Isaac Asimov is rightfully considered the master of science fiction, whose contribution to culture cannot be overestimated. For some, his works became an inspiration for their own creativity, for others – a fascinating world full of mysteries and adventures that captivates for many hours. But even if you haven’t heard anything about the writer himself, you probably know a couple of universes inspired by his works. Today’s conversation will focus on one of them.
Let me make a reservation right away that the full story consists of three films, two books, two games, two animated comics and one cartoon. In this material I will touch only on the very beginning – the film, book and comics released in the year 2000.
Pitch Black
David Twohy. Today this name is associated specifically with the Chronicles of Riddick universe. At the end of the twentieth century, David was already an experienced screenwriter. His list of credits included, among other things, stories for the films "The Fugitive" and "Waterworld", but as a director, Twohy participated in only two projects, one of which, "Arrival", was based on his own script. When representatives of Interscope approached him, David interested them mainly as a screenwriter, and at that time he already had some experience.
Interscope brought the script, saying they liked the idea, but not the execution. The story, written by brothers Ken and Jim Wheat, entitled "The Coming of Night" was a copy of the work of the same name by Isaac Asimov. The company contacted me and said "make it work on screen and if we like it, we’ll let you direct it". They played a game with me and I accepted the challenge. In this version of the scenario there was only a fall to the planet, survivors and monsters. There was no Riddick. And I combined that script with mine.
By the way, the Whit brothers themselves were more than pleased with the result, saying that not a single change was bad. The company liked the final result, and David began filming. Having gone through all stages of production, the film was released on February 18, 2000. called "Pitch Black", in the Russian version sounding like "Black Hole".
Plot
In general, the story in the film is quite simple, but interestingly twisted. For those who for some reason have not familiarized themselves with the film, I suggest doing so in the near future, but for those who cannot – welcome to the spoiler, where each scene of the film is described in detail.
"Very long flight between stops. Big enough to cause problems."
Spacecraft Hunter Gratzner flies through the comet’s tail. The hold with cryocapsules is pierced right through by fragments, by a fatal coincidence, killing the captain. Having detected an oxygen leak, the emergency system begins to awaken the crew – officer Greg Owens and pilot Caroline Fry. “Show me the stars,” Owens exclaims, turning on the external view monitor, but in response he receives an image of an approaching planet. Engulfed in streams of flame, the ship rapidly rushes to the surface.
While Greg tries to send a distress signal, Caroline tries to right the ship. In vain. “It is recommended to reset the ballast,” is heard from the system speakers, and the pilot shoots off the two rear compartments, but the situation does not improve. There’s only one thing left.
"What are you doing, Fry?", Owens asks, but he understands everything. She decided to sacrifice the compartment with cryocapsules. "Don’t touch that lever!", the officer warns, and for a few seconds he manages to convince Caroline. "I’m not going to die because of them!", the girl screams and pulls the handle, but her partner manages to jam the doors between the compartments. "You have seventy seconds to right the ship," he says. Miraculously, the pilot succeeds, and the ship at full speed tears up the sandy surface with its belly, falling apart and scattering capsules with passengers.
Jones wakes up in the wreckage of the ship. While the rest of the survivors are unlocking the remaining cryocapsules, he has a more serious task. The capsule containing the prisoner he was transporting is empty. The man carefully makes his way deeper, but the fugitive attacks him. With the help of a baton, Jones manages to defeat his opponent.
Fry finds his partner’s body pierced with a metal pin. "I’m sorry," she whispers, but the officer’s eyes open. He asks for the pin to be pulled out, but it’s too close to his heart, and as soon as Caroline touches the metal, Owens screams. "Don’t touch! Don’t touch. this lever!"The girl is looking for an anesthetic and realizes that there is no longer a first aid kit. "Go away," she says to the others. Jones is the last to leave, glancing at the man in black glasses chained to an iron post.
