Riddick articles page2

The Chronicles of Riddick set report & DT interview

Score (french)
2004. March

translation by Kriszta
corrections by Minx

When the shooting of the summer's blockbusters ends and the post-production starts, then the directors go to work and the producers count the cinema tickets in their dreams, SCORE gives you the exclusive, the precious and the rare: a report from TCOR, the latest movie from Vin Diesel and David Twohy after Pitch Black. Made from a lot of dough, this movie wants to be the sci-fi alter-ego of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Since 2002, Diesel and Twohy have been working to construct the multiple universes you'll see in the trology built around PITCH BLACK's Richard B. Riddick. When Universal gave the money for the first part, it was guaranteed, that if the first one made money, then two other movies would follow, that will be shot straight each after like MATRIX RELOADAED and REVOLUTIONS. But till that day SCORE surrenders to this great movie. Loaded with mythology, ambitions and knowledge TCOR will be released (in France) in August. […] Its time to be in a great shape and get ready to the violence, darkness and gigantism.

For those, who have the world in their hands, the galley slaves, who have nothing but dreams, for those who dreams from women and money while walking on the streets, for the rabbles, like me, going to TCOR's shooting is a sign. It's already when you are sent to Canada on first class. Then because this shooting is the heavy, the massive, the certified. Vin Diesel for the explositions, 125 million $ for the security and David Twohy for the laser aiming. The shooting takes place in Vancouver, in a futuristic glass city in the middle of the naturally wild area, and it uses six different stages. 30 000 square meters. Its the biggest project ever Vancouver has hosted. A few kilometres away Alex Proyas shoots I, ROBOT with Will Smith. As they say ever since i came here, the best projects are in the starting blocks and they have been throwing each other evil glances. TCOR, directed by David Twohy, has a plus advantage over the opponents. The same man, who directed Pitch Black, does the sequel now. David Twohy is one of the most talented directors of his generation, one alter-ego of Spielberg; if you see Pitch Black or Below, you will have no doubts. He has a sense how to direct and lets you lose yourself in the movie. An other point is, that Twohy does not only know success as director, as he is the writer of THE FUGITIVE as well. So it's time for the mercenary's revenge.

When they took me to the RIDDICK set, it was in a climatised mini-van with leather seats, television, CD, bar. American style. At this point, the only thing I can say is that RIDDICK is the sequel to PITCH BLACK, the sci-fi movie event of the year 2000. Vin Diesel reprises his role as Richard B. Riddick, the asocial murdered who always finds himself in the position of the savior. Just like in PITCH BLACK, Riddick has the surgically altered eyes, altered for the night vision (he can see in the dark). But RIDDICK is not exactly a sequel to PITCH BLACK. Just like Vin Diesel says: "Pitch Black is a prequel to RIDDICK. Just like THE HOBBIT is a prequel to LOTR. Its not necessary to see it before going to RIDDICK, but if you have seen it, you have an advantage compared to the others around you in the cinema."

Interview with David Twohy

- Where do the origins of TCOR come from?

- I did not like the sequel idea the studio offered to me. I said to them: "If you want to develop his story, you have to make it more ambitious." So I offered them the idea to develop a trilogy around Riddick, Vin Diesel's character, so this way TCOR would be the first part. In case of success, we will do C-2 and C-3 (the code name for the two sequels after TCOR), just like Peter Jackson did LOTR, doing the two movies during one shooting. The idea was if I spent a certain part of my life on a project, it had to be the richest and most ambitious as possible. When Universal saw the success of LOTR, they happily accepted my idea.

- After the success of PITCH BLACK (40m$ income - 23m$ budget) you would think that you would have done a blockbuster but yet you chose BELOW, a small movie. Why?

- After PITCH BLACK, I wanted to do a movie without monsters. I like the athmosphere the movies from the '40, like LA FELINE, and wanted to pay my hommage to that genre. I knew that the dark tone would be perfect for BELOW, that way it would give a different style to the submarine movies. Otherwise, I found it interesting to do a yet another challenging, a tough exercise. It's a genre, where you play with the tension, different characters living together and the claustrophobia. The reference in this genre is DAS BOOT, the Wolfgang Petersen movie, that had a style, almost like a documentary. So I entered BELOW with the idea to make a completely different movie from my previous movies, PITCH BLACK or THE ARRIVAL. And now I do believe, I have succeded.

