Pitch Black (2000)

Nightfall
The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black

Cast:

Vin "Don't hold Chronicles of Riddick against me" Diesel is Richard B. Riddick
Radha Mitchell is Carolyn Fry
Claudia "Aeryn Sun from Farscape" Black is Shazza
Cole Hauser is William J. Johns
Keith "I won't put on those sunglasses, Rowdy Roddy Piper!" David is Abu 'Imam' al-Walid

What the box says:

It's evil vs. evil in an electrifying showdown that USA Today calls "...the best excuse to root for the bad guy since Arnold in the original Terminator."

The daylight can burn you, but the darkness will kill you. From the mind of the writer of The Fugitive comes the pulse-pounding sci-fi thriller, Pitch Black. Experience the psychological terror when a group of marooned passengers must face a pack of terrorfying creatures whose only weakness is the light. With little power and dwindling numbers, the doomed passengers turn to a vicious convict (Vin Diesel) with an appetitie for destruction and eerie eyes that can guide them through the darkness.

Plot:

A space ship passes through a dust ring. Riddick‘s narration reveals how he is being brought back with a number of passengers. When suddenly, some sort of micro-meteor storm hits the ship and kills the captain. Fry, second in command, takes the controls as the ship loses air and pressure. Owens tries sending out a mayday.

The ship is going to crash into the nearby planet. Fry starts ejecting parts of the ship to lighten the load. Owens is able to convince Fry not to drop the ship carrying the passengers.

On the desert planet, the surviving passengers start looking around the ship. They also notice the 3 suns

Owens is mortally wounded and hysterical before dying.

As the Muslim children celebrate their survival, Shazza and the other passengers thank Fry for being able to get them on the planet. Riddick is still being kept locked up.

Everyone starts searching for supplies. Somehow, Riddick is able to escape.

Johns, the officer who is bringing Riddick in, is sure that the convict will be back.

Before searching for water, some air respirators are rigged. On the search, they find several dinosaur sized skeletons. Fry tells Johns how she was going to ditch the passengers. Neither of them sees Riddick hiding right beside them.

The group finds a deserted mining camp, water, and a shuttle.

Paris is at the crash site. He hears a noise. Shazza and he find a passenger who survived and reached the ship. Unfortunately, Zeke shoots the guy thinking its Riddick.

Fry checks the shuttle.

Zeke is digging a grave and discovers a small cave, popping his head in it gets him a truly horrible death. By the time, Shazza gets there she finds Riddick. She is able to beat him enough until everyone else joins in…

Later, Fry wants Riddick to tell her what he knows. The convict tells how he got his eyes modified in prison so he can see in the dark. He’s been out in the desert with welder’s goggles. Jack, teen boy, wants to hang around Riddick.

Fry goes to find Zeke’s body. She goes into the cave and finds something. She is barely able to get out before the creatures get her.

Johns agrees to let Riddick loose if he cooperates.

Everyone tries to get some kind of weapons and to prepare the shuttle. Jack shaved his head to look like a little Riddick. Riddick searches the miner’s camp. He’s sure that whatever got the miners got Zeke.

One of the Muslim boys sneaks into the coring room unaware of what is in it. When Fry and the others search the coring room, the sunlight drives the raptors wild.

Imam buries the boy.

Johns, Fry, Riddick, and Shazza search the coring room that was secure except for the floor. They realize the creatures stay in darkness and the miners were killed 22 years ago. Fry realizes that an eclipse is imminent.

Johns tells Fry that Riddick can escape and pilot the shuttle on his own. The honorable police officer wants to stall Riddick and leave him behind.

Riddick pays a visit to Fry, and he lays on the bad boy seduction bit on her. He does drop that Johns isn’t a cop but bounty hunter and got enough drugs to save Owens.

Johns is mainlining through his pupil when Fry confronts him about the drugs.

The sky is getting much darker; Shazza gets everyone to head back to the crash site to retrieve the batteries for the shuttle and everything else.

Suddenly, it is pitch black, and everyone hears the raptors. Unfortunately, the raptors get Shazza. Everyone else gets back into the crashed ship. They figure the creatures see through echolocation. Riddick finds a raptor inside and dispatches it to the cold dark night. They realize that the light drives the raptors back. Fry wants to carry the power cells back to the shuttle.

Everyone is carrying torches to keep the Raptors away Riddick will be on point. They also rig some light tubes to wrap around themselves. Riddick stays far enough head to not be blinded. Johns is sure that Riddick will leave them… In the dark, Paris freaks out, runs away from the group, and accidentally disconnects the power for all the light tubes.

The Raptors get Paris.

Everyone resorts to torches at this point. Apparently, the raptors can smell human blood. Riddick reveals that Jack is a girl. The raptors can tell that Jack is a girl that will be a woman soon.

Johns gets hysterical again and tells everyone that Fry almost ejected the passengers during the crash. He tries to convince Riddick that if they had a body they dragged behind them it would keep the raptors from the group. No names are mentioned. However, Johns is implying Jack. Well, the escaped convict thinks of a better target. Let the fight ensue. Riddick versus Johns who is cut quickly. In the dark, the raptors get him.

The group heads on. It is down to Riddick, Fry, Imam, Jack, one Muslim kid, and other guy. Riddick drags the cells. They see the raptors are attacking themselves. They head to a cave when the last Muslim kid is killed. Riddick keeps going. Fry is able to keep the raptors from getting Jack.

Riddick versus a raptor: mano el monstro. The others catch up to him when it starts to rain putting their torches out. They go to a cave. Fry and Jack keeps the torch going with their dwindling supply of fuel.

Riddick reaches the miner’s camp.

Back at the cave, Fry finds bioluminescent slugs. They’re able to fill one full bottle of them and half of another. She heads on to get help to save Jack and Imam.

