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THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK UNRATED DVD REVIEW
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Part I (No Spoilers) |
Part II (Spoilers) |
Part III.1 (Spoilers)
Part III.2 (Spoilers) |
Part III.3 (Spoilers) |
Part IV (No Spoilers)
II. EXTRAS AND MISCELLANEOUS (Spoilers)
So, let's really get into what we're given to play with. I'll be covering the actual movie additions in the next section.
Introduction by David Twohy
Short and mostly there to discuss jumps in the film that I couldn't even see. Notable because Twohy comes out and states that this is his Director's Cut, which answers a question I had had that this might just be a marketing-driven cut of the film and the real director's cut would be coming later with an expanded set of more movie-related extras and a Vin commentary. I suppose this still could happen.
Commentary with Twohy, Karl Urban, and Alexa Davolos.
Twohy and Davolos are together in the same room, while Urban is apparently on a phone from Australia.
If I was into grading stuff, I'd say this is about a six, maybe even a five. Twohy rightfully gets most of the talking in and does a decent job covering the usual bases. Unfortunately there are more than a few spots where he's maddeningly silent for long stretches, and there just doesn't seem to be the analysis, detail, or enthusiasm found on the fantastic PITCH BLACK commentaries. It is kind of fun listening to him tapdance around the scenes that he was obviously forced to cut by the studio, without being able to come out and say it. One thing he does nicely is point out the sections added for the DVD, and whenever the cut was due to the MPAA then he's plenty forthcoming.
Urban does fine, pleasant and cheerful and occasionally offering nuggets such as that he and Feore were not getting along that well on the day they filmed the scene with Vaako sneaking up on Lord Marshal. Some fun honesty, very positive things to say about Vin Diesel, and he even points out what Vin's favorite word for describing crazy situations is (I won't spoil it) and gives an impressive imitation.
Davolos fares the worst, by far. Despite having the best voice ever recorded on a commentary, she ends up saying very little. Unfortunatly a lot of what she does contribute is the usual "everyone is great" and "everything was amazing" and "I love this 'piece'. And this one. And this..." stuff. This is too bad because when talking about Kyra, it becomes obvious that she has put a tremendous amount of thought into the character.
Finally, it's worth noting how ridiculous it is that there is no Vin Diesel commentary. The only reasonable answer is that Universal is hoping this DVD sells well enough that they can put together a double-dip, this time with Vin's involvement and some more movie-related extras.
Riddick Insider Facts on Demand
At one point I was pretty excited about this feature, since the last time I'd seen it done was on the ATTACK OF THE CLONES DVD where it was really a great extra. The TCOR implementation is much weaker in both content, format, and design. While you can read it a bit better (the text comes in a big boxout for the best contrast, rather than just laid on top of the footage), gone is the color-coding to differentiate between the different types of information. There are misspellings, some pretty bland and 'filler' stuff, and an annoying tendency to mention ancillary material like DARK FURY with a marketing-driven intent that is distractingly obvious (does the average viewer really need to know that the other movies in the series are “available from Universal Home Video"? We buy them from stores, people, not your business divisions).
And for Christ's sake whoever wrote these further adds to the confusion over how Riddick got his eyeshine by saying that Pope Joe did it in Butcher Bay. I guess this means additional years of emails from people asking what the real answer is.
But the text comments aren't all bad. They appear pretty frequently, are heavy into providing backstory elements (something I have a lot of interest in), reference events from all the other stories in the franchise and also things that happened before EFBB, and have plenty of fun behind-the-scenes nuggets (Chinlund swallowed his fake teeth at one point. Explains the voice, maybe). Oh, and I'd always wondered why the Necromongers mess around with axes and spears when they have guns. Well, now I know... it's because it's more "honorable."
Deleted Scenes
Pretty neat, actually. Twohy's commentary is flat and he's silent for most of it, but this is made up for by some fun dialogue. Toombs of course gets most of the good stuff (or is it just made good by Chinlund's delivery?).
"Aereon and Imam on Helion"
Cutting this was definitely the way to go. It's unnecessarily heavy on convenient exposition, enough to make you cringe. Keith MFing David is in it, though, and his delivery is great (and I must not be the only person to notice that, as some of his lines made it into trailers). It would have also deepened what I considered to be one of the movie's weak spots, namely whether people actually know who the Necromongers are or not, as Dench just launches into Necromonger and Furyan stuff right off the bat.
