Review of Riddick (2013) by Will_R — 13 Sep 2013

Just awful no exceptions. Based on claims that this film would harken back to the original themes established in "Pitch Black," the casting of Katee Sackhoff (as well as the return of Karl Urban), and reviews on this site telling me to ignore the critics (hint: listen to the critics), I was hopeful.

But the result was worse than disappointing. In fact, it was horrible. Karl Urban's role was reduced to a brief flashback set to establish the background of Riddick's heavy-handed survivalism on a graphics-poor planet of overly done CGI that seemed to come straight out of "Star Trek: The Next Generation.

" His "dingo-dongo" companion (yes, that's what they actually call the alien-dog-predator-thing that Riddick somehow manages to befriend) is an additionally poor attempt at child-like humor and in the end is less than endearing.

Even Riddick's rumblings failed to make up for the non-terrifying, and certainly uninteresting, group of mercenaries that come to track the man down. What could have been a compelling dynamic between the mercenary Dahl (Katee Sackhoff) and Riddick boils down to a one-dimensional, unestablished, and implied sexual interest that never comes to fruition.

Oh and let's just say that Sackhoff's character isn't exactly inclined towards someone of Riddick's masculine features, which only makes it doubly unbearable. Besides the Necromonger flashback, the only real attempt to tie in the plot of "Riddick" to previous films in the series involves a character so obscure that only ardent fans will understand the sub-plot.

The most promising element of the film that actually did seem to recall "Pitch Black" was a creature that seemed to simultaneously evoke the bird-like terrors of that film and poorly plagiarize the xenomorph hordes of "Aliens.

" A missed opportunity to revitalize this franchise, "Riddick" is just a poor film.