Survivors look around the sandy surface. In addition to the already familiar Fry, Jones and a prisoner named Richard B. Riddick, the boy Jack, the collector Paris, the couple Zeke and Shazza, and four pilgrims survived: Imam Abu al-Walid and three teenagers. They all consider Fry the captain and thank her for saving her and landing the ship.
However, the problems are just beginning. It turns out that the planet is illuminated by three suns at once, so there is no night on it. Lack of oxygen in the air, constant heat, only rare alcohol transported by the collector to drink, and in addition it turns out that Riddick, who, according to Jones, made several escapes from prison, has disappeared. Shazza makes oxygen masks, and Jones and Fry go in search of the fugitive. Pilgrims join them in the hope of finding water in the desert. Soon the squad stumbles upon something like an elephant cemetery – a space completely filled with the bones of giant animals.
While combing the area, Fry stops. Jones approaches and hands her a bottle of alcohol, asks why Owens asked not to touch the lever and promises that this conversation will remain between them. The pilot tells him about the last minutes before the crash. Their dialogue is overheard by Riddick, hiding a few centimeters behind the bones. The squad follows further and stumbles upon an abandoned settlement. There they find a source of water and a spaceship without fuel.
People remaining at the crash site hear strange sounds. It turns out that another person survived the disaster, but Zeke mistakes him for Riddick and kills the poor guy with a shot. After dragging the corpse to the previously dug mass grave, the man notices a dark hole at the bottom of the pit. He makes his last mistake in his life by bending down to look into the hole, and something with great force drags him into the darkness.
Dying, Zeke shot his attacker several times. Shazza comes running at the sound, finding only a bloody hole and Riddick on the edge of the pit. He tries to escape, but Jones, who arrives in time, manages to catch him and blind him, tearing his glasses off his head.
Fry tries to find out from a tied up prisoner where Zeke’s body is. “It’s not me you should be afraid of,” Riddick tells her. Then the girl asks to show her your eyes. She sees glowing white circles without pupils. Jack, who is watching them, sees this and wonders how to get the same. "Kill some people. Then you’ll be sent to prison and you’ll never see the light of day. You find a doctor and you give him twenty menthol cigarettes so he can operate on your eyeballs," he explains. Fry says Zeke isn’t in the hole. “Then they looked badly,” Riddick answers.
Deciding to check everything, Fry climbs into the hole, tying himself with a rope. There she first finds Zeke’s lantern, and then a severed foot. Finding herself in a cave and discovering unknown monsters, the girl climbs up a stone well. Shazza, Jones and the imam arrived in time and pulled her out.
Jones frees Riddick and returns his glasses, saying that he is tired of chasing him and promises freedom if they get off the planet. The survivors take fuel cells from the wreckage and transport them to the found ship in an abandoned settlement. Fry installs the cells and says that he needs a few more to power the ship.
While exploring the settlement, Riddick discovers a locked building. Jack and Ali, one of the younger pilgrims, follow him at a distance. The man examines the door, but Jones approaches him and calls him. Jack goes with them, his handmade glasses and shaved head indicate that Riddick is now his idol. Ali, unbeknownst to everyone, enters the building through a hole in the wall.
Some suggest that people left here https://libra-spins.uk/ a long time ago, but Riddick replies that no one left the planet, pointing to the things left behind. Fry wonders what happened to the settlers in this case, but then the excited imam asks if anyone has seen the boy.
While exploring the room, Ali presses the button to open the hatch on the ceiling. Sunlight streams into the room, illuminating the sleepy monsters hanging in clusters from the ceiling. Disturbed, they swarm around the boy and he, in an attempt to get rid of them, runs into the next dark room, slamming the door behind him. However, as soon as he looks back, the expression of relief on his face gives way to a grimace of horror.
Jones shoots the castle and the whole group enters the building. The Imam calls Ali by name but receives no answer. Suddenly the man notices that the door to the next room is moving strangely. Carefully, he grabs the handle, but then the door swings open, knocking him to the floor. A swarm of strange bat-like creatures bursts out of the room and, circling near the ceiling, hides in a shaft in the middle of the room. The remains of the boy, practically devoid of flesh, fall before the imam.
