David Twohy
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The most obvious comparison to Pitch Black has to be Alien since both begin with freighters drifting in space with crew in hypersleep, a leading lady as captain, and survivors fighting for their lives against a bloodthirsty alien creature.
Pitch Black is Alien without the distraction of real characters.
At second glance, this is still true, but you notice something else: Despite its rip-offs (mostly of "Alien" ), "Pitch Black" delivers not only on thrills and suspense, but on artistic direction and clever plotting.
If at times it is reminiscent of "Alien", "Mad Max" or of countless hilarious straight-faced science fiction B-movies, "Pitch Black" takes itself as seriously as it needs to and embraces every cliché it comes across like an old friend.
Alien, the now-classic 1979 Ridley Scott sci-fi epic, is possibly cinema’s most cloned movie.
Incorporating disparate genre archetypes (the movie mixes "Swiss Family Robinson" with "Ten Little Indians" by way of "Alien"), "Pitch Black" provides a thrill ride from its chaotic opening scenes (in which a transport vehicle is forced to make a crash landing) to its surprising outcome.
Aliens (1986)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced Riddick (2013), Pitch Black (2000)
Plot Themes Visuals Characters
Of course, this revelation comes to light, but even that opportunity for narrative progression fails to enliven the main thread of this yarn, the millionth knock-off of the Aliens films to misunderstand completely what makes those films such extraordinary entertainments.
There may be a whole lot of Aliens to the proceedings, but Pitch Black becomes sericeable enough on its own armrest-gripping level.
In Twohy's very slight variation on the "Aliens"/"Starship Troopers" theme, two antisocial people, a docking pilot and a homicidal prisoner, are rehabilitated by the tribulations of survival on a desert planet.
We never really get a good look at the embracing bat-creatures, but we see enough of them to know that they pale in comparison to the ones in "Aliens".
If the plot’s somewhat reminiscent of the original film and its influences, not least James Cameron’s Aliens, it is at least a flick that makes good use of its precious resources.
The technique was perfected by James Cameron in “Aliens” and has become the standard of science fiction character teams since (even used again later in the director’s own “Avatar”), and here director David Twohy makes full use of it right down to the token asshole (Santana) who is short-sighted and too smug to know that he will probably be laughed off screen by a hateful audience well before the final act.
This is a feature designed around its thrilling monster attack sequences, running the gamut from Alien and Pitch Black inspired cave scenes to bright sunny sand monsters in the vein of Tremors .
Beyond some spider/scorpion creatures who seem modeled after those in Pitch Black (2000), there are only two, and they take an enormous amount of effort to bypass (not to mention, they look like any number of such approximations from contemporary Hollywood films, from Pacific Rim to Jurassic Park to the new Godzilla titles).
After battling this beast, they take refuge in a cave structure and are then set upon by a new assortment of creatures that look like the monsters from “Starship Troopers,” reproduce like the monsters from “Alien” and fear the sunlight like the monsters in “Pitch Black.”
They run toward the rocks, where some giant bug creatures attack (these look and act like the monsters in the vintage Vin Diesel movie “Pitch Black”).
The movie wants to be more than it can be, so it ends up looking a bit strained in some places, although much of it is undeniably, viscerally effective, especially when Miller and cinematographer David Eggby (Pitch Black) get their cameras right in the middle of the automotvie mayhem ripping up the straight-line asphalt highways cutting through the Australian outback.
Resourceful as Fry is, though, she's uncomfortable in her new role—particularly when the planet's Mad Max-like landscape, thought to be uninhabited, suddenly turns treacherous.
If at times it is reminiscent of "Alien", "Mad Max" or of countless hilarious straight-faced science fiction B-movies, "Pitch Black" takes itself as seriously as it needs to and embraces every cliché it comes across like an old friend.
Special mention has to go to Eggsby, who used the same Coober Pedy, Australia, locations for the now-classic "Mad Max" (1979).
With this opening sequence, Pitch Black -- co-written by brothers Jim and Ken Wheat with director David Twohy -- asserts outright its derivative sources, quoting from the Alien, Mad Max, and Terminator series, Blade Runner, Fearless, Con Air, and The Fugitive, even Stagecoach, in the outlaw traveling with a group of "civilized" folks.
It's a tightly constructed genre picture, combining the best paranoid thrills of the "Alien" series with the setting of "Mad Max" and the anti-Utopian future of "Blade Runner."
The picture is a survey of George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy, of all four Alien films, of dashes of Jeunet and Caro's French phantasms, and of David Lynch's Dune, with--and I mean this in a good way--just a smidge of Flash Gordon factored in: a parade of black leather-clad grotesqueries inhabit a lushly imagined future (breaking records for lumber usage in its Vancouver construction) in a film that attempts to tell old stories in a new way and, for the most part, succeeds with an agreeable level of whiz-bang.