"Original Planet UV 6"
Interesting, this. Anyone who read the novelization or the two pages of the script I dug up know that the whole ice-planet (referred to in the film as Planet 6 of the UV System, but confusingly in other places as Planet UV or even Planet UV 6) confrontation at one point was totally different from what eventually got into the movie. Turns out that Twohy felt the whole thing lacked excitement and somehow wrote and shot a fundamentally different and more complex scene. Which tells me that the five million dollars of additional shooting they announced as being to reverse the death of a major character was actually to completely redo this important early section of the movie. Probably good that they didn't come clean with that at the time, heh.
Anyway, more great Toombs dialogue and delivery. There's a neat effect when Riddick is forced to put his space-cuffs on, although much of the other effects are still pretty rough, including a comically unfinished backflip composite. Some nice work by the merc ship FX team when Riddick uses the locator to make it pop up out of where it had been hidden under the snow.
Oh, and the absolute gem... for the subset of us TCOR viewers that felt a lot of the names of people and places in this movie were ridiculously on the nose ('Crematoria' for a hot planet, 'Igneon System' for the location of the hot planet Crematoria, 'Aereon' for the air elemental, etc) comes the comical coup-de-grace in the original name for the UV system... which at one point was the 'Frigido' System. HAH!
"Toombs' Demise".
This much more complex scene is what they originally had, so there's no way it cost five million bucks to change it to fifteen seconds of Toombs being put in a cage next to some Hellhounds. Twohy claims to have killed the original death scene because of pacing, and never addresses the fact that in the revision Toombs doesn't actually die. Now, obviously someone decided that Toombs and Riddick needed to meet up again, which had to have figured in somehow.
This deleted scene is actually really cool, and not just for some great bloody makeup on Toombs' neck and his choking death gasp. Rather, since most of the effects were never finished, you get a good sense for how these scenes that comprise live-action and effects footage are put together. One angle has all the actors on the set looking like straight out of the movie. Then another angle has Toombs wrestling with an untextured and very rough animatic Hellhound. Then another angle with a finalled hound. And then yet another with Peter Chiang with a hound head on a stick poking it at Chinlund. A nice addition.
Riddick's Worlds
It's kind of weak to include these 360 degree views of the sets, but then again the Joe Sixpacks that never looked at them on the movie's website would probably enjoy them a little. I'm sure anyone reading this saw them months ago, so let's move on to the short doc of Vin showing the sets off. This footage does a much better job of illustrating the scope and craft of the work, and it really does come off as quite impressive. We even get to see some pieces that were built but never made it into the movie, and look... there's a frozen Urzo Giganticus!
Virtual Guide to The Chronicles of Riddick
I'm really on the fence about these. I love paging through still images of concept art and watching rough animatic footage, but I'm sure the vast majority of the casual moviegoers who will buy this DVD would never bother. The presentation on this disk tries to sweeten the appeal by putting things into a bit more context, flashing images and rough & finished footage in sequence while one of the characters narrarates an encyclopedia entry on the topic. Theoretically it's a good way to kill a few birds with one stone, but just like most stills galleries you just can't see any fucking detail! The interface takes up 40% of the screen the entire time and everything is kind of hazy and strobe-y, presumably to try to inject some drama.
Another problem is that this way of putting the material on display has got to cost more than a simple slideshow of scanned images, meaning we get a lot less of it. Despite the massive mountain of art that was undoubtably created for TCOR, there's not much shown here and there is even some repetition.
But I do like that there's this whole section devoted to story elements and that all the audio is performed in character by the principal actors (except Vin). The dialogue is entertaining and dramatic, thankfully.
The entries and narrarators are as follows:
- Conquest Icon - Toombs
- Crematoria - Kyra and also Toombs
- Elementals - Dame Vaako and also Aereon
- Helion Prime - Abu MFing 'Imam' Al Walid
- Planet U.V. - Toombs
- Lord Marshall - Purifier
- Necromonger - Dame Vaako and also Aereon
- Necropolis - Lord Marshal
- New Mecca - Imam
- Quasi Deads - Purifier
Toombs' Chase Log
Visually this really doesn't bring much to the table since it looks like the graphics were done at the same time by the same people as the Hunt For Riddick game. Not necessarily a problem if you're trying to pull this down through a modem, but a little lo-fi for DVD. Oh well.
