Riddick-ulous!

- SPOILER -

Oh, come on.

Seriously?

We waited ten years for that?

Ten years!

(Yes, okay, nine. I only just got round to watching it.)

I'm going to be honest about this, I don't care what anyone thinks of me - I bloody love Riddick. The whole concept: the books, the films, the anime - and probably the games if I ever had the time to play them.

Unlike most, I am completely okay with the fact they can't stick to a genre - or even the same characters (or character names) - for more than one instalment. I'm good with that. Because it's a kick-ass concept which could go anywhere. A story flexible enough to work as a horror movie, a futuristic sci-fi adventure, and a cartoon. I mean - wow. That doesn't come along very often.

All those poor writers out there weeping over the fact they got typecast in genre fiction. What would they give to be able to take their favourite character and apply him/her/it to a completely different backdrop?

Riddick was the first and only thing that inspired me to test out fanfiction, years before I ever decided to write a novel. 

Which is why I feel so bitterly disappointed about the threequel.

Pitch Black took $23mil to make. This was apparently $38mil. How can you take a 65% increase in budget and essentially make the same film - only worse?

Stuck on a planet with man-eating monsters. You already did that, really well, back in 2000. 

I thought the whole being-stuck-on-a-planet thing was just the opener, like Chronicles of Riddick. An hour-and-a-half later, I would gladly have taken the dog's place when they shot it.

There was such huge potential with CoR. You could have gone anywhere, done anything. Crossed the boundaries of death into Underverse. 

An amoral killer in charge of a vast, merciless army... 

...and you give him a puppy!?

If I wanted to see that crap, I'd buy an underwear calendar.

It made me laugh to read: 

One interesting note, the audience for Riddick was 37% Hispanic and 53% over-30.

Well, I wasn't over thirty when it came out! 

I was nineteen. 

Now, I'm over thirty.

That is how long it has taken us to get from awesome original to diabolical rehash.

Now they reckon there's another one in the pipeline. Perhaps it'll be out before I collect my pension. Vin Diesel ain't getting any younger, either. There's going to come a time when playing Riddick isn't going to be so much fun.

It just felt like it was playing to the gaming crowd rather than the film fans. There is more money to be made in gaming than movies. Running around a world, battling giant scorpions, is going to be much easier to turn into a shoot-'em-up than an elaborate world with complex characters and meaningful dialogue.

Not that gaming/film interplay is always a bad thing - after all, it brought us Silent Hill.

But, truly, I was expecting more.

I'm off to sulk.