riter/director David Twohy's Pitch Black, the sleeper SF movie of 2000, crept up on audiences with its story of a ragtag band of starship crash survivors rescued from horrific monsters on a planet of perpetual night by the unlikeliest of antiheroes: Richard B. Riddick, an escaped mass murderer played by then-relatively-unknown Vin Diesel.
On June 11, Riddick returned in The Chronicles of Riddick, also from Twohy. But unlike the relatively simple monster movie that was Pitch Black, Riddick places the title character in a complex and epic adventure. Diesel reprises the role of the escaped convict who finds himself, five years after the events of the first film, caught up in sweeping events of which he has only a dim understanding, involving massive armies of darkness subjugating entire planets. Riddick and a couple of characters from the first movie must contend with a new and darkly human enemy, the Necromongers, aided only by a mysterious "air elemental" played by Judi Dench. Chronicles is envisioned as the first of three films in a trilogy that the filmmakers compare with Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings in its scope.
In addition to Diesel, Keith David returns as the sage Imam, and newcomer Alexa Davalos, familiar to fans of The WB's Angel, makes her feature-film debut as Kyra, the grown-up version of Pitch Black's young girl, Jack, who masqueraded as a boy. Colm Feore stars as the Lord Marshal, the leader of the Necromongers; The Lord of the Rings's Karl Urban (Eomer) plays Lord Vaako, the Lord Marshal's lieutenant; and Thandie Newton takes on the role of Lady Vaako, his Lady Macbeth-like wife.
Diesel, who also has a producer credit on The Chronicles of Riddick, spoke in an interview with Science Fiction Weekly about the film; other interviews are taken from a visit to the Vancouver, B.C., set last July and from press interviews conducted this month in Beverly Hills, Calif. The Chronicles of Riddick is being released by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.
Vin Diesel, can you talk about working with Twohy to create a whole new mythology for Chronicles?
Diesel: Yeah. The great thing about working with Twohy is he's a guy that understands sci-fi better than most guys I know. And being more of a fantasy guy myself—I'm more of a mythology guy—merging those two concepts is what makes it interesting.
You are evolving Riddick's character?
Diesel: That's right. In the first one, we were just happy to get it made. ... I always knew that I wanted to explore the Riddick character. As time went on, I realized the most exciting thing to do would be to explore the universe around Riddick and explore what that looks like and attempt to create a universe. It's often said on the set, what makes this all the more challenging is that we're not just making a movie, we're making a universe. Post World War II, we had Tolkein's Lord of the Rings as a kind of mythology to buy into. And then in the '70s we had Star Wars as a mythology to buy into.
The concept was to create a mythology that would take three films to explain, three films to adventure in. A story that would take three films to tell. But the wonderful liberty is that it is a blank canvas. You know how we see these amazing films so often. Without naming any names, we see these amazing films, and they lack a kickass protagonist, a protagonist that we can kind of identify with and buy into. We know who Riddick is. We know that Riddick doesn't promise to save anybody. We know that Riddick wants to just be left alone. We know that Riddick has abandonment issues. We know that Riddick has a lack of identity due to the fact that he was never raised in a conventional way. He was raised in a penal system. For as long as he can remember, he was the bad guy, and grew up as a criminal, as an appointed criminal, so to speak. And there's something nice about that.
So although we are lucky that we had a blank canvas, that we were able to just let our minds run wild and just really go for something, that we would enjoy to see and that we had been waiting to see, we're also fortunate in the sense that we have a protagonist that's kind of clearly shaped, and because Pitch Black was such a contained story, we were able to really familiarize ourselves with this protagonist.
Has the movie turned out to meet your expectations?
Diesel: It's pretty spectacular. The great thing about working on these pictures with such a cool special effects department is that it's like, you slave to get the character right, the relationships right, the emotion right. And then you put it all together and David goes off with [visual effects supervisor] Peter Chiang and the special effects department, and [they] create all these amazing images. Its just wonderful. Because I get to enjoy the premiere. Because everything is tweaked 100 percent.
Were there surprises for you when you saw the film in its final state?
Diesel: This band of characters was fleeing [a prison on the planet of Crematoria] and trying to outrun a "virtual thermal front" that for their purposes was like ... a chasing tidal wave of fire. I couldn't imagine how that would look until I saw it [in the final film]. Spectacular. ... [On the stage,] we were acting with the idea that there was something large chasing us that would, you know, kill us if it caught up with us. But the special effects of that had to be realized in order to be fully understood and appreciated. ... We had a lot of practical sets.
