Okay, I have a pretty high tolerance of asininity in movies. I liked Gladiator, remember? (Well, I think I did. I seem to remember I did, but I hardly remember anything about the film. Eh, who cares? Russell who?) But I have a current winner for annoying cinematic asininity.
Darin and I actually have been getting out to see movies again: we have date night every other Wednesday. On the whole, however, we’re having a hard time finding movies to go see. I said, “Isn’t this summertime? Shouldn’t we have a cornucopia of flicks to choose from?” Apparently not. Oh well.
So last week we went to Chronicles of Riddick. Badass Riddick, from Pitch Black, wends his way to New Mecca, which happens to be the place where the feared Necromongers invade next. Necromongers are weird half-alive, half-dead guys who go around flattening planets and “converting” the masses to belief in the Underverse (writer-director David Twohy loves him some technobabblish terms), all the while wearing bizarre fetish clothing. Riddick manages to evade being vaporized through his superior, um…physique? gravelly voice? muscle flexing? Whatever. He avoids the Necromongers but gets picked up by some mercs. They take him to Crematoria, a planet that’s 700 degrees during the day and minus 300 at night and has a high-security prison built beneath the surface. Riddick manages to escape the prison, get back to New Mecca, and defeat the Necromongers.
It’s all pretty standard stuff. Lots of serious pauses. Lots of slinking in silly costumes.
But there was one moment that just hurt my head. See, the Russians who operate Crematoria are going to flee using the one available spaceship, and they’re running down the tunnel built into the planet between the prison and the spaceport. Riddick needs to get to their spaceship before them.
So he runs on the surface.
Um…
The conceit is that he’s running in the twilight, following the night, ahead of the daytime, so it would be warm enough but not too warm.
Um…
Dudes? Temperature aside? There’s no freaking atmosphere on that planet.
When you have science in your movie that someone who failed Physics for Poets finds egregious…rethink.
(Sadly, Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics does not have a review for this flick yet.)
Hey… have you seen “the day after” yet? it has its good moments but basically has the same problems – weak science – quite a few parts are totally unbelievable… let alone impossible… oh well…
riddick the movie that filled my spare couple of hours tricked me in to believing that movies these days acounting for the velocity of the situation does not even for a moment spare our intelligence although some might say the heavens opened up and entranced our way of entertainment
hey its Science Fiction. FICTION. not real.