Jones throws a flare down a shaft, illuminating human bones. Now they understand what happened to the settlers. Fry finds rock samples, the most recent of which is dated twenty-two years earlier. A timekeeping model of the solar system helps them understand that once every twenty-two years, the planets line up, causing a solar eclipse.
Fry is about to bring the missing fuel cells, but Jones stops her. He tells the story of how Riddick escaped, killing the guards and the pilot. He reveals to the girl his plan – to bring fuel at the last moment and leave the criminal on the planet.
Riddick, left alone with Caroline, tells her that Jones is not a cop at all, but a mercenary. "Have you ever wondered why Jones is shaking so much?? Ask him why your captain screamed so terribly before he died,” he says finally.
The girl sees Jones injecting himself with morphine, ampoules of which he hides in shotgun shells. She reproaches him for letting Owens die like that. “Look at yourself,” the mercenary throws back. Coming outside, Fry irritably waves away the others, saying that she is not their captain, but suddenly freezes. The rings of a huge planet rise from the horizon: the eclipse is near. It’s time to pick up fuel cells from the wrecked ship.
Shazza drives the all-terrain vehicle with the survivors, not paying attention to obstacles and not slowing down. But only after loading the fuel into the car, it becomes clear: they didn’t have time. A huge planet obscures the sun, and twilight falls on the earth. Solar-powered equipment won’t go anywhere else.
It’s getting darker, and countless monsters are breaking out from the depths of the planet. People run for cover, but Riddick and Shazza, who are lagging behind, have to throw themselves to the ground to save themselves. The swarm flies past, and Shazza, deciding that the danger has passed, gets up and runs to his comrades. Immediately she is surrounded by flying creatures, tearing her flesh into pieces. The remains are picked up by a living hungry tornado and, whirling, are carried away. Riddick gets up and, shaking off the dust from his palms, slowly walks towards the others. Entering the ship after everyone else, the criminal looks back and sees huge mountain formations collapsing and monsters much larger than the previous ones flying out of the resulting mines. “I told you, it’s not me you need to fear,” he says. At the same moment, the last weak ray of the sun disappears, plunging the earth into darkness.
Hiding in the compartments of the ship, people come to the conclusion that the sounds made by monsters help them see using the principle of echolocation. Suddenly they hear the same sounds inside and realize that there is a hole in the body. While exploring the premises, Riddick discovers two monsters. The pilgrim Hassan who follows him becomes a new victim. The monster chases the man, but Jones kills the creature with a shot. Shining a flashlight on the remains, Fry sees that the light is burning them.
The survivors count the remaining light sources, and Fry offers to carry the fuel to the ship, saying that Riddick can guide them through the darkness. Jones protests but eventually agrees. While loading fuel, he warns Caroline that the killer will abandon them on the planet. “What is so valuable in your life that you are afraid of losing it?? Is there something other than a dose of drugs??", she retorts.
Having loaded fuel cells onto a makeshift sled, people run after Riddick, wrapped in LED strips connected to the generator. Jack sees a lantern falling out of the sleigh and runs to the side to pick it up. While Jones shoots at the creatures that attacked the child, Paris freaks out and crawls to the side, breaking the generator with the tension of his tape. While the others set fire to bottles of alcohol, using them as torches, Riddick watches as the monsters tear apart Paris’ body.
The imam notices footprints in the sand and says that they are going in a circle. Riddick says he needed time to think. The travelers insist on continuing, but the killer says it’s a deadly walk, "especially with bleeding.". People are perplexed because Fry is not injured, but Riddick points to Jack, adding that the creatures sensed her from the very beginning. Caroline asks why she didn’t say anything. “I decided that it was better to be a boy, otherwise you would have left me on the ship,” she replies.
Fry offers to return, but an enraged Jones says that they need to move on, accusing her of planning to kill everyone when the ship crashed.
