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The Chronicles of Riddick: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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s the 2000 movie Pitch Black ended, mass murderer and prison escapee Riddick was escaping a desolate, dangerous planet with the few survivors of a devastating alien attack. This year's follow-up, The Chronicles of Riddick, resumes the story years later, when Riddick is a hunted hermit living alone on an icy planet, and his Pitch Black wards, Imam and Jack, have gone their separate ways. But as Warner Brothers did with The Animatrix, Universal has put forward an animated release that bridges the two theatrical films.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury immediately follows Pitch Black. Vin Diesel, Keith David and Rhiana Griffith reprise their roles as Riddick, Imam and Jack; as they escape the world where they nearly died, they're captured by a mercenary ship, just as Jack predicted in the closing scenes of Pitch Black. Riddick pretends he's a simple, stranded merchant; the ship's commander, Junner (Roger L. Jackson, the voice of Mojo Jojo on The Powerpuff Girls), returns the favor by pretending he believes the lie, and is unaware of the massive bounty on Riddick's head. Nonetheless, Junner reels Riddick's ship in and orders his crew to capture the people inside. Then the killing starts—killing that only barely lets up for the rest of Dark Fury's half-hour length.
Eventually, Riddick gets to meet the ship's true master, a decadent, psychotic femme-fatale type named Chillingsworth (animation vet Tress MacNeille). She repeatedly plays on his seemingly reluctant concern for Imam and Jack by threatening them in order to extort Riddick into following her orders, though the remote-controlled explosive charge she plants in his neck might also contribute to his temporary obedience. Ultimately, however, Chillingsworth intends for Riddick to join her extensive collection of infamous killers—people whom she keeps posed and cryogenically preserved in a literal rogue's gallery aboard her luxurious ship. As she makes abundantly clear, she considers murder an art form, and Riddick an artisan of the highest caliber. So naturally, she demands—and gets—an opportunity to watch him practicing his art.
The plot is beside the point
Dark Fury doesn't actually fill in much of the gap between Riddick's theatrical films. The whole story is a throwaway interlude, with a gratuitous nod to Chronicles in its introduction of the bounty hunter Toombs (played here and in Chronicles by Nick Chinlund).
But with Aeon Flux mastermind Peter Chung at the helm, it's clear that plot's not the point. Dark Fury is all about Riddick's growly machismo and the universe-class fighting skills that justify it, whether he's facing deadly monsters, a disposable battalion of hirelings ("Unfreeze some more mercs," Chillingsworth says casually after one massacre) or Junner himself. Chung makes the most of Dark Fury's extensive fight scenes, with dramatic angles and lighting, even more dramatic monster imagery, and a wealth of special effects. Like so much of Chung's work, Dark Fury is mainly about the striking combinations of detail, composition, dynamism and color that make his combat sequences as pretty as they are exciting.
Granted, viewers' appreciation may depend on how they feel about Chung's human designs, which are typically distorted and outlandish. Chillingsworth, in particular, barely seems human; she's all hard angles and froggy lips. Riddick comes across a little better, possibly since Diesel is practically a cartoon character himself. Dark Fury is stylized to a fault; its characters are no more meant to look human than they are to act human. They're streamlined versions of already simple characters, with everything unnecessary pared away so they can zip through this slick plot more smoothly.
Universal tried the animated-prequel trick once already this summer, with Van Helsing: The London Assignment. Sub-par animation and sloppy writing hindered that release, and the ad-heavy DVD only made things worse. Dark Fury is a better bet on all counts. The story is sleeker, the animation is far superior, and while the DVD extras do include a couple of Chronicles plugs, they're mercifully short, and they come alongside a Peter Chung interview and an animatics-to-screen study. Dark Fury can't stand on its own; it's still effectively a cash-in spinoff. But at least it's a visually creative and impressive one, with its own aesthetic merits.
Possibly the oddest thing about Toombs' Dark Fury appearance is how detached it is from everything. When he's unfrozen to fight Riddick, it's strongly implied that he angered his mercenary masters by doing something so bad that they nearly didn't unfreeze him, but that story is never addressed. Then he's barely involved in the action that follows. It seems like he's just around as a Chronicles reference, but that reference is so unnecessary that it comes across like the C-3PO revelation from The Phantom Menace: A pointless sop to fans who will likely just find it kind of silly. — Tasha
Also in this issue: King Arthur and Jonny Quest Season One DVD
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