What is it about this character that you think speaks to you or for you? Why such a compelling character to come back to?
Diesel: It's a compelling character in both his complexity and his simplicity. ... His nature is complex. His character is complex, [as is] the unpredictability of his nature. But at the same time there's something very simple. And there's a very simple mantra that he preaches, which is, "Don't f--k with me, I won't f--k with you." And ... those are interesting colors to play with in a character, because ... they're both two different extremes. Couple that with this ambiguous origin and history, I think that makes for an interesting character, because this character doesn't really know his history and is discovering that. And we discover it with him, and he's as shocked as we are.
What makes this story different from other mythology franchises like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings?
Diesel: Well, the first thing is, ... we haven't had a mythology that has a central character, a protagonist, that is as complex as Riddick, I don't think. ...
He's the quintessential antihero. We all know how much I love antiheroes. He's the quintessential antihero. It takes you 45 minutes in the movie just for Riddick to understand the word heroism. Let alone for anyone to hope that he can be heroic. That's cool. That's real. You can invest in this guy's spiritual growth. He's a guy that embraces that indifference and doesn't care what anybody thinks about it, who [just] wants to be left alone. He's a guy that thinks that anything that happens with the universe has nothing to do with him, and he doesn't care. That's kind of cool.
How did Judi Dench get involved? Was that your doing?
Diesel: Yeah. I flew out to London, and I saw a stage performance that she did with another lovely actress named Maggie Smith. And I started courting her. Just begged and pleaded and said, "You know, this character was written for you, and you are this character. This is how we want to play." And she was so into it. ... In Vancouver, we would have dinner together and, like two kids playing in this whole universe, ... talk about different [things]. I mean, she's just remarkable. No one would ever expect that [she] and I would have a conversation that is so fantasy-based. A conversation you might have had with a friend after watching Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, you know what it mean? ... It's really cool. ... I couldn't imagine anyone being [cast] until Judi Dench was. ... I kind of made that a point. It was very, very important to me to have Judi Dench play the role of Aereon.
You're a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons. Did you end up playing D&D with her during breaks?
Diesel: Almost. If it was up to me I would have been.
People will observe that this film marks an opportunity for you to make a comeback. Is that a concern for you?
Diesel: No, it's not a concern. ... It's not about that. If that was a concern, I would have done all the sequels [such as 2 Fast, 2 Furious], and I wouldn't have kind of lost myself in the creativity and the fun of The Chronicles of Riddick. Films like The Chronicles of Riddick take a lot more time than a studio-manufactured sequel. ... The idea isn't about maintaining someone's idea of whatever. It's got to be about making stuff that you're proud of, and if that takes a little bit more time to do, then you've got to take that time out. ... The fun for me is making the movie. ... It's about the character.
But do you feel any pressure to make this film work, with the hype of your career?
Diesel: Well, for some reason, I was more nervous last night [at the premiere] than I have ever been on any premiere. I was nervous because it was something that I had been working on for five years that is so close [to me], [that has] been such a labor of love, and that made me anxious for some reason last night. I don't know why I'm more nervous at this than I've ever been. Having said that, the second I finished my first day of shooting with Judi Dench, I won. I had accomplished a real goal. ... The second the studio green-lit this epic that didn't spawn from a book that was in existence for 50 years, that didn't come from a comic-book character, was completely an original project, I felt like I was satisfied.
What's the status of a proposed second film? Is there a script now?
Diesel: Well, we're all committed to this one. But there has been a C2 and C3 sketch. ... The story actually takes three films to tell. ... But we're finishing this one, and we're committing and enjoying this one, so that we're not in production when this comes out. That's where we are.
Do you have a story idea for the second or the third films?
Diesel: Yeah.
But not a script?
Diesel: No, the script isn't in shooting-script format. But there's a story. No one knows that.
Would the plan be if this succeeds well to shoot two and three consecutively, like the Matrix sequels?
Diesel: I don't know if that's the idea. ... It's so hard to do one movie that I don't know if the key is to shoot two movies at the same time. I think its always good if ... you know in advance that you plan to tell a story over multiple pictures. But I don't know. I think to have that sketched out is cool.
How involved were you with the video game for The Chronicles of Riddick, Escape From Butcher Bay?
Diesel: I created Tigon Studios just because I wanted the Chronicles of Riddick video game to be incredible. ... I created that two years ago. And the proximity of Tigon Studios and [my film production company] One Race producing The Chronicles of Riddick and Tigon producing Escape From Butcher Bay, I was fortunate to be able to take all the information hot off the press, or before it was even implemented into the film, and incorporate it into the video game and chronologically tie up this story to The Chronicles of Riddick.
