Oh boy, where do I start? Well, let's start with the objections listed at the end of the episode shall we?
Problem #1: New rules, new magic bean
Since there is a good deal of comparison to Star Wars, lets try this: "It's a space fantasy like Star Wars is…" And what if the first movie was all about Han and Chewie having to escape the empire; no hoaky religions or ancient weapons. Then in the next movie we're hit with "magic and ghosts"? I see the objection, but where do you set any of that up in Pitch Black? I'll grant you though, that his Furyan shock wave…thing falls under the heading of: …wwwwhaaaaat…?
Problem #2: Convoluted, complicated, main character not doing anything for most of the film. Impossible to understand what is going on. What the villains are doing doesn't make any sense.
Plot summery: It's five years since the events of Pitch Black. An army on a crusade to covert or kill threatens the world of Helion Prime, site of New Mecca, and home of Imam and his family. Aereon, an Air Elemental comes to Helion to warn them of the impending attack. She tells their leaders of the one way they might have to defeat this army; a foretelling about one, a Furyan, who would bring about the death of their leader, the Lord Marshal. Imam tells her of Riddick, and, certain that he is the one she seeks, places a bounty on Riddick. The mercs find Riddick on the planet where he had exiled himself, but he is able to overpower them, and steal their ship. He tracks down Imam, the only person who would have know where to find him, and meets Aereon. He rejects her plea for help, but learns that Jack had gone in search of him, and last was heard from in prison on Crematoria. Before Riddick can set out for Crematoria though, the Necromongers attack. He tries but fails to save Imam, and is taken prisoner by the Necromongers. Riddick's mind is probed, and it is revealed that he is a Furyan; he is sentenced to death, but is able to fight his way out. Having escaped the Necromongers, he falls into the hands of the mercenary who's ship he had stolen. Knowing he needs to get to Jack, and that that would be the only reasonable destination for the mercs to bring him, he surrenders himself to them. At the prison he is reunited with Jack, who now goes by Kyra, but it is not a cordial reunion. Meanwhile, the Necromongers have found clues that lead them directly to the prison. When the prison guards discover the Necromongers are on their way, a gunfight ensues between them and the mercs. In the aftermath, Riddick and some of the other prisoners stage a daring escape; a run 29.4 Km across difficult terrain, trying to beat the prison guards to the only ship. But the Necromongers have already arrived and another fight breaks out. The prison guards and most of the escaping inmates are killed, but Riddick is able to tap into the pain of his entire race, and force-blast many of the attacking Necromongers away. Kyra is taken back to the Necromonger armada, and a Necromonger Purifier (also a Furyan) gives a message from the Lord Marshal: stay away, and you will be allowed to live. Riddick takes the ship, and heads back to Helion to try and save Kyra. Unfortunately, she has already been turned. With nothing else to live for, Riddick fights the Lord Marshal out of pure rage. When the Lord Marshal seems to have the upper hand however, Kyra stabs him in the side with a pole. She is killed, but the injury opens the door for Vaako, a Necromonger Commander, to step in and kill the Lord Marshal, taking his place. Before his axe blade can strike however, the Lord Marshal jumps to where Riddick is standing and waiting. Facing an axe on one hand, and Riddick on the other, the Lord Marshal jumps to Riddick, who buries his knife in the Lord Marshal's head. Riddick has some last words with Kyra, and slumps into the Necromonger throne. Having vanquished their leader, he has now become their leader.
In one line: In normal times Evil would be fought by Good, but in times like these it should be fought by another kind of Evil.
Riddick's motivation: The final dialogue of Pitch Black, regarding what they tell about Riddick when they are found "Tell them Riddick's dead. He died on that planet." At the end of Pitch Black, Riddick drops Jack and Imam off on Helion (New Mecca), tells Imam where he thinks he might go next, and exiles himself. The events on the alien planet have left him with people he cares for, but knowing he will be hunted as long as he is alive, he chooses to cut his ties to them, rather than allow them to come to harm by being near him. At some point Jack goes looking for him, only to take up with mercs and be slaved out, ending up at Crematoria. Ok, backstory done. With a price on his head and his location known, Riddick seeks out the only person he told where he might go. He declines Aereon's plea for help, "Not my fight…", but learns of Jack's fate. Before he can set off in search of Jack though, the Necromongers attack. Now his motivation is to get Imam and his family to safety. He can't and is himself captured. Escaping the Necromongers leads him back into the hands of the mercs who he thought he had left behind. He knows where they'll take him, and he knows that Jack is probably there, so he goes along with them. Reunited with Jack / Kyra, they attempt to escape, but things don't go as planned. The Purifier tells him he is free to cut and run, so long as he stays away from the Lord Marshal. This is important, because the Riddick of Pitch Black would have taken the ship and ran. Instead, he takes the ship and seeks out Kyra. Discovering her conversion, he turns to rage, killing the man who "killed everything (he) know(s). And in the end, the man who only wanted to be left alone, finds himself the leader of a conquering army.
