A Sci-Fi Sleeper Hit Made Vin Diesel Into a Star
Before he was Fast & Furious, Diesel was Richard B. Riddick.
There’s a scene early in the 2000 film Pitch Black that is laugh-out-loud hilarious. After one of the ill-fated crew of the spaceship Hunter-Gratzner thinks escaped convict Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) is on the loose murdering people, the camera does a quick zoom to show ups that Riddick is not trying to murder anybody, but instead, sitting under an umbrella, sipping some water. And, in this one moment, the ethos of Pitch Black, and the appeal of Vin Diesel, can be fully understood.
Twenty-five years ago, hardcore film critics and even sci-fi aficionados were content to write off David Twohy’s Pitch Black as derivative shlock, more suited for a Sci-Fi Channel original movie than a theatrical experience. But Diesel is simultaneously badass and also f*cking hilarious in Pitch Black. That combination, arguably, makes Pitch Black a camp science fiction classic. But even if you don’t buy that, the truth is, the tone of Pitch Black defies reason. The world-building is slapdash, the editing of the film jarring enough to make you wonder why certain characters are doing anything. And yet, the glue of the film is Diesel’s unique, strange charm. In fact, a half-century after its release, it's possible that Pitch Black may be his best movie.
Like the quasi-Alien knock-off that it pretends to be, Pitch Black hits the ground running by bringing a bunch of folks out of cryostasis as their spaceship gets pelted by small meteors. Most of these people are just passengers, though among them is a dangerous felon named Riddick (Diesel) who, occasionally, drops in for some first-person narration. As the movie begins, and before the ship crashes, Riddick tells us in voiceover: “They say most of your brain shuts down in cryosleep. All but the primitive side. The animal side. No wonder I’m still awake.”
Riddick is an animal get it? And if he gets loose, he’s going to go nuts!
This premise is, of course, a lie. Riddick has got to be the sweetest badass in all of science fiction history, and is essentially the blueprint for the set-up of Mad Max: Fury Road. At first, he’s just in it for himself, but of course, once a gaggle of strange photosensitive alien critters starts attacking, Riddick becomes the unlikely savior of the crash survivors, and ultimately, more ethical than some of the people supposedly in charge. Plus, his superpower is uniquely perfect for this situation: Riddick has eyes that are very sensitive to light, and allows him to basically see in the dark. The three-sunned planet they’ve crash-landed on required Riddick to wear cool goggles most of the time, but when those shades are off, he looks kinda like a Fremen. To be clear, this is a feature, not a bug.
Even though the film’s story tells us that Riddick is a bad guy, and we’re meant to think of him as an anti-hero, the subtext makes it clear we’re supposed to like him. This is a movie in which all these helpless people are going to get picked off one-by-one, unless they listen to the survivalist, Riddick, and figure out a way to survive internal betrayals, too. One of the most shocking features of Pitch Black is the fact that the movie routinely offs various members of this group, including some extremely innocent characters. In a sense, these shocking fatalities serves as a counter to the more camp elements of the movie: You can forget the film’s formulaic tendencies because you’re occasionally distracted by the fact that characters can perish.
We didn’t need another anti-hero until Vin Diesel arrived.
Of course, Riddick himself lived to fight another day. By 2004, much of Pitch Black was retconned in the sequel The Chronicles of Riddick, which asserted that our cat-eyed badass wasn’t human, but rather a member of a near-extinct species called the Furyans. If you’re looking for any of the lore that dominates the plot of the sequel in Pitch Black, you won’t find it. Smartly, Pitch Black’s world-building is nearly razor-thin, this could be almost any science fiction canon we’re dealing with. And, in a sense, the genericness of Pitch Black is what makes Diesel’s singular performance so memorable and affecting.
The larger saga of Riddick is, technically, still unfolding. After The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004, the franchise went back to basics with Riddick in 2013, another survivalist movie, that was, in a sense, a kind of souped-up remake of the first movie. Somewhere on the horizon though, the world of Riddick will get some kind of conclusion with the in-development Riddick: Furya. This fourth film promises to have Riddick meet others of his race, which, in theory, could make the movie the biggest retcon of all. And, if you’re invested in the Dungeons and Dragons-esque canon of these films, then Furya will be awesome. But, if you’re looking for an economic, pulpy thriller that doesn’t require you to think, and just you know, tap into the animal part of your brain that likes silly movies, Pitch Black still clicks.
