Last week, in order, we watched the 3.5 films in the Riddick series. We’d only ever seen the first one, and were interested in the others. Here’s reviews of all of them.
Pitch Black (2000)
This was a low-budget sci-fi horror film about the survivors of a crashed spaceship fighting for their lives against a legion of alien predators on an otherwise barren planet. As the name suggests, the film is very dark and this is doubly integral to the plot: the aliens only ‘come out at night’ and the antihero can see in the dark.
His name is Riddick, and he is played by a young Vin Diesel. He’s a villian and murderer, and for this reason there’s initially tension between him and the other survivors. Ultimately his martial skills and unusual vision make him invaluable to their survival, and a truce is formed.
The film is obviously inspired by Aliens but weaves a unique story of its own, and despite some dated visuals (especially use of colour grading) holds up fairly well. It’s not a great (or even good?) film, but it’s fun to watch.
The standout of course is Vin Diesel, who has strong charisma in the role of an (objectively) awful person, and very much carries the film. Pitch Black was a success and made a lot of money, and when it came time for a sequel it was obvious which way the story would go…
The Chronicles Of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004)
This was a direct-to-DVD short animated film spanning the time between Pitch Black and the sequel. It was directed by Peter Cheung (famous for Aeon Flux) and Vin Diesel returned to voice Riddick.
The story is simple and not at all required to understand the film sequel, and I found this animated interlude a little unpleasant due to the grotesque art style. Completely skippable!
The Chronicles Of Riddick (2004)
Set five years after Pitch Black, this sequel focuses on Riddick as he becomes involved in a plot to destroy a planet. The story is absolutely bonkers, and includes grand space battles, an evil empire called ‘The Necromongers’, magical beings called Elementals and all sorts of weird elements such as ‘the Underverse’.
We learn more of Riddick as well, including the fact he’s maybe not so bad after all. It turns out he’s one of the last remaining ‘Furyans’ and has superhuman abilities and mystical powers that may help wipe out the Necromongers. The film keeps throwing stuff at you hoping it sticks, and even when it doesn’t you won’t care because it’s always visually interesting (it here’s a strong Warhammer 40k vibe). Once again Vin Diesel’s weird charisma steals every scene he’s in.
Somehow they got Judi Dench and a young Karl Urban in this. There’s creepy alien dog things, many crazy fight scenes and one of the most insane endings you’ll see. The budget was obviously much bigger than Pitch Black, but for all its bombast the film underperformed and almost killed the nascent franchise.
We never saw this when it came out, but we thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s crazy and silly and very guilty of adding plot elements without any hint of explanation, but it’s also a lot of fun. The best film in this series and very much worth a watch!
Riddick (2013)
Nine years later Vin Diesel had become a megastar due to the Fast & The Furious franchise and the franchise holders decided to return once again to this series. But the budget was scaled back and the studio wanted a film more like Pitch Black and less like Chronicles Of Riddick.
What they made was a sort-of Pitch Black remake, only now the nocturnal aliens are replaced with weird scorpion-things. There’s a very lengthy setup sequence of Riddick being marooned on a planet (and befriending an alien jackal!) before mercenaries turn up to catch him only for all hell to break loose when hordes of the creatures attack.
It’s a well paced film – even if it feels like two – and for its lowish budget I thought the special effects (solidly in CGI territory now) were very good. There’s some decent acting from the mercenaries, including one that has become famous in recent years in a Star Wars show, but once again Vin Diesel steals the show. This is a much better film than Pitch Black, but not quite reaching the enjoyable lunacy of The Chronicles Of Riddick, and I think it’s worth your time.
And so – perhaps to our surprise – we thoroughly enjoyed this somewhat overlooked series! Despite very lengthy gaps between the films they tell a more or less consistent story, and the more we learned about Riddick the more we wanted to learn. There’s still many questions, about the Furyans and Necromongers, and it feels like this is a story that can continue.
So it’s perhaps good to know there’s another sequel on the way, likely to be released a dozen years (or more) after the last one. And with the working title of Riddick IV: Furya maybe we’ll finally get some answers to the true past (and future?) of this fellow Riddick? Let’s hope so.