That leaves us with Toomb's dialogue and delivery. The 'story' encompasses a period where Toombs had just dropped off another convict he had bagged, picks up a regular bounty for Riddick, gets a crew, and heads off to eventually discover that Riddick's bounty has grown. On the surface level it's pretty entertaining, and of course funny in quite a few places. Chinlund and whoever wrote the dialogue really nail the personality of this guy, with great stuff like "I even had to deputize a bunch of idiots and sent them on a Riddick goose chase in the stupid direction".
Dig a bit deeper, though, and you'll hear a couple things that don't quite work when it comes to storyline. To begin with, somehow Toombs is able to research and discover the name of the skiff that Riddick, Imam, and Jack escape off the planet with in PITCH BLACK. This makes no sense, as there should be no connection between the Hunter-Gratzner and a little craft that had been sitting on a remote abandoned planet for several decades. Plus the thing got left on the Kubla-Khan in DARK FURY anyway. What the wtf? Also, Toombs visits Crematoria during this chase log, and makes a comment about some of his crew he leaves behind having to do a 'terminator run.' There's no evidence of any sort of falling out with the Russians, so why wouldn't they just take the sled? And The Guv had said that no one had ever escaped from Crematoria before. And to do a terminator run they'd have to either shoot out the windows in the control room, or come up through a mole hole. And... why, why, why is it so hard for people to keep this stuff straight?
This is an entertaining feature, sure, but unnecessarily weak in content and definitely doesn't match up to the Johns chase log on the newer PITCH BLACK DVD.
Visual Effects Revealed
Heh, only six minutes devoted to the making-of of a hundred million dollar movie. I'm sure that somewhere, the DVD and SFX gods are weeping. In fact, the main thing I took away from this is that Pete Chiang has a cool English accent and that the wall on Crematoria they climbed up was monstrous. Six minutes!
Easter Egg
First off, the instructions. Choose the 'Convert' menu, highlight Bonus Materials, and click the 'up' arrow. You'll see a box light up on the gravity pad Riddick is standing on, and you should click your 'select' button. Alternately, choose the 'Fight' menu, highlight Play, and click the 'left' arrow. The four holes in the swingblade will light up; click the 'select' button.
This brings up a short piece with Colm Feore, intercutting the filming of his final head stab and head kick with him talking about it. Funny, interesting, short of course. You can tell the guy is pure charisma. Too bad the DVD doesn't have an hour of this kind of stuff. "When I become the lord of the universe, 500 years from now, remind me to design some comfortable armor."
Xbox game demo
Like I said, this isn't the first level of the game like the box states but rather the 'Mainframe' demo level. It definitely gives you a pretty good idea of what ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY is all about, though.
Starting off on a walkway above a tech working at a computer, you can drop down and beat him to death with your bare fists (and elbow, don't forget) or snap his neck. The tech drops a screwdriver shiv and has a rifle leaning against the wall. Now millions of gamers will hopefully learn the joys of shooting out all the lights in a level and then sneaking up on guards and jabbing them in the neck. Too bad there's no eyeshine this early in the game.
Personally, to demonstrate BUTCHER BAY the best I would have included the Aquilan Block level that occurs closer to the beginning of the game. You'd get a taste of fistfighting, then using a knuckleduster, then a shiv, then a couple of scripted sequences, then the big battle with Rust, then the chance to kill all the remaining prisoners and the guards that appear afterwards. You wouldn't get to shoot anybody, true, but you'd have a truer sense of why the game is cool.
However, this still stacks up quite nicely. I'm torn, because on one hand it's conceptually screwy that so much space on this single-disk release is taken up with a game level rather than movie extras. However, I understand how important it is for Universal to push what's successful, and by all accounts BUTCHER BAY is making everyone a ton of dough. And as a bigtime gamer who would love a second game in the Riddick universe, I'm sure this demo scheme can only help promote the game part of the franchise.
DVD Rom
Why, oh why couldn't this have brought up a custom interface leading to a copy of the script and a full set of storyboards instead of ... nothing?
Menus
I love the menus. Sure there's an added delay before you get to the goods with the "Convert or Fight" intro menu, but the chapter-skip button speeds through that if you're in a rush. It's nice to have the option to say, "Y'know, today I'm in a Quasi-Dead themed sort of mood." or "I could really go for some steaming shiv!" Skip the trailers at the start by hitting Menu and skip past the animations by hitting your chapter skip button.
Part I (No Spoilers) |
Part II (Spoilers) |
Part III.1 (Spoilers)
Part III.2 (Spoilers) |
Part III.3 (Spoilers) |
Part IV (No Spoilers)
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