Sometimes absolutes just don't cut it. Sometimes the blacks and whites that color your everyday decisions fade into a indistinguishable gray. I find myself contemplating this while on Netflix trying to decide how many stars I should give my latest viewing, Chronicles of Riddick.
Was it a well written movie full of expansive cinematography, acting of the highest caliber, heaped atop oscar-worthy writing? God no. Would I watch it and ten movies just like it back to back for hours on end? Hell yeah. Why, you ask? I don't know, maybe we men are biologically engineered to like action movies. When Scott first saw this movie he boiled it down to two words, and I'd have to agree with him. This movie is "tough porn." I'll allow you a few moments to completely digest that analogy... there.
Now for a rundown: this movie is bad. The antagonists of the movie are this traveling armada of doom called the Necromongers. Why not the Necromancers or the Necrophytes or the Necrocons? Who knows but the writers decided to go with a combination of the words "Necro" and "Mongoloid." Anyway, basically they are famous (or is that infamous) for coming to town and either killing everyone or converting them to their odd, ill described "death worship" religion.
So, one of the survivors from the previous movie lives on a planet that about to be invaded by the Necro-Tards, so he sends for Riddick to come and help. Riddick shows up, does a bunch of tough stuff, and everybody freaks out because he's apparently the last member of a race prophesied to kill the their leader. What race? Why, he's a Furion. Get it? It's like the word "Fury" with "on" put on the end of it! Genius!
Moving on, he escapes the clutches of the Death-Mongos by doing some more really tough stuff only to be captured by a band of mercenaries bent on collecting his bounty. After being captured he is taken to a prison planet where the surface burns at over 700 degrees! Guess what it's called! Burnia? Hotland? Planet Fire? No, don't sell the writers that short, it's called Crematoria! Get it? It's like "crematorium", with a "ia" on the end. Man, these guys really set the bar for creativity. Maybe they're from the planet Creativitia where they drink create-juice and dine on creationberries all from the luxury of their Create-a-Home. I bet it's awesome.
At this point he's in an underground prison where the inmates apparently are only required to mill around unsupervised and plot escape plans while randomly being attacked by big alien dogs that the guards set loose. Here, Riddick does some amazingly tough stuff and escapes, flies back to the original planet that was under attack and kills the leader. It was tough.
No matter how bad this sounds, just writing this makes me want to watch the movie again. I really can't put my finger on it, but between this movie and The Rundown, I just don't know what is going on with my love of crappy movies. Hollywood seems to have knocked it out of the park with their placement of racially ambiguous body builders in mid-budget, guilty pleasure action movies. Well Played.
