Ok, I have seen the trailer for this a couple times. It looks like it could be very cool to me. I am not a big fan of van diesel (though he was alright in pitch black). The effects look top notch and the story seems pretty cool. The only question is will they cheese it up and dumb it down for the general audience or will it be real sci-fi??? What do you think?
I must say I like the offical site (which is rare) and the story sounds okay. It feels Sci-Fi so here's hoping
Right, just saw the trailer and I must say it looks very vauge. Nothing was given away really. But it did look quite cool. Only one way to find out...
Holy mackerel, did you say that Van Diesel was good in Pitch Black? Please qualify that statement and provide evidence. I believe the burden of proof rests squarely on you sir. Also, I have seen a trailer for this new movie, and as such have to express my confusion that someone would express that it looks like it has a good story (what story) and that you hope they don’t cheese it up (it is quite clearly already rolling around in its own space cheese) It looks like a completely mindless special effects overloaded, summer movie exploitation that will make as little of a splash as Pitch Black did, and may even manage to be more painful to watch.
Well, I said he was alright, not good. And the reason for that is he didn't talk much. If you go to the website you can get a little more background for the story. There is a good chance you are right but hey some people are pessimists and some optimists...besides we are due for a decent sci-fi (when was the last one, alien?) so I guess I am just wishing.
Pitch Black was indeed quite good if you look at it from the perspective of a morality tale whose 'shocking, until you think about it' (Twilight Zone) ending doesn't use SFX to overwhelm the truths of character interaction inherent to the story. In Particular: 1. Not everyone who tries gets a happy ending but those who actively play against those trying to 'get along to get along' often end up dying alone, screaming. 2. Survival is it's own ethical standard. Woe be to the fool who tries to domesticate it with moral wisdom. 3. Just because there is a sad ending (goodbye Ripley female-testes wannabes) doesn't mean the tragic drama should or will be allowed to overwhelm the basic values of the story. Rather they give Riddick cause to believe in himself AFTER he has already /physically proven/ that he has the guts to do the right thing rather than the animalistic one. 4. Physical acting still has a part to play in enriching a story without Conan stylized primitivism ruining the 'class' of a strong-silent character type. In particular, the /hinting/ of sexual and/or physical brutality themes doesn't have to result in their actualization (by either the good or the bad guys) so long as they are played out in context (and in this case, Riddick's survival instinct was a lot more basic and thus powerful than his desire to make enemies by overt acts of force as the lifeboat pressurization test with the pilot and 'rape me if you dare' implication made clear). That said there were also some true Howling Woofers: 1. Ships in FTL (the ONLY way to move across galactic distances) would NOT just 'pop out' into normal space to be hit by a 'random meteor storm'. Nor would any ship which did suffer such a hit through the stasis cabin be instantly sealed and rendered habitable again. Objects moving at 30-60,000 mph generate INCREDIBLE kinetic heat upon impact. Enough to make any atmosphere inside a spaceship hull instantly 'pop the rivets' with expansion pressure. Even if reduced to a near vacuum level of stored oxygen, the metals themselves would outgas and explode into fragments (spalling) if delivered that much instantaneous energy. 2. Riddick playing 'watching you' games was stupid. They were crashed, it was clearly a bleak situation. He should stood tall and made himself useful. If he THEN turned, at least on the man who continually tortured him, you would have given him a lot more 'edginess' than the simple BDSM implied 'shadows and chains + flexing muscles' moment. 3. Guards and Prisoners. The whole deal with incorrigible criminal behaviors seems unlikely in the 27th century when presumeably genetic prescreening and special psychological testing and training could be used to recover a 'dangerous' personality type. Also, if someone makes a mistake, punishing him for the loss of another's life should be laughable, IF said victim can be cloned and his stored memory reimprinted. Indeed perhaps the best reparation is to make the man who inflicted the crime himself /forget/ (the opportunistic greed or hatred) the reason for his actions. If you lose the goal then you lose not only the instigative reasoning but presumably the chance at rewarded outcome which caused it. 4. The whole dueling male ego trip thing was equally stupid, especially considering the dangerous situation they were in. I expected Riddick to show more respect for that gun and the Bounty Hunter to have a lot more desire to outright dominate rather than 'suggestively set up' a man who clearly hated him enough to tell him it was a mistake to let him live. Riddick should have either picked his moment and butchered the man simple-quick 'just because' or She Who Must Be Obeyed should have stepped in to stop them both. FOR ONCE. Let the girl in charge refuse to be a watcher! Basic Command and Leadership 101 is that YOU make all decisions. Which means YOU have a gun to control outcomes. And YOU forbid two boys from 'settling things on their own' because the loser will be too broken and bitter to be a good pack contributor as a beta male and the winner will look at you with a victor's "Says Who?" contempt of next-on-list. 5. The 'designated black man' doesn't die. But the kids he was missionary zealoting to a new life do. That such was all resolved within basically an 'Allahu Akbar!' (as God Wills) emotional outcome was bad, both morally and dramatically. Not because it was tragic but because CHILDREN ARE IMPORTANT. And thus we tend to keep them 'center of the herded' in survival situations because that way we can concentrate on the main threats rather than on keeping track of the impulsiveness. Indeed, if you want to show real /despair/ generate a situation where the adult-mentors CANNOT save the kids. Preferrably as a function of watching them fight and die, alone. Predators do tend to take the young because they are the weakest and often slowest, at least mentally. But if the kids had at the least died while operating on a buddy system of companion task-sharing (another simple survival skill: everybody works, together) then the outcome would have been more stunning and less like a Friday the 13th "There's a psycho out there so let's go skinny dipping in the murky old creek!" outcome. 