- Did the fame of Vin Diesel help you to choose RIDDICK?

- Absolutely. Without Vin Diesel, you could not see me now. Vin really did the career choice of these days to make TCOR with the best conditions possible. If you see xXx, you will be impressed with his presence and charisma. And they are the qualities Universal accepted to make RIDDICK. In a certain way, there are two stars of this movie: the sci-fi and Vin Diesel. Sci-fi sells itself to the genre fans, while Vin brings a broader audience to the movie.

- Riddick is a bad man, a murderer. How can you build a gigantic movie around such a troublemaker character?

- Exactly that's what I love in this movie. Riddick is an anti-hero. He is not the glorious type who confronts the difficulties with positivity. He carries a very negative vision on the world and the people with himself. I don't want to glorify him, and exactly that's what was hard to make the studio understand. In reality, we see the other Star Wars, TCOR won't be manichean with the Good against the sBad. This movie is less schematic. The hero is a murderer, but within the negative dimension, you will realise, there's good within him. Also, this movie follows the path of Pitch Black, where all the characters had a double edge. This movie is too controversial, too cool for an expensive film.

- It seems like Riddick has "primitive powers", so they say?

- This movie will uncover the origins of Riddick, and the viewers will realise that he is not a normal man. You will better understand how is he changing. Riddick is much more than you can believe. You will explore the new powers and forces within him. The movie will follow him towards countless universes, battling with the enemies. But TCOR is also about spiritualism. There will many theological references, even if I am agonistic. But religion and the way they practice it, interest me a lot. Religion has a very important role in the history of the mankind, and also in the way people are built. Talking about religion, that's good way to ask question about there functions.Both in PITCH BLACK and BELOW, I was interested in people with faith. Whether it is of religion or supernatural phenomena. RIDDICK will move a step further into that direction.

- How was the decision to shoot in Vancouver made?

- Very fast. First of all, all of the other studios worldwide were too small to embed our project. To make the decision, where to shoot, have all the set decorations, the six stages was fearful. But here its all given.But here we were given it all. When I finished the script, the question emerged immediately, where to shoot. And as the exterior scenes happen during the escape, the only way to shoot the movie was in a studio. When it comes to a movie like TCOR, its not necessary to use the real, natural sets.

- In sci-films, it's obligatory to shoot a space ship battle scene.

- So we have one. But ours is set in the sky, in the night. If you want a reference what you can see, imagine the aero battles during the war in Iraq, but in the future.

- Scorsese said that the directors of the independent movies must have a beard. What do you think?

- I think that it has passed. I have a beard and I make a 125 million dollars movie. At this level I am rather a smuggler than an independent director.

RIDDICK is a very ambitious movie, the common dream of VD and DT. Both are giants in their fields. Together, they make a nuclear explosion. DT is a very calculating director, very accurate and perfectionnist. VD is the concrete, the way and the muscle. The crime and the style. In short, the association is perfect. Today, the stage where Twohy shoots, imitates the Necromonger world. "Just like their name indicates, they are the phantoms who spread death. But for them death is a good thing, because it frees them from the sufferings. Just like in Shakespeare's HAMLET, they see death as a re;lease from suffering. Maybe death is a good thing, that's what gives us grace and happiness. What if that were true? Then we would have to reconsider all of out spiritual beliefs? Thats what DT poses as a question to one of the characters.That's the question DT poses to one of his characters." He is Colm Feore, the actor who plays the leader of the Necromongers. RIDDICK is a movie that embeds the grand mythology's, the grand legends. Its universe is huge, and full of ambitions. It's the movie of inflations, when everything is huge, unlimited and gorgeous. I will need a lot more forests and ink to tell you about the rest.

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The Chronicles of Riddick

Empire
2004. March

"We're using more space here than Universal Pictures has in Los Angeles in total," boasted a grinning publicist when Coming Soon toured the cavernous Vancouver sets of The Chronicles of Riddick laste last year. "We are the biggest consumer currently for BC Hydro." (The water-powered leccy company which provides juice for most local Canucks.) Forget the small-scale antics of Pitch Black, that made Vin Diesel the next big thing. For the sequel, rivers have apparently had to flow faster to service writer-director David Twohy and Diesel's vision of the next chapter in what they're hoping will be an epic trilogy.