The Chronicles of Riddick carries a backbone of hysterical pomposity unseen since David Lynch's Dune -- huge and gaudy, dripping with self-importance that pleads to be deflated.
Writer-director David Twohy, working on a vast canvas, maps out the lore and dimensions of Riddick's universe, and as with David Lynch's trippy "Dune," the result is intricately detailed yet frustratingly sketchy.
One conversation includes a reference to Natural Born Killers, and when Nick warns of "lots of twists and turns ahead," you know he's not talking about the trail.
Writer-director David Twohy has a few twists and turns up his sleeve, and even if you see them coming from a mile off, he handles this popcorn-movie rehashing of Natural Born Killers with the kind of light touch we’d expect from, say, Howard Hawks.
This “Getaway” doesn’t really take off into a mashup of “Deliverance” and “Natural Born Killers” until the final third of the movie.
Within minutes the talk turns to movies - "Natural Born Killers" comes up - and the men begin subtly needling each other using script-jargon like "Act II twist."
Natural Born Killers meets Lost when newlyweds Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich arrive at a Hawaiian paradise only to learn that a killer couple is butchering honeymooners.
There is a scene in David Twohy 's A Perfect Getaway in which, after hearing about some gruesome murders, one of the characters is reminded of the film Natural Born Killers .
A cheap, thrilling B movie — in the vein of Pitch Black , Slither or Ready Or Not — is a welcome sight amongst awards-season seriousness.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened and the result is a slice of aquatic ALIEN-sploitation (that also borrows from PITCH BLACK and THE DESCENT) with some cool stuff but is mostly frustrating and unmemorable.
Writers Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad owe much thanks to extraterrestrial influencers from the aforementioned The Sphere to Pitch Black , but their seabed storytelling suffers not from copycat syndrome.
With this opening sequence, Pitch Black -- co-written by brothers Jim and Ken Wheat with director David Twohy -- asserts outright its derivative sources, quoting from the Alien, Mad Max, and Terminator series, Blade Runner, Fearless, Con Air, and The Fugitive, even Stagecoach, in the outlaw traveling with a group of "civilized" folks.
In Twohy's very slight variation on the "Aliens"/"Starship Troopers" theme, two antisocial people, a docking pilot and a homicidal prisoner, are rehabilitated by the tribulations of survival on a desert planet.
Of course, this revelation comes to light, but even that opportunity for narrative progression fails to enliven the main thread of this yarn, the millionth knock-off of the Aliens films to misunderstand completely what makes those films such extraordinary entertainments.
There may be a whole lot of Aliens to the proceedings, but Pitch Black becomes sericeable enough on its own armrest-gripping level.
Many of the land-dwelling critters evoke the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, which is unsurprising given that Pitch Black started life as writer-director David Twohy's script submission for Alien 3 at a time when Sigourney Weaver was refusing to reprise her role as Ripley.
With her commanding screen presence, Midthunder spends much of the movie in natural landscapes, accompanied only by her character’s rather adorable dog, Sarii—and the combination of hero-and-dog versus aliens recalls a similar dynamic in Riddick (2013).
In a moment when unpretentious genre-savvy craftsmen like David Twohy have receded from view, Trachtenberg, whose background is in commercial and video-game work, has similar gifts: At times, Prey displays some of the same ornery virtuosity as Twohy’s Riddick films, especially the underrated 2013 third installment, with its mostly dialogue-free opening passages pitting Vin Diesel’s loner against a host of carnivorous monsters.
Lewis Fitz-Gerald (who began his film career in "Breaker Morant" in 1980) offers strong comic support while veteran Keith David (whom many will remember for his fight scene with Roddy Piper in 1988's "They Live") brings the appropriate gravity to his role as the Muslim cleric.
The crowd includes tough-talking docking pilot Fry (High Art’s Radha Mitchell, in the buffed Sigourney Weaver role from Alien ), musclebound, pissed-off convict Riddick (Vin Diesel), and a whole slew of obvious victims-to-be, including self-interested antique dealer Paris (Breaker Morant’s Lewis Fitz-Gerald) and steadfast Muslim cleric Imam (Keith David), who brings three young pilgrims with him to the slaughter.
It benefits from its Australian outback location and a nice blend of Aussie talent, including newcomer Radha Mitchell ("Love and Other Catastrophes") and seasoned veterans Lewis Fitz-Gerald ("Breaker Morant") and Simon Burke ("The Devil's Playground"), which it mixes with such American actors as Vin Diesel ("Saving Private Ryan") and Cole Hauser ("Good Will Hunting").