David Twohy, Pitch Black was a self-contained, streamlined story. This one is a whole different thing.
Twohy: It seems to have gotten out of hand [laughs].
What were you thinking?
Twohy: I was thinking that we just didn't want to do Pitch Black 2. There were some scripts developed for Pitch Black 2 by other writers. And they let me read them at the appropriate time. And I thought that it just wasn't ambitious enough. Not necessarily in scope or spectacle or budget, but it wasn't ambitious enough in terms of why do I want to spend a year and a half, two years of my life, going back to the same planet and the same creatures and spending more of Universal's money? ... So I suggested that they look at a very early treatment that I wrote for a sequel right after Pitch Black. In sort of a flush of having finished the movie I jotted down probably a seven- or eight-page treatment that I then sent in to Universal, and I think at the time it was deemed too expensive. So nothing became of it. But they developed other scripts, and I said, "Do you remember that treatment?" And they said, "No." I said, "Well, it's in your files somewhere. Why don't you just, like, get it out, and we'll have a look at it again." And they did right there in the board room, and they all read it, and they said, "Hey, this is pretty good. It's got mythology to it. It's got scope. It's got spectacle." I said, "Yeah, all the things that you don't currently have with your scripts." And then they huddled for a little while, and they came back and they said, "All right, let's do your version."
Why such an elaborate mythology?
Twohy: I sort of specialize in straight-ahead, linear stuff with Pitch Black and to a similar extent in Below [which he co-wrote with Darren Aronofsky]. And I was ready to paint on a bigger canvas. And I like the idea of subplots.
There are a lot of mythic film trilogies. What's different about this compared to what's come before that won't feel familiar?
Twohy: Consider that we're starting with an antihero at the core, rather than a hero. I mean, I'm starting with a lead character who's a mass killer. Does that feel familiar? No, I don't think so. So we start darker than anybody else. And we're exploring not good versus evil, but we're exploring, like, bad versus evil. And there are no white hats in this film. This film, and this hopefully series of films, explores the gray area.
You shot a scene with Kristin Lehman, playing a Furyan woman named Shirah, that's not in the movie?
Twohy: She had a whole thing going. ... There was a concern that ... between the Judi Dench character [Aereon], who was a little mystical herself, and the Shirah character played by Kristin, that there was just a little too much mysticism going on, and that it didn't allow the audience to get grounded as much as we needed them to be to go forth and enjoy the movie. ... I'd be interested in putting [it] back in the film [in a director's cut DVD.] ... [She] helps tell him what it is to be a Furyan and helps introduce the notion that your origin is with a race called the Furyans.
Can you talk about the big action sequences?
Twohy: Well, we have a sequence called Siege of Helion Prime, where these Necromongers come in. They are world conquerors, and they come in and they take this planet in one night.
All the pretty New Mecca stuff is going to get destroyed?
Twohy: [New] Mecca is the Islamic quarter of this larger world called Helion Prime, and a lot of it gets laid low, yeah.
And then Riddick himself becomes a warrior again?
Twohy: Very much a warrior again. Reluctant at the beginning. Lived in isolation for many a year before they dragged him back into it. And of course he may hold the key to reversing the tide of this plague that's systematically sweeping through the universe.
What will it take to get the proposed second and third films made?
Twohy: They didn't sign me to do three. They didn't sign them to do three. ... What we have said, Vin and I, ... is that we have thought about the characters and plotted the characters for three Chronicles, right? And so we know in our heads where we are going. And we've talked to the other [actors] about where their characters would be going in future installments of the film. Universal has ... been consistent with their wanting to see how this opening weekend [box office] did, and the second weekend, because the second weekend is a key to them to gauge dropoff.
Are the next two films going to tie directly into this one?
Twohy: C2 will pick up the minute after this one ends. And I'll tell you how we sold it to the studio, how we got them enamored of the idea of three films, because at first they weren't. ... When I turned in the first draft of the script, I had leather binders made up that said The Chronicles of Riddick. ... And I put the executive's name stamped in gold down in the right hand corner, and I put a lock on it. And a week before I turned in the script I sent them the key. And the key said, "This is the key that will open the doors to untold myth and riches" or something like that. And so they had the key for a week. ... "What the hell does this go to?" And then I sent them the covers, and they got it on the weekend. They had to stick their key in, turn the key, open up the script. And then in the first story meeting I had other volumes made for C2 and C3. And I just sat them down on the desk. And they were talking about the first script, and they're looking at it. "Boy, can we read those?" I said, "Nope. No key. You don't have the key."