6. Riddick's vision, while different from the 'green tinged everything' standard NVD portrayal of night sight, still seemed hokey for what the HUMAN visual centers would understand of range resolution and color gradation (from memory of tints and value blending we can single square-mm detect a yellow lemon from a reddish hued orange in even the dimmest twilight condition for which all other animals, including those with color perception would be utterly mixed-perception stumped). Similarly, the millimeter wave watery 'on off' vision of the 'blind pterydactyls' wouldn't work in a world where high speed flight requires 'instant not reechoant' stereo vision (even most bats SEE to manage basic stabilized flight control using sound ranging solely for obstacle avoidance and precision steering to small targets). 7. I had a hard time seeing how the beasts could lift a man with such small bodies. And also what they had survived on (other than each other which is a species survival losers game as the old/big monsters would quickly eat not only the next generation but the ones after that and leave huge gaps in the reproductve cycles as they themselves aged out) in a world which had clearly been drouted for centuries if not millenia of very hot temps and little or no water. 8. The notion of predators not learning from their mistakes is a bad one. Partly because it means that the guys with the 'war winning weapons' (the big bladed spears) cannot fight alongside if not in superiority to the 6" shiv wielding mega-hero. And partly because the notion of 'trying to get past the door!' drama of things clawing just outside your view is so BTDT. In this, you need to take a lesson from Jurassic Park (the book) and show predators that initial get /slaughtered/ by superior human will and intellect but eventually learn to use numbers and multidirectional attacks to saturate the defenses. The scariest carnivore on any planet is the one in whose eyes you can see /understanding/ (learning process) shining back out at you as a function of MUTUAL recognition of sentience. This would have been a lot better (scarier) way to keep the numbers of big-enough-to-hurt-you enemy within 20-60 believeable totals while avoiding the 'everybody who runs blindly is taken down from behind' migratory slaughter marathon. 9. The Glow Slugs were stupid. Especially when roadside flares, cutting torches and 'alcohol lamps' as well as the fiber optics cabling was barely sufficient to keep the threat at bay. 10. The idea of one guy 'free weight' lugging FOUR 20 kilo power cells was completely moronic. Sure, Riddick is built like a tank but that's 160+lbs folks. He ain't gonna mush very far dragging an adult human's weight like a sled dog. MY preference (again for added tension) would be to show the woman using HER HEAD to detonate one of these cells 'every little ways'. With falling-like-rain bodies of dead monsters the result of her innovativeness. Pilots are not hired for their pretty looks, but rather their innate ability to exploit situations and resources _ahead of time_. Better to be Smart AND Lucky. KPl.
Personally, I liked Pitch Black. It was entertaining and I liked Radha Mitchell. Certainly not the best sci-fi ever made, and indeed it did have many "howling woofers" in it, as KPI puts it. And to his list I would like to add: 11. What the hell was everything in that star system orbiting? Three stars on the outskirts of the system, with the planets in the middle circling... nothing? Unless there was an unseen neutron star or a black hole in the center keeping everything in orbit, that system should have been totally unstable and moved off in various directions. As far as the other HWs mentioned: 1. We don't know what kind of FTL drive exists in this universe. Perhaps it is some kind of Stutterwarp technology, jumping short distances, recharging the drives, jumping again, recharging... and got hit between automated jumps. They never explained it. 3. You assume a lot about what is/is not possible or ethical in a specific future timeline. You don't see Star Trek shows where someone dies and they just say "Shit, the captain is dead. Oh well, just charge up the transporter and input his last pattern into the buffer." Poof, captain is back, he just doesn't remember the last day and a half. 7. I agree with the lift question, but how they survived is easy. You are assuming earth creatures that live mature lives, give birth to live young which must be fed at once, etc. These humans were on the planet a few days, no more than a week and clearly saw little. What is obvious is that there is a significant area beneath the surface (you saw how many critters flew up, so there must have been room for them somewhere). Also the humans found a solar powered well which drew water from below. Hence, a sizable underground area with water. Perhaps these creatures, upon sexual maturity, give birth to young that are like larvae? Small scavengers, or mold eaters, or whatever? They only undergo the change to "adulthood" every 22 years in conjuntion with the world they live on. (Earth plants and animals have their life cycles governed by the timetable of Earth, wouldn't it be so elsewhere?) So had the ship crashed 2 years earlier, there would have been NO carnivores present. Again, who knows? These clearly were not Earth creatures and not all life has to live exactly as "life as we know it". The people in the movie didn't stick around to do a big survey. 9. The glow slugs. They may have had enough light to keep the immature predators at bay, however, and in a group, discourage the older ones from their breeding/feeding grounds. 10. The power cells were 35 kilos each, I think, not 20, which nearly doubles the load he supposedly dragged along. They could have at least made it seem difficult in more than just one scene. All in all, plenty of places to poke holes in the movie. I still found it as entertaining as most sci-fi dreck out there.
You can poke holes in any movie... because they are MOVIES. To enjoy a scifi movie, you have to take it for what it is. A great scifi movie would have more depth, less holes... but that wouldnt appeal to the general public... If you want a fantastic scifi movie (miniseries) that has depth to it, I suggest Dune and Children of Dune. Both were fantastic Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
