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THOUGHTS ON THE MTV FOOTAGE
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Had a few cocktails, watched the 10 minutes of footage they aired on MTV, and decided to toss up my impressions. Shoot an email my way if you've got thoughts of your own on any of this.
To begin with, Riddick spends this entire chunk of the movie with ratty hair , a ratty beard, and ratty clothes. Of all the good cinematic ideas on display, this might be the best. It shows that somehow Universal managed to withhold the impulse to immediately shove oiled-up muscles into the first frames of the movie. This is good for us bigtime fan-types, who already know what the deal is. It also shows some balls in that someone who's seen PITCH BLACK but otherwise hasn't made the connection yet won't be able to latch on to the Riddick imagery.
The next thing I liked was that the "The Following PREVIEW Has Been Approved For ALL AUDIENCES" title card is followed by an s-bomb maybe thirty seconds later.
Oh... it looks like they aren't using the Universal logo with the planet slowly blacking out. This is disappointing... I thought the images they've been using in the trailers and spots was a nice nod to PITCH BLACK.
In a very simple sense, this first chunk shows a quick demolition of what the book tells us is Aquila Major, along with a short Judi Dench introduction of the Necromonger story and sense of style, followed by Riddick and the Mercs on Planet UV, and ending up with Riddick's entry into Helion Prime's atmosphere. That is A LOT to cram into ten minutes, and I think the novelization readers will be surprised by how quickly that first chunk of the book is put away.
For fun, though, the Planet UV stuff is nothing like what ADF wrote up. Urzo Giganticus is relegated to nerd trivia game history, and Mercs fooling with Riddick's cave are replaced by Mercs doing long faceplants from Toombs' undercutter.
I approve.
I'm assuming that D-Neg did the work on the closeups of the Conquest Icon that comprises the very first images you see, as the camera pulls out of the top where the 'energy ball' is emitted to reveal the faces of Lord Marshals past (which three LMs are represented on the Icons, anyway?). If so, well, good job, gents. The lighting, texturing, and skies are all imposing as hell.
The shots that immediately follow, a closeup of the Lord Marshal's helm (his face is never revealed) pulling way back to show a large exterior of the Basilica, are done in the manner most recently seen in those lovely ones of Orthanc and Sauron's tower that pepper the LOTR trilogy. Live action footage, digital work, and probably some miniatures too.. all tasty and metallic and seamless.
You know that shot we've been seeing for a while now from space of the big blue circle expanding over the surface of a planet? That's a Conquest Icon in action, and the shot in the movie lingers long enough to show ten more, and that's just on the hemisphere we can see. Bye bye, Aquila Major, guess your little gang that Riddick tears apart in ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY only got to enjoy having a homeworld for five short years.
So Riddick is officially 'another kind of evil', huh? I really can't get a feel yet for whether this series is trying to tell us he's just a wronged man, or actually bad. Guess we'll have to wait for the sequel.
Anyways, I still hate the official logo they've done for this movie, so fortunately we get to see the damn thing twice. Interesting that Twohy gets a w/d credit at the start of the movie and there's no mention of Vin. Hopefully those were just put in for this preview and don't represent the final titles of the finished film.
Riddick running across the ravines on Planet UV? Perfect. The slight hold until the undercutter appears? Perfect. The main character design? Perfect. If I ever get the chance to sit down and crack a bottle of JD with Twohy, I might ask him if was a deliberate choice to have Chinlund's face go partially out of the frame during the "Take it, take it, take the shot!" shot, but who knows. Netguns are cool, the s-word is cool, the undercutter flicking on it's lights while Riddick stands there with a shiv in each outstretched hand... effing cool.
The wanna-be cool dialogue goes just a little bit too far with the 'grab a gat' line, but this approach was firmly established in PITCH BLACK so this will be the last time I ever gripe about it. It's more than made up for by the cinematic value of three long-distance faceplants anyway.
So Riddick takes on a *spaceship* singlehandedly and of course ends up flying away with the thing. The new cryo-sleep will probably confuse Joe Sixpack, but that Helion Fighercraft is sweet as hell. SOTA hasn't told anyone what the line of resin ship statues they'll be doing is yet, but hopefully that'll be one of them.
Loving the orange and chemical green coloring of Helion Prime, and even though Riddick weaving between towers reminded me immediately of WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S I still think the art crew are going to rock the hell out of this movie.
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