Jones and Riddick lead the way. The mercenary offers to kill the girl and drag her corpse along as bait, but the criminal does not agree. A fight breaks out and Riddick leaves his wounded enemy in the dark. Jones tries to shoot the creature that attacked him, but realizes too late that in the heat of battle he mistakenly loaded a fake cartridge case with a drug. The shotgun doesn’t fire and the monster bites off the drug addict’s head.
Riddick joins the survivors. During a short respite, he examines the remains of the monster and discovers a blind spot in the creature’s line of sight. The imam approaches and offers to pray and reproaches the killer for not believing in God. “Do you think you can spend half your life in prison and not believe in God?? Do you think you can survive a nightmare when the rope is already tightened around your neck and you won’t believe it?? You don’t understand everything right. I absolutely believe in God. But I hate this scoundrel,” he replies.
Dragging four fuel cells behind him on a rope, Riddick and his squad move forward. Suddenly the creature grabs the pilgrim Suleiman by the leg, but the imam manages to save him. Riddick sees Jack being attacked by a monster, and Fry unsuccessfully trying to drive it away with a lantern. At the last moment, the criminal decides to help and kills the creature with a knife. It starts to rain, extinguishing the torches. The imam tries to bandage Suleiman’s wound, but suddenly the creature drags the young man away. "Well, where is your god now??", says Riddick gloomily, when the imam, who has lost all his guys, falls to the ground in despair. The killer finds a small cave in the rock and hides the survivors there, covering the entrance with a stone, while he drags the fuel further, taking the last remaining lantern.
Three people in a cave run out of alcohol for their torches, but find glowing slugs to fill their bottles with. Fry goes after Riddick and finds him in the ship ready to take off. “A strong survival instinct,” he is surprised and offers to fly away together, but Caroline cannot forgive herself for the decision to sacrifice the crew and attacks the killer. Riddick puts a knife to her throat and says she will die. "I’m ready to die for them," Fry replies.
The couple returns to the cave and picks up the Imam and Jack. On the way to the ship, Riddick falls behind and finds himself alone with the monster. Using the creature’s blind spot, he manages to deceive it, but then a second one appears. Caught between two opponents, a man raises a knife.
Fry brings the others to the ship and realizes that there is no criminal. The imam shakes his head and calls for them to fly away, but then a scream is heard and the girl rushes towards the sound. She finds the wounded Riddick and tries to drag him to the ship. “I said that I would die for them, not you,” Caroline says, but then the creature pierces and drags her away."Not for me!", the man shouts after her.
The three survivors of the ship prepare to fly away but Riddick turns off the lights. “You can’t leave without saying goodbye,” he says, and when the emboldened creatures gather around, he turns on the engines. The flame burns the monsters and the ship leaves the planet. Jack wonders what to say if they ask questions about him. "Tell them that Riddick is gone. He died there on the planet".
Filming process
Working on a small budget, Twohy cast a cast of little-known actors. Jones was played by Cole Hauser, the second main character, pilot Fry, was played by actress Radha Mitchell. With the role of Riddick himself, however, everything was not easy. One of those who wanted to play a criminal was Steven Seagal. The director didn’t want to hear anything about it, but, succumbing to the studio’s persuasion, he still invited the actor to audition.
I asked him how he felt about the scene where Riddick shaves his head. "Listen, David," he told me, "let’s take it away. Hair is a man’s strength.". I had to go “on the carpet” to the company and ask to hire someone else. Who, they asked, but by that time I had already met Vin. Auditioning has never been his strong point, but he lives the character and gives himself completely to the role. I watched a short film he made and saw potential in it. And I told them I’m taking it.
To show the landscape of an alien planet, the location for filming was chosen near the Australian city of Coober Pedy; the place is really deserted and arid. Fun fact – in a region that experiences a water shortage, showing how people in the film suffer from thirst, one of the problems of filming was rain. By the way, there is a reminder of Riddick in the city – a local businessman bought the spaceship props from the team, which are still there to this day.
