Trigger warning on this review for brief mentions of attempted sexual assault and sex slavery, and trigger warning on the film for those scenes.
Riddick comes out on DVD tomorrow.
If you have a strong stomach for watching women and queer people being mistreated, you may be able to look past that and enjoy this film. It’s Vin Diesel, after all, and he’s an extremely charismatic and entertaining guy. The character of Riddick is one of the most badass antiheroes I’ve seen, and in this film he gets a dog. Awwwwwwww, it’s so sweet!
But the preceding film in the series, The Chronicles of Riddick, was no picnic with gender issues, and this one is arguably worse.
Does Katee Sackhoff have an agent? If so, we need to talk to that person. “Hey,” we could say, “She played Starbuck on the new Battlestar Galactica, so she has geek cred. But that doesn’t mean she has to be in any sci-fi project that asks her, right? Is money tight? Can we sit down and make a Katee Sackhoff employment plan that doesn’t involve being treated like this?”
Katee plays Dahl, a female mercenary who the film PRETENDS to tell you is a badass. She’s tough, she’s a sharpshooter, blah blah blah. None of this matters because the film spends the rest of its time using her instead of respecting her. It uses her to demonstrate that the lead Bad Guy is really bad, since he won’t stop making crude comments and trying to sexually assault her. It uses her to demonstrate that Riddick is scary cool, able to sneak up to an open window and take one of her belongings without her even knowing he’s there. (It’s scarier because she’s half naked! That was totally necessary! Right?) It also uses her to prove that Riddick is overwhelmingly attractive, so amazing that he’s able to overcome her self-professed lesbian identity and get her into the sack!
Or maybe it was trying to prove that lesbians just haven’t been laid properly yet? I don’t know.
I also wonder if it was intentional that her character’s name is misheard by many audience members as “Doll.”
I wasn’t surprised by the film’s treatment of her, but I was very surprised by Riddick’s behavior. I simply do not remember him as the guy who makes creepy, offensive comments to women. I don’t really remember him being much of a talker, honestly. It’s not like he has to. His actions speak for themselves. And yet the pattern of his interactions with Dahl is really gross.
There IS one other woman in the cast, though the film does not pass the Bechdel test because she’s shot to death very quickly as an early proof of the Bad Guy’s badness. And possibly to motivate Riddick, who sees her die. Though he doesn’t seem to care that much, honestly. He’s going to be killing his way through the mercenaries anyway to get what he wants, it’s not like that’s a turning point for him. Keri Hilson, an African-American actor, plays “Santana’s prisoner” who is apparently held in sex slavery before being murdered. She doesn’t even get a name. As bad as it is to be a white woman in Riddick world, it’s really bad to be a woman of color.
But Skye, you’re possibly saying, how would we know the Bad Guy is bad if he doesn’t do bad things?
Well, I would say, how many on-screen depictions of women being assaulted and murdered are you willing to watch to make that point? Does our entertainment need more of that, or less?
And aren’t there screenwriting classes that can help with this sort of thing?
Too much fail. No stars.
This is not my kind of movie, but I seriously enjoyed your review!
Thanks for the heads up to skip this one. ;)
LimitlessLisa, thanks! I had fun writing it which is usually a good sign that other people are going to enjoy reading it.
Sarah, glad I could help! The dog is SO cute, but… :(
I appreciate your raw review. We like sci-fi movies but for whatever reason, this franchise has not appealed to us. Glad we stayed away from it now…even if it does have a cute dog. :)
“Too much fail. No stars.”
BAM! That’s a review.
Loved your review, will have to pass on the movie!
I actually am not a vin diesel fan but your review sparked some curiosity! I always like to hear movie reviews since Im always looking for yays or nays on what to watch. thanks!
Alvina, I would absolutely recommend Vin Diesel as an actor, just not this series! :)
Pary Moppins, yes, I’m sure if we need a cute dog fix there are other, better options.
Michelle and Patti, thanks for your kind words! I do my best to be informative AND entertaining, you know? ;)
I was so sad about this movie, because i LOVE the original Riddick (and I admit a high level of fondness for Chronicles of Riddick, too), even though he does make an inappropriate comment or two to Fry (“It’s been a long time since I’ve smelled beautiful,” and at one point he sneaks up on her and cuts off a lock of her hair and smells it. It’s super creepy), and I had such high hopes for Dahl – especially when she said she was a lesbian.
alianora, if I had remembered that creepiness from Pitch Black I might have been less surprised. But yeah, this goes WAY beyond. :(
In Pitch Black, those behaviours are intentionally creepy. Riddick is a dangerous psychopath, and how his impact on the other survivors is up in the air. As it happens, being in the same boat as them in some measure, leads him him to appreciate their worth, and culminates in his helpless rage that Frye ends up dying for *him* rather than the child and the holy man.
But when he was cutting Frye’s hair, he might just as easily have been a secondary threat and risk to them all. And that’s a possibility that at that point existed within the story as well as at the viewer’s level. Because the change in him hadn’t happened yet.
But that’s a progression that demands that in future films, the creepy behaviours should be toned down, not up. In Pitch Black, his creepy invasions of women were psychopathy he was supposed to growing away from. Riddick, the film, doesn’t just turn that into a gross attempt at cool badass, but negates the characterisation in Pitch Black. And negates the sense that they were wrong.
SunlessNick, thanks for nailing the explanation. I was kind of flailing my hands around like “I know something is really off here!”