Movie Review: Pitch Black
Pitch Black, now ex post facto titled “The Chronickes of Riddick: Pitch Black” is a B-scifi movie I suppose.
The plot is simple, a transport passenger ship crash lands on a foreign planet en route to its destination. The survivors try to figure out how to survive, and discover the planet isn’t empty of life. Ok, simple scifi plot.
Why bother to even discuss it then? It has a somewhat interesting addition of characters. I’m not talking about Vin Diesel (the convict Riddick) or the crewmember-turned-captain or the Frenchman, but rather the Muslims. Yes, there are Muslims in a futuristic SciFi movie. Apparently among the survivors are an imam and his sons making Hajj to “New Mecca” which is implied to be some other planet.
Ordinarily I hate depictions of Muslims in movies (they never pray realistically etc) but this time they did an OK job, even reciting the shahadah properly (or would they need to say “Labbayk” instead?) They even make a theme out of it as the imam and nihilist Riddick argue over faith when characters start to die off.
My rating? See it if you want to see a somewhat decent portrayal of Muslims, but avoid it if you don’t like lame mild horror movies or “people on alien world struggling to survive” movies. I didn’t really care for how the plot went, so I waver between “worth seeing once” or “a waste.”
I liked the sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick more, though I can only describe it as “Galactic Space Crusader Romans who attack planet Morocco” (at least in the beginning). The imam makes a minor appearance as well, but they left it so we won’t see more in any sequels. A shame, since he was my favorite and most interesting. I think the Chronicles of Riddick series is going somwhere and making a cool universe for the stories, but the rest of the episodes are either animated or in book form. A shame because the sequel leaves off at a fairly crucial point.