As Riddick preps the shuttle, Fry gets to the camp. She tries convincing him to help save the others. He tosses her some lights but vows not to wait for them. He even offers to let her come with him. However, Fry is driven to atone for her almost dropping the passengers during the crash. With Riddick’s knife at her throat, she vows to die saving the others.

At the cave, Fry and Riddick bring Jack and Imam to the camp. The raptors are nearby. Jack and Imam reach the shuttle. Fry goes back for Riddick who was behind them. As she drags him to the shuttle, a raptor kills her.

In the shuttle, Riddick preps the shuttle for takeoff and then powers all the lights down. The raptors swarm around the shuttle before Riddick jacks the power back on and BBQs them as he takes off.

In orbit, Jack wonders how to answer any questions about Riddick. He tells her that Riddick dies on the planet.

What I say:

Welcome to the 275^th review of my site. It is hard to believe I've been reviewing and kicking for so long. Well, the past few weeks of things like the Thirsty Dead, I thought it was time to bring out one of the better movies. I'd like to say Pitch Black was a cult classic but feel it has garnered a bit too much recognition for that title. It didn't come out and slowly gain fame over the past decade like Tremors.

Too many sci-fi movies seem lame and tired almost like a third derivative...(Sorry got to use that lame calculus joke whenever possible.) 1977's Star Wars had its share of tributes if David Hasslehoff's Starcrash could be considered that...After Alien, there was a stream of monster in space movies. Unfortunately, the late 90s and early 2000s haven't been kind to science fiction...Independence Day was more concerned with how to sneak explosions into a movie. Then, we sometimes get surprised by word of mouth about how "such and such" is a good movie. Law of averages will normally make us get stuck with a horrendous movie that makes us question our friend's sanity, but we do get a good imaginative sci-fi movie now and again.

Pitch Black is not one of those movies. After the past few years having Jeff Goldblum able to hack into alien computer networks using an Apple laptop, we need something a bit more believable. I know that it is a slippery slope when using words like "believable" with science fiction. One camp wants sci-fi to have a complete basis in reality which negates the fiction part. The opposite camp just does whatever they want excusing it as sci-fi, almost believing technology to be like magic that can do whatever is required in the script. I'll try to keep my ranting in rein. Back to Pitch Black, space travel requires passengers to travel in cryogenic suspension. Obviously, that means they must not be breaking the Universal Speed Limit of roughly 186,000 miles per second.

The movie does seem to have a bit in common with short story or novel version of Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, though while that story showed how people who lived on planet orbiting several suns and were incredibly terrified of the dark to the point that caused them to be deranged and want to set fires for light when an eclipse hides all the suns. Pitch Black showed how a small group had to survive the night against a species of carnivorous "raptors." So this movie has more in common with Night of the Living Dead except not zombies but carivorous creatures.

Few actors get those roles that seem they were born for like Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws. Vin Diesel was lucky enough for Riddick. First imagine a world where the Chronicles of Riddick was understandable or not ripping off the Ori from the last 2 seasons of Stargate SG-1. But Pitch Black works on its own...The first few times you see Riddick after ne escapes, he just pops up almost like Jason in the Friday the 13th movies the way he is right out of the sight of the other characters. Riddick is more than just the prisoner. He definitely is sinister. You don't see that many characters that ooze damnmanliness and baddazzness so easily. Though after his Navy SEAL as a nanny movie that may not such as apparent.

Radha Mitchell manages to come across like Ripley but doesn't seem like copying her. Too many sci-fi movies just try to turn the female lead into a Ripley clone before Alien Resurrection did that to their own franchise. Well, Radha's Fry at the very beginning is about to drop the passengers off the ship so she can survive. Even when the passengers thank her for being able to save them, you can tell how she's uncomfortable about almost ditching them. In fact, her personality changes by the end the way she's so determined to save everyone she can. Come hell or high water, no matter the cost to herself.

By the way any movie with Claudia Black fine, very fine...Part of my Farscape obessession that had me follow her to Stargate SG-1. Now if they could only get Gigi Edgley...

Ever drive down the road in summertime and just at the very edge of the road ahead you see that shimmering? I'm not doing a good job of describing, but if you've seen it once you'd understand. In Pitch Black, that aura appears most of the time to some degree. I've never been in any desert but still get the feeling that is the way at various times with the harsh desert vibe and even the blueish tinge at some points.

This is probably the the friendliest portrayal of Muslims is in any movie of the past decade or so. Keith David is known better from guy who fought Rowdy Roddy Piper in the sunglasses fight in They Live or the other guy besides Kurt Russell who survived John Carpenter's The Thing. Normally, Keith David always plays the tough guy and while he never is anyone you'd want to get angry. As the Iman, he is more compassionate and sympathetic rather than intimidating.

One of the things that doesn't make sense is the light tubes. They were all connected to a single power supply. However, when Paris gets so scared and runs off from the group the power supply is cut when goes off. OK, yank on lamp cord it would disconnect. However, the others would not go out as well. Even stranger they don't even try patching it immediately. They switch to the torches at this point...If only, they had mentioned when Paris ran off it disabled the power supply. That would at least be a semi-decent excuse.

Quotable Dialogue
"Was that a purge, Fry?"
"That's very, very rare since the tribe is now extinct."
"Most days, I'd take that as a compliment."
"Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer."
"You're dancing on razor blades here."
"You're 79 kilos of gutless white meat."
"I told you to ghost me."
"We can't leave without saying goodnight."
Morals of the Story
Eyeglasses are commonly worn in the future.
Morphine is the preferred drug in space.
The pupil is the sweet spot to mainline drugs.
It's very easy to pop bones back into place.