweet-like.” At the end of the film, Riddick gets airlifted by Dahl off the outcropping as she straddles him, and then in a soft voice, she says, “Let me ask you something, sweet-like.” It’s a great character moment, and a line that really resonated. Also, if those examples don’t convince you, maybe this will. The only woman in the film is named Dahl. Think of Humphrey Bogart talking to Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, and calling her “doll.” There you go.

Societal Commentary

The character of Riddick is not a nice guy. He’s a self-proclaimed murderer and is not shy about doing what he needs to survive. As an anti-hero in cinema, he fulfills a need to root for characters who are willing to cross lines that civilized people would never. But that said, he has softened across the three films, and he knows it. He admits that he got civilized, which is “the worst crime of all,” according to him. His civility extends only as far as not wiping out the Necromongers when he had the chance. That’s mostly due to the need he has to find his home planet and finally get some answers. He has become a character who is a man of his word. He has honor and integrity and only attacks when attacked. He points out that he only kills Santana after he sees him shoot a female prisoner in the back. He knows Diaz is bad news, but refuses to pick up a gun to help defend Johns, because he was told, “No weapons.” It’s humorous, and being a slight dick, but it proves to Johns on multiple occasions that he can be trusted. So when Riddick tells Johns that he did not kill his son, Johns can believe him. If only more people had this level of integrity, the world would be a better place.

The Science in The Fiction

Riddick doesn’t do much to advance any technological aspect of science fiction films. It’s very much the status quo. But there are still some fun elements of technology to be found in the world of Riddick. The most interesting piece of hardware is Cyclops, a robotic arm, as big as a person, that holds a camera of some type and interfaces with security alarms placed around the perimeter. It ends up swinging wildly before getting shut down when Riddick messes with one of the sensors, disabling the security set up by Santana’s crew. The film also features some beefy hover cycles that are a mix of the Lawmaster from Dredd and the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi. They feature both a jet underneath and in the rear, both of which get used as an offensive weapon against the Mud Demons. The designs of the ships and the power sources are also interesting. Each ship has a series of nodes that work together to power the ship. Remove one, and it’s like pulling a fuse; nothing works. They’re also not interchangeable, which is good for the plot point of needing to get Riddick’s help to return the devices.

As with Pitch Black, the film continues its interesting and cool creature design. Each beast is similar to Earth creatures, but alien enough to be different. There are the vulture-like birds, which Riddick strangles once when he’s extracting himself from his make-shift grave. Presumably, this is one of the things he is seen cooking later. Another delicacy is the underwater eels. These don’t seem as dangerous as the other creatures. One swims into his armor, but never seems to bite. The zebra-dogs, which are jackal or hyena-like, get a lot of time in the film. Riddick steals one of the pups and raises it to be his guinea pig in testing the anti-venom he creates. Standing atop the hill with his full-grown doggo, Riddick is like an interplanetary Tarzan. Finally, the Mud Demon is the scariest. Its scorpion-like tail holds a deadly venom, as do its teeth. The tail also seems to have its own set of eyes, not just a fake set to distract victims. They’re also extremely tough to kill. It appears that even after slicing off one’s head, it is able to regrow it and continue the attack. And after spilling one’s guts, it just slurps them up again to put them back where they belong. Gross!

The Final Frontier

This is a much more enjoyable film than it deserves to be. It certainly is more action-oriented than the second film, containing a great cast. Matt Nable pulls off the authority as Boss Johns incredibly well when compared to the humorously inept Jordi Mollà, who believes he’s always in control. Katee Sackhoff is great as the butch Dahl, continually proving that she is tougher than most of the other characters (including Santana). Primarily known at this time for her work as Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, she creates an entirely different, yet still empowered character. Dave Bautista makes an early appearance, having gained notoriety as a wrestler. This was his last appearance before becoming a huge star as Drax in the hit Marvel film, Guardians of the Galaxy, and appearing in a James Bond film, Spectre, and in the Blade Runner sequel, Blade Runner 2049.

There’s nothing in Riddick that smart audiences won’t see coming. It doesn’t make it less enjoyable, but sort of a comfort. When Riddick scrawls “fair trade” in blood on the cabinet containing the power nodes, Johns believes that the criminal may have stolen the modules and changed the code. Because that’s what he wants to fairly trade for. But even that gives Riddick too much credit. Riddick is also smart, and getting others to do the work for you is the easiest and best way to work. Vin Diesel was getting older with the release of this film. It had been nine years since the previous Riddick film, and when the next film comes out, it will be at least 12 years between them. He looks good, but credibility is strained when audiences see him go up against Bautista. Overall, it’s a fun action adventure flick with several likeable characters and enough thrills to satisfy a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Coming Next