And for most of the fairly terrific 30 minutes that follow, “Riddick” resembles nothing so much as an outer-space remake of the 1966 Cornel Wilde adventure “The Naked Prey,” with Diesel on the run from all manner of carnivorous creatures, including “alien jackals” that look like the offspring of a zebra and a pit bull.
This man-versus-nature opening segment plays like a laughable, tension-free sci-fi variation of The Naked Prey .
Blade Runner (1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Pitch Black (2000)
Themes Dialogue
It's a tightly constructed genre picture, combining the best paranoid thrills of the "Alien" series with the setting of "Mad Max" and the anti-Utopian future of "Blade Runner."
With this opening sequence, Pitch Black -- co-written by brothers Jim and Ken Wheat with director David Twohy -- asserts outright its derivative sources, quoting from the Alien, Mad Max, and Terminator series, Blade Runner, Fearless, Con Air, and The Fugitive, even Stagecoach, in the outlaw traveling with a group of "civilized" folks.
It's the slavish devotion to deep immersion (Linus Roach as a reluctant "Purifier" almost steals the show in a small speech recalling Rutger Hauer's at the end of Blade Runner) draped over a sometimes-familiar frame that makes of The Chronicles of Riddick a superlative entertainment.
Most intriguing is when the dark-feeding creatures force three distinct groups to fight as one…the uneasy alliances and suspense reminded me of another sci-fi/horrow ride, 1982’s “The Thing”.
Oddly, Riddick starts well enough – think A Boy and His Dog meets Conan the Barbarian – in a back-to-basics survivalist mode that reminds us of the comparative pleasures of two-Riddick-movies-ago, Pitch Black.
The bloated opening act of the 119-minute “Riddick” is its weakest chapter and many won’t be able to get past this extended riff on “A Boy and His Dog” as Riddick (Vin Diesel) is forced to deal with life alone on an inhospitable planet after being stranded there.
Aside from a flashback and some typically noir-ish narration, this opening stretch of the film is wordless; visually and tonally, it brings to mind Paul W.S. Anderson’s underrated Kurt Russell space Western Soldier .
I really like the idea of “a guy and his dog” that’s reminiscent, believe it or not, of “Dances With Wolves.”
There is virtually no dialogue, but Diesel’s sizable screen presence and our previous experiences with the character are more than enough to sustain both tension and momentum (the digital effects used to create the planet’s vistas are a bit hokey-looking at times, as is a CGI dog creature that Riddick ultimately befriends Dances With Wolves-style, but it’s all part of the movie’s self-aware lowbrow charm).
Cole Hauser, perhaps best remembered as one of Matt Damon's neighborhood buddies in "Good Will Hunting" (1997) and Woody Harrelson's younger brother in "The Hi-Lo Country" (1998), steps into leading roles as the bounty hunter harboring a personal demon or two.
The survivors include baby-faced pilot Fry (Radha Mitchell, from High Art), spiritual Imam (Keith David, from There's Something About Mary), and law enforcement officer Johns (Cole Hauser, from Good Will Hunting and The Hi-Lo Country).
It benefits from its Australian outback location and a nice blend of Aussie talent, including newcomer Radha Mitchell ("Love and Other Catastrophes") and seasoned veterans Lewis Fitz-Gerald ("Breaker Morant") and Simon Burke ("The Devil's Playground"), which it mixes with such American actors as Vin Diesel ("Saving Private Ryan") and Cole Hauser ("Good Will Hunting").
The time frame is not meant to be the actual 1950s or early '60s (the period in which DeBoer and Luebbe’s short The Arrival is set), though the retro vibe is reinforced mightily by Leigh Poindexter’s similarly unsettling yet fabulous production design.
After the failed attempt on his life, Riddick struggles to survive on an unfamiliar, barely habitable planet filled with wild alien dogs, impressively terrifying amphibious scorpion-like monsters and equally unimpressive-looking pterodactyl-like vultures, all on a desert CGI landscape that's a cross between Georges Méliès' 1902 silent classic "A Trip to the Moon" and the 1980 cheese fest "Flash Gordon."
After the failed attempt on his life, Riddick struggles to survive on an unfamiliar, barely habitable planet filled with wild alien dogs, impressively terrifying amphibious scorpion-like monsters and equally unimpressive-looking pterodactyl-like vultures, all on a desert CGI landscape that's a cross between Georges Méliès' 1902 silent classic "A Trip to the Moon" and the 1980 cheese fest "Flash Gordon."