Tuesday, June 8, 2004

Vin Diesel
Interview The Chronicles of Riddick

Playing the enigmatic anti-hero Richard B. Riddick

Growing up, Vin Diesel used to tell people that if he couldn't be an actor, he'd be a superhero. Now of course, he gets to do both, playing the tough anti-hero Riddick who's forced to save the human race in this week's The Chronicles of Riddick.

Diesel calls Riddick, a character first seen in the horror/sci-fi combo Pitch Black, "a seemingly nefarious character who ends up being your only hope," and explains that's why he finds Riddick so fascinating to play. "Unlike the picture perfect heroes and the whitewashed heroes, the idea that this anti-hero has to go through such a journey just to understand the concept of heroism before even being heroic was interesting."

The actor realizes that although The Chronicles of Riddick takes place in a futuristic world, the nihilistic anti-hero stance of Riddick fits right in with today's real life youth heroes like Eminem and the rap group G-Unit. He believes that young people don't want to be preached at about heroism or righteousness. "We have to be very clever on how we introduce heroism to our culture, because it won't be accepted if we hit them over the head with it. I guess that's a hat trick, to take a character that's an antihero, that says, 'I want to be left alone,' and then through his eyes, watch him realize his significance in the world."

Diesel is proud that the epic quality of The Chronicles of Riddick is so different from the compact story of Pitch Black. The challenge was to set up the complex situation of an entire universe without bogging down the story. "There were no books that had been around for 50 years, there were no comic books that have been around for decades that have already introduced the mythology to the audience," explains Vin. "This was completely original and because of it, we had to find a way to introduce the mythology very quickly and in a way that you would accept immediately without question, which was why it was so important to have Judi Dench play Aereon, because what actor comes with that much credibility in her tone? What actor has that authenticity? When she speaks of the universe and the state of the universe, you believe it."

Diesel describes himself as a passionate guy who often gets lost in the creativity of making a movie. For The Chronicles of Riddick, he and David Twohy drew upon such influences as Shakespeare's plays, Kurosawa movies and the paintings of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. In fact, the story of the Riddick character is so complex that a two-hour movie can't do it justice, so Diesel is using other media to further give fans a chance to visit Riddick's world. "Because movies are so expensive to make now, the videogame world allows me to explore my imagination, put it all in there without costing hundreds of millions of dollars and when you're creating something like 'The Chronicles Of Riddick,' you're no longer creating a movie, you're creating a universe, so if you're wise, you'll take advantage of all the other markets to further flesh out that universe."

Soon to be released are an animated DVD, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury, and a project especially close to Diesel's heart as a longtime gamer, the videogame, "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay." Intrigued by the possibilities of interactive entertainment, the actor has even started his own videogame company, Tigon Studios. "The videogames now are so much more story driven," Diesel explains. "When I realized a couple years ago that people were buying videogames because of story more so than gameplay, that started to get really exciting and attractive for me." And what of the experience of controlling a videogame character that he has embodied on screen? "Two words: twilight zone. It's so bizarre playing yourself. You have to detach yourself, because nobody likes seeing themself getting punched in the face repeatedly by these other characters. It's surreal but the game is so damn cool."

While Diesel hopes to bring Riddick back to the screen in years to come, he has already started focusing on his next projects. He is shooting a comedy called The Pacifier that promises to show a softer side of Vin Diesel to the audience. In it, he plays a government agent who agrees to protect the children of an assassinated scientist, only to find that child care is his toughest mission yet. He is also determined to bring another epic to the screen, the story of the Carthaginian general Hannibal in Hannibal the Conqueror. "It really needs to be told," says Diesel. "The idea of the man unifying a polyglot army of all the broken people to defy tyranny, what's more current than that?"

Of course, in typical Vin Diesel fashion, the actor started training to ride elephants for the role long before it was sure the movie would ever be made. But as a man who became a star after age 30, Diesel knows that fulfilling a dream can take years and years. "If you have a dream, the first person that needs to believe in you and sometimes the only person that needs to believe in you is yourself."