I finally - after all these years, finally- got around to actually sitting down and watching Pitch Black.
It's one of those films that was always around when I was younger and at university for the first time. It had cachet; low-budget but good science fiction films were not exactly in premium supply back then.
So there was always a video or - gasp - a DVD - lying around the shitty shared houses and bedsits I was living in, or it was always on Channel 4 (or 5) late at night. I think I must have watched it four times in pieces but never actually sat down and watched it from beginning to end before.
(This has happened with a few films, I confess.)
Having bought it for the princely sum of £1, though, I finally sat down and watched it from beginning to end, and enjoyed it immensely.
I have a thing about Breaking Bad. It's good television, to be sure; expertly filmed, beautifully written. It's as good as people say it is. I don't go for it, however, because everyone in the show is an arsehole. I know this is probably the same as in real life - I'm a doe-eyed optimist, of course, and like to believe this is probably not true, but it probably provably is - but there isn't one single character in the show who's not unbelievably arseholic. Jesse is the nearest thing to sympathetic, and that's because he alternates between pitiable and powerful. Gus is perhaps the next along the line, but for all the good reasons he has for doing the things he does, he's still willing to do bad things for bad reasons, and does so, repeatedly. Hank is only that much less of an arsehole after he starts to deal with his PTSD and engages with his physical therapy.
I don't quite get the appeal of watching a show where everyone starts out as irritating bastards and they only get worse. Granted, I've only seen the first four seasons, so maybe the fifth is a magical land of forgiveness and happiness and everyone gets what they want, plus a cake. But still.
Maybe I just don't get the appeal.
This is by contrast with Pitch Black, where only the bastards survive.
Seriously; if you're anything other than a utilitarian hardcore bastard (or, to be fair, if you cross Riddick, which would just make you a stupid bastard) then, well, you die.
The characters seem oddly fresh, too, thirteen years on; this is probably just my take on it, but this felt like one of the first times the Everybody Has Problems trope in filmmaking really worked. Nav-Officer slash Commander who heroically lands the ship? Yeah, she tried to jettison everyone in the cryogenic pods so she could survive. Security officer? A mercenary with a secret morphine addiction who justifies it by comparing it to coffee. Anyone who's a normative hero isn't; anyone who's just trying to survive is normative.
There's also a sad judgment to be made about how Pitch Black, pre-9/11, was able to have an Imam with Muslim followers, representing the Religious People In Space subtrope. It's a little sad, and a little strange, watching this twelve years on, because it's religion in science fiction - something that doesn't necessarily happen quite so much these days. (I'd bring up the example of Shepherd Book from Firefly/Serenity, though. It does happen; just not quite so much.)
Pitch Black, however, does have one of my favourite rack focuses in film.
Early on - and spoilers, although the film's thirteen years old, so whaddayagonnado? - the survivors accidentally shoot another survivor who had only just woken up and didn't know about the crash, the circumstances, etcetera. He wanders up to ask some questions and blam, dead, hysteria moment. Everyone freaks, panics, but the camera remains still as they leave the frame, only to change focus; and there in the distance is Riddick, on a sun-lounger on top of a ship, having a nice drink and just relaxing.
Comedy like that is why film can do things other mediums can't. Maybe. But it made my day...
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