Excellent Movie!

Rating: 8/10 (27 October 2000)

I'm astonished that Pitch Black didn't do better, it was a wonderfully realistic and well written movie! And why can't people just enjoy the darn flick? People say the science is bad. WRONG! Gravity is what holds planets around a sun. If the planets are dense enough or big enough and the suns are small or less dense, than they very well CAN rotate around planets! Nobody even mentions the glow-slugs later! Of course it makes sense that on a planet like this evolution would create phosphorescence as a defense mechanism. Lovely detail! And quit whining about contrived plots and ripoffs! You CANNOT make a movie today without ripping something off! For everyone who called this movie a wannabe or compared it to Aliens or the Matrix, I hate to break it to you, but the critters from aliens were almost IDENTICAL to a critter in a novel called Voyage of the Space Beagle by AE van Vogt written at least 20 years before Alien came out. Likewise, the Matrix was ripped off from an RPG called Shadowrun which was released in the mid 80's! And yes, it seems a little hokey that they just happened to crash in the 22nd year when the darkness came, but you'll notice in Alien that out of the whole gigantic refinery ship, the creature just happened to hide in the little teeny-weeny lifeboat ship. And the queen in Aliens just happened to hide in the one place where they couldn't get her without killing themselves And finally as for those who say the characters are shallow. When was the last time you saw a character admit they did something stupid? (Fry crawling down the hole) or when survivors thanked the pilot for the extremely tough job she did of keeping some of them alive in the crash instead of "oh, great babe! ya really screwed us over with that pro landing!" And Riddick was still a nasty guy at the end, he was just starting to change and soften a little. Kurt Russell overcame 35+ years of ironclad conditioning and mind control in just a few weeks in Soldier! So everyone out there that keeps complaining about unreal this, and shallow that, save your money and watch "The Real World" on MTV. Those of you that can open your mind and just enjoy the great fiction, put Pitch Black at the top of your must see scifi!
8/10