"In was a dream to do something this magical, and on this scale," says Vin Diesel, whose fugitive, see-in-the-dark anti-hero, Richard B. Riddick, finds himself caught in the middle of two opposing forces on an intergalactic crusade, with Colm Feore's dastardly Lord Marshal and his Necromongers on one side, and Judi Dench's ethernal Aeron, Ambadassor of the Elementals, on t'other. "Despite the scale, I'm still fascinated with the character, this overlooked, forgotten, misunderstood guy," adds Diesel, effectively confirming that Riddick's more anti-social characteristics will be jettisoned. "What this movie is expand on the character in Pitch Black and find a mythology for him."

Which is indicative of Twohy and Diesel's ambition. "I want this to be the kind of movie, that audiences can lose themselves in," growls Diesel. "Post-World War II we lost outselves in Tolkien, in the '70s we lost ourselves in Star Wars. We haven't had any of that in a long, long time. What we are doing is fusing sci-fi with mythology in a way that's never been seen before."

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RIDDICK.2

Score (french)
2004. April

translation by Kriszta
corrections by Minx

When meeting again the megalomaniac dimension and the grandiousus movies like STAR WARS or THE LORD OF THE RING, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK find again the style of these sagas, that develop their universies on several levels. So the movie of David Twohy reinvents the cosmos, the relation of the people with God and opens our imagination to a new gallery of characters. This month, we continue the travel, the adventure, but on the obsure side, to present you the race of the damned, the villains and the unfaithful, who will stand between Riddick and his mission.

CAPTIONS

Above, this is the set of the prison where Riddick is imprisoned. That's where he meets Kyra, the small girl with the shaved head who has survived Pitch Black. The history repeats itself, because Riddick will do all to escape with her. Below, this is Toombs. "A boss of the villains, but with a good heart" describes him the actor, Nick Chinlund.

Riddick will confront the Necromongers, a warrior race lead by Lord Marshal (Colm Feore). Vakoo is his right hand man. But, like always in the David Twohy movies, the confrontation will not be Manichean.(Manichean- an adherent of a religious system of the 3rd-5th century representing Satan in a state of everlasting conflict with God) On a certain way, CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK is a reference to the crusades. When the catholics attack the countries to "educate" and to defend their people in the name of their liberty. One way or an other, all of them believes in the justice in his combat. Twohy's movie follows the same pattern.

The future universe where Riddick exists lets us to expore an extraordinary vision related to the mythology and the new characters. Karl Urban (Eomer in LOTR) explains: "In LOTR, we had the luck to the have the support of an already established mythology. The characters had already popular been before the movie. Here, David Twohy wrote the whole universe of Riddick and made something unbelievable. He knew how to use the common points between mythologies and legends, to make all pple from north to south, east to west, feel like they knew this story." In a certain way, it is uncomfortable and it is luxorious compared to LOTR. It's uncomfortable because we do not have the support of a genius book. Its an advantage because we can really create a world, where if we want, we can be free. The only limit is our imagination. (…)

This full liberty must go through different choices, so the movie can be structured. So, in TCOR there are two cathegories of enemies: the bad and the good. Played by Nick Chinlund, Toombs is a bad [guy]. "This is a mercenary who has to capture Riddick. There is a full universe of mercenaries in Riddick (the "merc world")". We are the forces of order in the future. Toombs is an old style guy who does his job and wants to do it well. For him, Riddick is an outlaw, thats why he must be captured. Our stake is to make Toombs liked by the public, even though he seeks to capture the hero. This character might be seen as Riddick's alterego, a tough type, but basically good. This psychology lets us to imagine all kind of possible developments for the role, to name it, the process how Toombs becomes an ally of the hero. Concering the real enemies, the Necromongers, Twohy gave us serious reasons to want them all to be destroyed. Colm Feore, who plays their leader, Lord Marshal, also told us the substance of his role and the army he leads: "That's what I love in the Necro race, that once we were humans. We have passed different stages of purification and now we are on an other level of understanding the world. We have lived through all the pain in life and we have searched for a tool to get rid of it. I think that to be freed from all the pain is the biggest obsession of a person. For me, the character of Lord Marshal is like Julius Caesar. He wants to conquer the universe and he is motivated by this huge vision, an extraordinaire plan. This is bad in the meaning of that someone goes through the conquer and the death, but his aim is to create a justful word. If he destroys [it], it is for [its] reconstruction. According to him, the ashes have to give birth to a new civilisation. According to my opinion, this is not bad, it depends from the angle you see it. David Twohy built him like an ancient person, Shakespearean or biblical. It is sure that there are a lot of classical elements, that makes him brilliant. He is the leader of an incredible power. He is Rome." Shakespeare is one of his references he mentions most of the time to describe the dimensions of the characters. Karl Urban also mentions him when he talks about his role Vakoo, Lord Marshal's officer, "Vakoo is a commander of the Necromonger army. It is a little bit like Mc Beth(Macbeth). " There are some part of his passage, where he reconsiders his life with his wife, played by Thandie Newton. This is a war without fear. He does all the dirty work for Lord Marshal, to name it, to kill Riddick.