I’m an artist, that’s how I see it!
Speaking about the picture itself, it should be noted the visual style, which catches your eye from the first minutes. The entire film was shot on film, which was processed using "silver retention" technology, making the image more contrasty, but also less saturated. The director was very pleased with this decision, noting the daytime "flaming" look.
The special effects deserve special mention. Trying to stay within budget, Twohy turned to visual effects creators Ian Hunter and Matthew Gratzner, who made the film’s opening scene of the ship crashing onto a planet as cost-effective as possible, keeping the number of scenes outside the ship to a minimum and focusing on the crew’s development of the crash. Tui himself was so pleased with the work that he named the ship in their honor – "Hunter Gratzner". Hunter would later say in an interview that he was grateful to the director who immortalized their names in the film industry.
According to Tui, his idea was to show the unpredictable development of heroes under constant pressure. For these purposes, both death and monsters, the design of which was borrowed from the drawings of director Patrick Tatopoulos, and a special atmosphere that culminates in the onset of night, because the less you see, the greater the tension.
As a result, Tui managed to create the image of one of the most brutal and memorable anti-heroes in the history of the industry and create an entire universe of films, games and books, but we might not have seen all of this. During filming, the studio that financed the project, Polygram Pictures, went bankrupt. “It’s hell making independent films and not knowing if the money will come in.”. Even if we finish it, there will be no one to release the film into theaters," the director recalls. But fortunately for the team, Universal Pictures offered to take two films from Polygram and release them. One of them was "Pitch Black".
With a budget of $23 million, the film managed to collect more than fifty million, and in 2004 a sequel called “The Chronicles of Riddick” was released, but now we will not talk about it.
About the book
As part of today’s story, I would like to specifically mention the novelization of "Black Hole". This two-hundred-page novel was written by American writer Frank Lauria. The book is an almost exact retelling of the events shown in the film, but with some liberties. I would like to separately note a number of details that make it stand out from the background of the film.
Firstly, there was an emotional explanation for the characters’ actions. So, Riddick became more alive, more humane. He also feels and doubts, like any other person.At the same time, the character is shown to be smart and cunning. Fry is amazed that a criminal can fly a ship without training, since this is not an easy task even for a trained pilot. In the episode where Fry tells Jones the story of the ship’s crash, the mercenary throws an unfinished bottle on the ground to lure Riddick out. Walking away and looking through binoculars, he is surprised. "Didn’t work!", – an unfinished bottle in the same place, but if he had gone back, he would have found sand inside.
Secondly, after reading the book, details are revealed to the reader that are easy to miss in the film. For example, for me personally it was a discovery that Jones loads the wrong cartridge in the scene of his death. Yes, the film emphasizes that he stores drugs in red cartridges and the same one flies out of a shotgun, you can blame me for being inattentive, but how many people noticed this detail when watching? But this one detail greatly affects the perception of the character. If earlier it seemed that Jones was simply unlucky and his addiction had no effect on the development of the plot, now it is clearly visible how a man becomes a victim of his own passions.
And the final difference is the most interesting, as it adds background to Riddick’s character and develops the history of the world. Below I will retell an excerpt, because I don’t undertake to advise reading – the book was never published in Russia and was not translated, I personally read it in the original, but still, people with sufficient knowledge of English who are interested in the Riddick universe should definitely read it. The episode below is considered canon and is included in the character’s history on the fan Wikia.