This is a pretty big film, and some people might say it's a risky thing to create. Pitch Black fans are going to find something completely different. Does it concern you?
Twohy: The answer to this question, yes, it does feel risky. And not at all. Because every film you make is a risk. Every time a studio makes a movie, you know what kind of money they're pouring down the line to make it and then to market it. I don't know what the average negative cost is, but I'm assuming it's hefty. Then to market it, again. So, yeah, it's risky from their standpoint and ours. But you know what? It's like, you don't get to be a movie director if you run scared. So it's like, yeah, it's a cool idea, it's a big movie. It's got scope. It's got spectacle. I guess we're competing with Star Wars. I guess we're competing with Lord of the Rings. I guess we are. In the marketplace we will. ... [But] we're just trying to do good what we do.
Alexa Davalos, you're the grown-up version of a character from Pitch Black?
Davalos: I am indeed the grown-up version. Yes. Five years later.
How is she different?
Davalos: I think, as anyone changes in five years, I think she's grown up and really come to fight for herself and understand herself a bit more. I think she's evolved quite a bit, and yet has a lot of Jack inside of her.
... Kyra is amazing. ... I'm having so much fun playing her. She's incredibly multifaceted and giving me a chance to really play so many aspects of a young woman, really, sort of finding identity and the lack there of and resentment and abandonment issues and yet being very tough and strong and being a survivor and having such a childlike innocent side as well.
What is the relationship between you and Riddick?
Davalos: I think what's interesting about Riddick in the first film is that we are unaware of the mythology and the history of the Furyans [a mysterious race of which Riddick is one of the few survivors]. ... And I think Jack's innocence in Pitch Black sort of hits him in a way that nothing else does. She's the only one that doesn't have previous knowledge of him, and she's the only one that doesn't judge him necessarily. So I think they created an interesting bond in that film. And bringing it here, there's a lot going on between Kyra and Riddick. A lot. There's definitely a bond. There's all sorts of things. She really looks up to him. She really, in a sense, wants to be him in many ways.
Do you have to do a lot of fighting or stunt work?
Davalos: Yes. Lots of stunt work. Lots of fighting. Lots of weapons. Yeah. Kyra actually carries a very small [blade] in her mouth, which has been a large part of my training process, actually being able to maneuver this very sharp object in my mouth.
Will your character tie in to the next two films?
Davalos: I don't know.
Are you contracted to do them?
Davalos: Yes. Two more.
Can you talk about working with Vin?
Davalos: Yes, absolutely. Vin has blown me away in his passion and knowledge of this mythology and the story. He's incredibly inspiring. He's been amazing. He's been amazing to work with. I didn't know much about him before I started this process, and he really allows everyone to explore and create every day, rather than sticking by one thing. He gives everyone motivation, and he's so passionate. It's amazing to be around.
Colm Feore, what was it like to perform in that armor throughout the entire movie?
Feore: The armor ... was very cool. I'm fundamentally of the belief that it's not how you feel, but how you look. And if you look cool, then everything else doesn't matter. But it sucked. I mean, ... it was pinching me here, it was knocking me out, it was metal, titanium. [The] hat, the gloves were unbelievable. The craftsmanship in this outfit was fabulous. But it doesn't do you any good when someone says, "But we made this especially for you," as they hammer it onto your head. You go, "You know what? I'm not feeling the love here. It's still metal, and it still hurts, so could you go a little bit easier?"
You've been in Stephen King's Storm of the Century, Paycheck and now this. Is it a coincidence that you've been in a lot of science fiction, fantasy, supernatural type stuff?
Feore: I don't think it's a coincidence at all. I think that I got Stephen King's strange Storm of the Century, because of [the 1993 film Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, in which he starred], which was a very weird thing. ... From a classical piano player to the devil. Good, works for me, that's fine, keeps the babies in shoe leather. But I think part of it is the classical education. The classical training comes enormously in handy when a producer says, "Look, we've got some plot issues here. We need people to explain what's going on before the kissing and the exploding." So we need guys like me, plot guys I call us, to ... say, ... as I did in Pearl Harbor, point to it, so people know where Pearl Harbor actually is. I wish I were kidding, you know? And I have to find a sage bit of acting and a good facial to go, "I'm pointing at the blue thing with little boats and the sign that says 'Pearl Harbor.' Do you think that will help our audience?" I suppose it will.
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Also in this issue:
Richard K. Morgan
and
Andrea Braugher of Salem's Lot