The ensemble of the elaborate intentions and deep emotions make Riddick the violent action movie of the summer. Many movies are in this double position, greek tragedy and the breaking edge of cinematography (Hulk, Matrix), but if you investigate it well, are provided in their characters. Following this logic, COR more than a blockbuster. This is a vengeance, and offensive answer for those who burn and die at the end of the movie. A real film where the theahre of the drama is the universe in its infinity.

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Premiere Magazine TCoR preview

Premiere Magazine
2004. april

„This is a story not of good guys versus bad guys, but of bad guys versus evil guys,” Twohy says about his $100 million-plus sequel to the decidedly more low-budget Pitch Black, one that transports Diesel’s Richard B. Riddick to a planet where he no longer has to worry about something hungry lurking in the dark. Instead, he gets caught between warring factions of half-dead politicians called „necromongers”, including Feore, The Lord of the Ring’s Karl Urban, and Newton, who spends much of her time „plotting, scheming, and having a lot of fun,” she says. „I was just this cow that was being really vicious and spiteful and Machiavellian.” Twohy, who also directed the original, came on board with his own screenplay after what he calls „the more expected version of the sequel” had been worked on by several writers, including Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), and discarded. He envisions futher sequels, but that may depend on whether Diesel (who earned $12.5 million for Riddick) can deliver box office closer to XXX’s $141 million than A Man Apart’s $26 million.

OH, BROTHER! Twohy describes working with his famously opinionated star as „a sibling relationship. There are days when we can’t stand each other; there are days when we’re in love with each other. He’s got a lot of ideas, and you have to be patient and listen, and grab the jewels when they drop.”

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Riddick Rides Again

2004.05.18
FilmJournal
By Harry Haun

Diesel ’n’ Dench—“not the first pairing you would think of,” concedes producer Scott Kroopf in an unchallengeable understatement. Nevertheless, he has brought this special brawn-and-brain blend together under the same marquee in Universal’s The Chronicles of Riddick.

If that last word sets off a ripple of recognition in you, then you saw Pitch Black (2000), where Vin Diesel played a futuristic anti-hero by that name, an escaped convict blessed with the useful ability to see in the dark, doing battle with a bunch of bad guys that he was barely better than. The Chronicles of Riddick—look, Ma, no numbers!—continues his sci-fi travails. It is not necessarily a sequel, just another shade of Pitch Black.

And Judi Dench is the new ingredient, different from the sort of dame Diesel usually associates with. The Oscar-winning Queen Elizabeth I of Shakespeare in Love rules the roost here as Aereon, the Ambassador of the “Elemental” race caught in the crosshairs of a galactic war—the “10th Crusade” in the 26th century—with the “Necromonger” sect.

Shakespeare, it ain’t—but Dench is a game Dame and dispatched her chores in a speedy Hollywood house call. “She had never done a movie like this, and she had a great time,” insists Kroopf. Contrary to what you might imagine, he says, she and Diesel meshed well.

“Whose idea was she?” you have to ask, and Kroopf is ready again. He quickly credits Diesel: “He’s my producing partner with Tom Engelman. Vin has been very involved in the creation of this piece and just felt she was the perfect person to set the new canvas for this story. She was his idea, and when we all heard it, we went, ‘Wow! That’s terrific!’ It turned out to be not only great for the movie, but it was a really fun experience to have somebody like Judi Dench in a movie like this. That kind of casting is a little bit like what it tried to do: We’re trying to find ways to come up with fresh, original stuff.”

