Pitch Black Sucked (part 1)

[Doc]

PITCH BLACK
This is for all you blind-ass fan boys and critics who so over-hyped the sci-fi thriller Pitch Black, that I was actually interested in seeing that thoughtless Aliens rip-off piece of shit.  I’ll not only prove why it sucked, and try to do it in 1000 words or less (though it may be a stretch), but I’ll even review it at the same time.
So….
Big Time Spoilers:
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… No, Really, I’m gonna tell all here, Because any amount of real analysis on the STUDIO’s part, much less the writers, would’ve told them to think about finishing the story BEFORE filming this particular Hollywood dropping…..
 
 
 

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Pitch Black:
This film opened cool enough.  Very SF.  And that, I think, is its main problem all the way through.  It seemed like well written science-fiction, but I could tell that it was a poorly written story when 20 minutes into it I still didn’t give a shit about any of the characters.  Don’t get my wrong; I was enjoying it.  Visually cool, interesting enough thrill development, but the ship has crash-landed in a hostile environment, everyone’s an asshole, and no one appears to have a name unless you’ve already read the movie’s webpage.  No amount of cool could have made this flick a TEN anyways, but its horrible character-device ending coupled with a lack of true development and story (with ONE character’s exception, and he was the device) made for one bad film.
When the opening credits are past and the special effects start rolling, we get our first narration as viewers from Riddick, the murderer con random factor dude in this story.  But as we follow our cast, from crash-down till five minutes before the ending, we follow our Ripley-babe, Fry.  Everyone else is superfluous as they’ll all die anyways, right?  Well, with a few minor exceptions here and there, that’s what the writer seems to have thought.  Or can we blame the director?  Do I work in Hollywood?  No.  If I did, I’d point this shit out.  Wait, tangent patrol.  Where was I before my RANT… oh yeah, why this movie sucked.  Well, let’s follow our storyline.
Our nameless crew crash-lands on Rock A.  Instantly, like worker ants, passengers and crew (along with cop-boy and con-man, Riddick) set to work surviving.  Aren’t the men and women of the future diverse and strong?  It’s a half an hour into it and now AFTER some of the nameless survivors start dying of their own stupidity that we finally, at least, begin to care about Fry.  Riddick begins to go from “random factor” to, “he’s cool… but ya gotta look out for the quiet ones like him.”  Course, by now they’ve found water on a ranch left behind by previous explorers some 20 years before.  That, and there’s something else on Rock A with them, and it hides in the dark and has mighty incisors.  So, in true modern fashion, people start dying in oh-so-cool ways, and we start getting glimpses of THEM, and the plot begins to sicken.  The cop-type put Riddick out to pasture to help them all fend for themselves for the dark is coming; a planetary eclipse that will leave the whole planet, conveniently, shrouded in darkness – and THEY can come out in the dark.  In fact, if light touches them, they toast.  So in the time allotted for this film, Fry, increasingly neurotic cop-boy, the cast, and getting-cooler-as-we-go Riddick must get power to the 20 year old jump ship, and get off Rock A before eaten by monsters.  Trouble is, night just fell, and now everyone we didn’t know the names of (or really care about) is getting eaten anytime they step, in true horror fashion, out of the light.  Good thing our bad guy Riddick has the ability to see in the dark.  Whew!  Lucky for them, eh?! .....
.....  End Part 1... go on to part 2!

[Doc]

...But here’s where, upon real analysis, the story really falls apart.  And I really liked this movie after a while, I did.  All the way up till the end and the big flush that was the sound of plot device.  We care about Fry now.  Fine.  We’d like to care about Riddick, but we’re just not sure about him.  Fine.  Cop boy’s a druggie and someone to hate for a while, and everyone else is expendably there to live or die according to script and final head-count per thriller.  OK, fine.  But upon final analysis and device only one conclusion is apparent; SUCK.  And its hardly Riddick’s fault this sucked.  He is whom I liked, along with Fry.  But the problem is we’re supposed to like him, supposed to care whether Fry lives or dies, and supposed to cheer when nameless human fodder gets it at points A-Z.  Though Riddick WAS cool; the actor portraying they only real character in this was spot-on in form and fashion.  He was bad ass, droll, and survival bound.  He kicked ass and was funny as hell, and if anyone deserves ANY good marks after Pitch Black’s credits roll, its him.
In the meantime, the lights are going out, and the only life we’ve seen on Rock A is the three hour tour crew, skeletons of long-dead herding creatures that died in an ivory graveyard, and the baddies with fangs.  The sky goes pitch, and THEY swarm out by the hundreds of thousands - incisors, whale song, and all.  A cool spectacle, I’m sure.  Course, in retrospect I wanna know what the food chain on this planet is, because they never f**king explain it.  Oh sure, you’re being so cool and clever an SF writer when you make the beasties swarm and frenzy over our “heroes”, chewing on each other like blood-lusting sharks.  But what the hell have they been eating all these years; living off of the meager meat of long-dead grazing animals, or the 20 years hence dead former explorers? And don’t tell me they feed strictly off of each other now.  That’s cannibalism; causes mad-beastie disease, ya’ know.
All this might have been forgivable though given the strength of the thrill ride and effects laden chomp scenes and, up until the lights go out, planet-scapes.  But when you spend the entire film identifying with Fry, whom you are meant to, only to watch her die and we get stuck with Riddick, the sudden anti-hero, and two other people who you could give a rat’s ass about, they’ve just insulted the audience.  That was evident the moment Fry died and the whole theatre went silent, and the only cheer left was when a couple baddies got toasted.  Once the credits rolled though, nobody cared.  Least of all me.
Why did it suck?  Well, the long and the short of it is this; someone thought they made a good sci-fi movie, but they didn’t.  They wrote a science fiction thriller, not a story.  In any good story, Alien included, there are characters that you should care about, and see though whatever hoops you make them jump.  But this whole movie was a vessel; a set up for two things – More alien fangs ripping human heads off, and Riddick being dynamic.  But because it was a ploy just to get us all to wonder, till the end, if Riddick really was an asshole, then kill off our heroine at the hands of the aliens just to show what a nice guy he really HAD become, it stunk.  Stunk bad.  I could have even liked Pitch Black up till that point.  But someone out there (several someones considering the creative process of a movie) didn’t realize that a Twist a story does not make.  You have to have character first.  And with the exception of the two people that the movie wanted us give a f**k about when they died or changed, this movie lacked character from shot one.  Final score, 4 out of 10, and that all goes to the guy who played Riddick.
fin'