Vin Diesel is not at all innocent to enjoy trying to build a legend around him. A perfect construction of delusions that seems to be believed, but when you see the way movies like ‘Fast & Furious’ embrace nonsense, you get the feeling that it’s also laughing at everything (of us, of himself). Perhaps there is the key to his complicity with the public, a perfect combination of absurdity and taking it very seriously (not far from what Tom Cruise is doing right now).
This is the only way to understand things like his claims that the “Fast Saga” is the action movie equivalent of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (are they melodramas then? Social realism?). Although it is true that Diesel has been very aware of the success of the fantastic saga by the hand of Peter Jackson, after all, it marked one of his most important films and also one of the ones that fell shortest in their ambitions. This is ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’.
A role-playing game that went crazy
Sequel to the stupendous cult gem of horror and science fiction ‘Pitch Black’, the film became an absolute priority for Diesel, above guaranteed hits like ‘Full Throttle 2’ or ‘xXx2: State of Emergency’ which turned down to be able to carry out this project with David Twohy. symptom that this is your favorite franchisebut also that he saw the potential to make a spatially coded replica of Tolkien’s adaptations.
Such was his confidence that Twohy wrote three Riddick movies, and in his negotiation with Universal he made the condition that they would only be able to see them if they got the green light. Since the first one worked well, they agreed to approve the first one, ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’, which introduced mythological beings, dynasties, evil clans on a much higher scale than the effective “minimalism” of ‘Pitch Black’. Diesel and the director even gave up the adult rating with the objective of expanding the public to reach.
Something that could have worked perfectly, properly building up Riddick as the faltering hero who wanders through space to escape his fate, offering up worlds that are fantastic and amazing. At the design level it is quite close to complying, but the structure of ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ and a certain leaden feeling due to go too big they play against him to fulfill his ambitions.
‘The Chronicles of Riddick’: Space Conan
That’s not why it’s a bad movie. There are really remarkable sections, like the one that arrives well after the film that is more similar to prison cinema than to the pompous game of role-playing that precedes it. Who knows if investing those sections would have helped to make this more ambitious and powerful part work better, which does not lack points of interest that could have given for a solid Conan in space but it does not quite come together.
If they wanted to do their sci-fi equivalent of the Jackson saga, they clearly failed the task because Universal didn’t follow through with sequels. With ‘Riddick’ they almost had to resort to self-financing which led to a return to basics which, by the way, did him good and it is possible that the promised ‘Riddick: Furya’ will follow the same roadmap. Not for this reason it is worth recovering ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ and its unstable but estimable invoice that can be seen through Netflix (at least until February 28, the last day to see it on the platform).
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