Which can be hard when the genre is as time-honored and repetitive as action-adventure, but Kroopf is an old, five-year hand at this, going back to when Pitch Black was making its first pass at an audience. A cult following and DVD sales helped the film to damn near double its $23 million investment—excuse enough for producers to go back for seconds.

“There was a lot of talk about the right way to do it,” Kroopf recalls. “What we zeroed in on was that we liked Riddick—the idea of this anti-hero in a sci-fi setting. He was unique, unique in the way that Vin created him, so we decided—rather than just doing a sequel to Pitch Black, which would have probably involved a lot of creatures and would have been more of the same—to take this character and put him in a much bigger-scaled sort of story.

“Basically, it was a David and Goliath story. Instead of a classic Good versus Evil, we had Anti-Hero versus Evil, and that, I think, gave us a harder edge and more originality.”

This is the first time Diesel has repeated a character in his films—and the reason, Kroopf believes, is “because Riddick got him going on the career trajectory that he has. It was the first movie where he kinda bounced out as a leading man. He loves the character and worked his ass off for it—in front of the camera and behind it. He is truly fantastic about doing his own stunts. It always makes a movie weigh better when the actors do their own stunts, and Vin can get on a wire and do some really amazing things. Like you always do, you have the stuntman do it a couple of times, and then you see if your actor is willing to give it a go. Not only is he willing, in many cases he did it just as well as the stunt guy.”

David Twohy, who wrote and directed the first film, is double-hatted for the second. If that goes over reasonably well, he has already signed up for Installments Three and Four.

The new plot, as Kroopf tells it, pits the pacifistic Elementals against the Necromongers, “an army of religious fanatics whose basic tenant is ‘Convert to our religion or die.’ They have overwhelming superiority both in numbers and technologically. No one can really fight them. Riddick gets drawn into the story as someone who could lead the resistance to them—and, of course, by dent of being an anti-hero, he wants no part of this. But, inevitably, over the course of the story, circumstances force him to join this fight. It’s about him taking on that, then it’s about discovering who these bad guys are and meeting a couple of characters who appeared in Pitch Black and seeing what became of them.”

The couple in question—and Riddick—are the only characters to emerge from (i.e., live through) Pitch Black. Keith David reprises his characterization of Iman, a religious guy on his way to New Mecca, not much changed from the previous film other than the fact that he has found happiness and now the world he lives in is threatened. The other character is Jack, who seemed to be a young boy but turned out to be a girl of 12. In Pitch Black, she was played by Rhiana Griffith; now, five fast formative years later, she is quite a different individual and played for the glamour of it all by Alexa Davalos.

Canadian actor Colm Feore garners most of the film’s hisses as the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers. His showdown with Riddick is a field day for the boys in Special Effects.

The budget for the film is undiscussably steep. “The Universal guys would kill me if I gave out a figure,” Kroopf contends. “It’s a summer tentpole movie. It’s got a lot of action. It’s got great art direction. It’s got fabulous costumes. It was expensive.”

But a big budget is the price you pay when you go for the action-adventure market. “It’s always a nerve-racking experience to bring any movie out during the summer, because there are so many big movies out there. [Chronicles commences June 11.] It fragments the audience. Every movie suffers.” Kroopf’s last time playing in this genre traffic was The Last Samurai, which, up against other big historical epics, underperformed in this country but did phenomenally well in the rest of the world.

And high hopes are pinned on its DVD release. “I think what’s going to happen with it here is that when it comes out on DVD, a lot of people will catch up. The good news about the whole DVD thing is that it really allows audiences who are a little harder to get into the theaters to sample these movies. Kids are going to go to movies, no matter what. They have to. It’s a social obligation. It’s, like, ‘I gotta get out of the house. I want to do something fun. And cheap. And congregate with a bunch of my friends, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.’ Movies fill that slot for them. Adults are more inclined to pop in a DVD—plus, they get all those extra-value things, too. It’s a whole culture now.

“It’s always a challenge to figure out what to do in films to make them big enough to get people to come and see them in theatres. Hopefully, we’ll get a few to show up for this.”

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