So while his first couple of motivations are rather selfish (remove bounty, run from a fight he doesn't see as his), the rest of the time he is trying to save the only people in the universe who he cares about.
Necromonger motivation: Pretty simple; Convert, or Kill. It's pretty much all right there in the Purifier's speech:
In this verse, life is antagonistic to the natural state. Here humans in all their various races are a spontaneous outbreak. An unguided mistake. Our purpose is to correct that mistake... because there is another verse. A verse where life is welcomed and cherished. A ravishing ever-new place called Underverse... but the road to that verse crosses over the threshold.
What you call, death.
So it is this Verse, that must be cleansed of life, so that UnderVerse can populate and prosper.
Look around you; every Neromonger in this hall, every one of the legion vast that just swept aside your defenses in one night, was once like you, fought as feebly as you. Every Necromonger that lives today, is a convert.
We all began as something else. It was hard for me to accept too when I first heard these words. But I changed; I let them take away my pain, just as you will change, when you realize that the Threshold to the UnderVerse will be crossed only by those who have embraced the Necromonger faith, for those of you who will, right now, drop to your knees and ask to be purified.
Consider this: if you fall, here, now, you'll never rise. But if you choose another way, the Necromonger way, you'll die in due time, and rise again in the Underverse. Convert now, or fall forever.
They are religious zealots on a crusade. Surely the notion of "follow us or die" isn't that unfamiliar to our history? On a practical level, the Necromongers don't procreate sexually, so they would need new converts to "replenish the ranks," and maintain the army.
Problem #3: Vin Diesel as the star.
Personally I don't have a problem with him, but to each his own.
Show Notes…yup
Remember how much shit we lay on Teague for not having paid attention to Dark City? I kind of feel that way about the whole panel on this one. Many of the answers to questions can be found simply by paying attention, as I will try to explain.
"Call me Dame Trey Stokes": Recent? Um, Wiki: "Dench was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and promoted to Dame Commander of the order in 1988."
"Judy Dench is a ghost who flies…": Aereon = Elemental =/= ghost! ("No we can't fly, but we glide very well.")
"I know we said he got an illegal surgery, but what we meant to say is he's a mutant…": Assuming this refers to Riddick's "eye shine," that has no relation to his also being Furyan. Neither the girl in his vision nor the Purifier have eye shines, and there is nothing in this movie to disprove his story in Pitch Black.
"We are watching the Director's Cut, which I've never seen.": …sigh…really? Ok then, well, the added scenes are basically all the ones with the Furyan girl in the vision. I can't recall for certain other elements, but there was also stuff cut to make it a PG-13. In short, if you cared at all about why it mattered that Riddick was from Furya then I believe it does matter. If you didn't care to begin with, well, there's more stuff for you to bitch about.
"The bad guy's motivation is…baffling": See above.
"They're trying to get to this region of space, that is a gateway to another universe…": Nope. One gets to the Underverse by being converted, and dying in "due time." Don't convert, you just cease to exist when you die. Die before your due time, you don't see the Underverse.
"How does this conquering thing help them with that?": Well, they need converts to populate Underverse, and to serve the Necromonger way until that due time comes. Furthermore, they do not procreate sexually (Riddick is refereed to as a "breeder"), so with each conquest them must "replenish the ranks" with new converts.
"…the pilot looks like Ron Pearlman doing Wolverine.": Really? No one knows Nick Chinlund? He's one of those "That guy"s.
Projects Vin Diesel worked on prior to Riddick: Saving Private Ryan, The Iron Giant, Boiler Room, Pitch Black, The Fast and The Furious, Knockaround Guys, xXx, A Man Apart. (Brian, you had a iPad! You have the power!)
"Storywise, why did we go to the prison planet? What purpose does that serve?": It's twofold; to get away from the Necromongers, and to get to Jack. Riddick is not the same "screw everyone else, I'm just looking out for me" character he was in Pitch Black. He is mostly motivated by his desire to get people (Imam and Kyra) out of trouble. He's also a smart guy. When he gets nabbed again by Toombs, he knows what's going to happen, he's worked it out. They still want to collect on him, but since the private party has dropped the bounty, they'll take him to a slam. Riddick know's that they'll take Toombs' ship, and he knows which slams are within range of their "shitty little under-cutter, got no legs." All he has to do is goad them into taking him to the one he wants to go to. It works out pretty well for him, since this way he doesn't even have to break in.
"Judy Dench…what are you doing in this movie?": Vin really wanted her for the part, and just wouldn't take no for an answer.
"Automatic disqualification due to it's involvement with…": I smell a High Fidelity commentary in our future.
Aereon goes to Helion to warn them of the Necromongers. She tells them of the "prophesy" surrounding the Lord Marshal. "It concerns a foretelling, a prediction now more than 30 years old. A young warrior once consulted a seer. He was told a child would be born on the planet Furya, a male child, who would someday cause the warrior's downfall. Cause his un-timed death." Imam tells her of Riddick. They suspect he may be the one, and put a bounty out on Riddick; either the mercs would bring him in, or he would seek out the one who placed the bounty, either way he would come to them.