Riddick served as an elite ranger for a resource extraction company on the planet Sigma-3. The task of his three-man squad was to clear the tunnels that made up the planet’s landscape, in which fire spitters lived. The creatures’ eyes worked as motion sensors; when they detected prey, they spat acid, separating the meat from the bones. To determine who would be the bait, dice were thrown. The two were hiding, and the loser was walking down the corridor. When the creature appeared, the man froze and stood for a minute, until the monster’s mandibles retracted and he became defenseless. The other two sprayed toxic gas, killing the creature on the spot. Riddick was seriously injured by drops of acid more than once until he learned to cheat with dice. After some time, he was sent to the prestigious Academy on the moon of Sigma-3, where he learned everything about murder, and then the company sent him back to Sigma-3. The goal was to “maintain order,” but in reality, these words hid lawlessness, torture and murder, and Riddick began to collect evidence of this. But the evidence disappeared, and he himself was labeled a criminal and placed in Deep Storage prison. However, Riddick was well trained and by the end of his third year there he killed a guard, dressed in his uniform and got out, where he killed two more guards and a pilot, and stole the only prison transport. The company placed a million-dollar bounty on him, making him a target for all mercenaries, and every killer Riddick eliminated was added to his list of "serial murders.". But Jones was smarter than others. He killed two children to attract the criminal’s attention and threatened to execute two more if he did not surrender. And Riddick gave up.
Among the author’s controversial decisions, one can highlight the fact that the character Jack from the film in the book is originally a girl named Audrey, which makes one of the story’s twists not so memorable.
The result is a high-quality translation of the events of the film onto paper, somewhat loose, but overall worth the time spent at least because it adds grains of history to this gloomy universe.
Pitch Black: Slam City
In the same year 2000, the animated comic Pitch Black: Slam City was released. The comic was drawn by Brian Murray, who also co-wrote the story with the already familiar David Twohy.
This eight-minute film recounts the events leading up to the film and tells the story of the hero’s escape from the prison known as Slam City, where he spent exactly 11 hours and 22 minutes. The plot is quite simple and the only interesting thing to highlight is Riddick getting his famous eyes through surgery. For those interested in the whole story, I can advise you to watch the comic on YouTube with a full translation – just Google it by name.
Among fans of the universe, this episode is the cause of controversy, since in the game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, released in 2004, which is also a prequel to the first film, an alternative version of Riddick gaining night vision was shown. It is not clear which of these two options is canon, but my personal subjective point of view is that in the game this is simply a justification for complicating the game mechanics and nothing more, but I cannot say. Perhaps the answer lies in one of the dozens of interviews with the creators of the universe, although I do not have exact information on this matter. Fan Wikia tells us that the episode from the game should be considered canonical, and the story of the comic book should be considered a beautiful story in which the hero himself believes, although in this case it is not clear why the Furians shown in the second film do not have similar vision. Neither the Cleaner, who gained a connection with his people through Shira’s mark, nor Shira herself, present only in the director’s cut of the film, lacks the signature sparkle in her eyes. Let’s leave this question for posterity, and continue our immersion in the universe.
. to the very bottom.
Nowhere in this material did I mention the film M. David Melvin’s "Into Pitch Black" for one simple reason – it is not customary to talk about it in polite society. So we won’t, but for those interested there is an excellent review on Kinopoisk, which fully reflects the essence and deep meaning of the film.
*Place for your joke about the title "Into the Black Hole"*
What in the end?
Throughout my story I tried to avoid personal opinions and subjective assessments as much as possible, but in the end I’ll still add a couple of lines from myself. My acquaintance with this universe began, like probably for many, with the second film, and I learned about the existence of everything else much later. And, to be honest, when I watched “Black Hole” for the first time, I wasn’t very impressed. However, I cannot help but admit the obvious – the film is captivating. Captivates with tension, amazes with plot twists, obvious and not too obvious. And perhaps, if you don’t know which of the three main characters, forgive the tautology, more importantly, he will make you sit with your mouth open throughout the entire plot, I don’t know, and this is not particularly important. Something else is important. For me, this is, first of all, a warm feeling of the beginning of the history of the entire universe. Gloomy atmosphere. And, of course, the brutal protagonist. This world doesn’t need happy endings, and they won’t fully exist until the third film, which raises a number of questions. Well, that’s all I have for now. Thanks to everyone who has read up to this point, and perhaps we will see you again somewhere on the roofs of the New Mecca or in the cramped cells of Butcher Bay – who knows!