"…it would actually make more sense if they had been to that place and were coming back.": That's pretty much describes the Lord Marshal. He was able to "ascend" or whatever to the threshold of the Underverse, and return. But again, they are not on their way to "place" as such.
"…and Judy Dench is a ghost…": Again, not a ghost, an Air Elemental. Can't fly. Can't aperate. Can't teleport. Mortal.
IIRC Necromonger technology is gravitational based.
Dark Fury doesn't explain anything; if anything it makes less sense than this one.
"…yeah, I would't be suspicious of you at all.": As they go into in some detail, part of the Necromonger faith is that "you keep what you kill". It's not a novel idea; if you are strong enough to overpower your superior, then you take their place. The Sith operate under a similar idea; always waiting for or conspiring to create circumstances that would enable them to eliminate the one above them and take their place. Such behavior would not be that unusual, and would probably be expected.
The Necromongers do NOT go back to the Pitch Black planet. Granted, it isn't spelled out in dialogue as such, but Riddick does refer to the small ship as an Under-cutter. The idea is that it can burrow itself, at least partially, underground (great if you're a merc or smuggler or escaped convict and don't want folks finding your ship). What you are seeing in the film is trail left as the ship left Helion.
Magnetorheological fluid
"Do I have to have his stupid haircut?": Fun fact, that haircut was Karl Urban's idea. He had just finished LotR, and did not want to spend another movie in a helmet, so I figured if he had a really crazy haircut Twohy would more inlined to shoot him without it.
Interesting Rome finally pops up in conversation, but no one sees any relationship between the Romans and the Necromongers. In an interview Colm Feore (Lord Marshal) said that he saw his character as being similar to Julius Caesar. There are certainly parallels between the Necromongers and the Roman Empire to be drawn.
Riddick's infamy may seem disproportional to Pitch Black for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the story revolves around him. From the mercies hunting him for a bounty, to the Necromongers hunting him at the command of the Lord Marshal, to the prison wardens who probably have him on a most wanted list. So of course everyone is going to know of him. Notice though that most of the prisoners don't have a clue who he is. All the soldiers he takes down on Helion in the beginning believed him to be a spy for the approaching Necromonger army. Second, we have our own "most wanted" list here today. How many of us know a single name or face on it? And that's just for our country; now include a galaxy of habitable worlds. What do you think the odds are that you would recognize a most wanted criminal on a cross country bus? Exactly. So I have no trouble believing that no one on that ship in Pitch Black would have a clue who Riddick was, or reason to care for that matter; he had a law enforcement escort.
Sigh…again guys, Aereon is NOT a friggin' ghost! The chains are there so everyone knows she's around. Otherwise she could just sneak around wherever she wanted. It's like putting a bell on your cat. She's not incorporeal, or magic, or anything like that. The Elementals are a race, like humans are a race. Aereon is an Air Elemental; presumably there are Fire, Earth and Water Elementals out there as well, we just don't see them in this movie.
Dame Vaako confronts Aereon to find out why the Lord Marshal is interested in her for. She saw the two of them talking in the throne room and wonders why the Lord Marshal is keeping her around for. The "prophesy" is not widely know; how Aereon found out about it I can't say, but other than the Lord Marshal, the only other people who know about it are told of it by Aereon. Remember, Dame Vaako wants to see Vaako take the Lord Marshal's place. She also knows that should Riddick be the one to kill the Lord Marshal, he would take his place. She can't have that.
Riddick's "animal thing": It's not that uncommon in the animal kingdom, that if you just hold your ground against an animal threatening you, it will back down. On the other hand running is almost always a bad idea.
"I'll kill you with my teacup": I'll concede, this part doesn't work. I get what they're trying to do; Riddick is deadly with anything he gets a hold of, but really, no.
"Wasn't he wearing a jacket a minute ago?" : Yes. And right before the camera tilts up to reveal him, you see it passing through the shot from above; he took it off and threw it down. K? K.
"Why didn't' they take the underground tunnels?" : The guards jammed the door to the tunnel after they went through. (Riddick explained this in dialogue a few minutes ago. Just saying'.)
I'll also concede that Riddick's Furyan shock wave…thing falls under: …wwwwhaaaaat…?
"What's so great about the Underverse?" : "There's a moment when you can almost see the UnderVerse through his eyes. He makes it sound perfect. A place where anyone can start over." Given the lives they've both led, that doesn't sound so bad.
End Show Notes
As for myself, I like this movie. Between this and Pitch Black this is the one I'm more likely to pop in. I agree that there is a disconnection between this and the first movie, but I'm willing to let that go and just enjoy it. This one is bigger, more epic, has more scale, and really tries to show us a universe outside of what we saw in the first movie. There is very little (some might say too little) "as you know…", but I think with proper viewing the pieces are all there.
Now, I've been at this all day, so I'm gonna go eat now.
