t's been five years since escaped convict Richard B. Riddick (Diesel) rescued an Islamic preacher (Keith David) and a young girl, Jack, from monsters on a planet of perpetual night. Now a fugitive, Riddick finds himself running from "mercs"—mercenaries, or bounty hunters—led by Toombs (Nick Chinlund), who have tracked him to the icebound sixth planet of the UV system.
Overcoming the merc crew, Riddick learns that someone on planet Helion Prime has placed a large bounty on his head. Stealing Toombs' ship, Riddick seeks out an old friend in New Mecca, Helion Prime's multicultural main city.
The preacher, the Imam, introduces Riddick to Aereon (Dench), an "air elemental," who tells Riddick that he is the key to defeating the Necromongers, a vast legion of armored stormtroopers led by the Lord Marshal (Feore). The Necromongers are advancing throughout the galaxy, converting all planets in their way to their sinister faith—or condemning them to death.
"Not my fight," Riddick tells her. "Are you going to leave, like you left her?" the Imam asks. He refers to Jack, now grown and going by the name Kyra (Davalos), who went off in search of Riddick and wound up a prisoner on the hell planet of Crematoria.
Riddick is about to leave when Helion Prime falls under attack. The Necromongers have arrived.
They capture Riddick and bring him into the Lord Marshal's Necropolis ship, where mind regression reveals what the Lord Marshal has feared: Riddick is the last survivor of a defiant race, the Furyans, the only people who can stand up to the Necromongers. "Kill Riddick!" he cries. But that won't prove so easy.
Dazzling but derivative
Diesel returns as his most iconic character in the follow-up to 2000's sleeper SF hit film Pitch Black. But don't call The Chronicles of Riddick a sequel; the filmmakers like to characterize Pitch Black as The Hobbit to Chronicles' Lord of the Rings. That may sound grandiose, but Twohy and company have set out in Riddick to create a universe as epic and all-encompassing as Tolkien's; this first Riddick is even envisioned as the first of three movies, a la Peter Jackson.
That's where the comparison ends, unfortunately. Though ambitious and at times dazzling—particularly in its baroque-meets-Marquis de Sade production design—Riddick ultimately feels a little too derivative to be fully satisfying.
Diesel's Riddick remains one of the most compelling characters in SF: a mass murderer and laconic loner who finds himself thrust, almost against his will, into this epic battle between evil and less evil. But unlike Pitch Black, a relatively straightforward story elegantly told, Riddick almost overwhelms Diesel's antihero with the scope of its vision. That has the unintended effect of diminishing the central character, though Diesel remains charismatic.
The movie contains many pleasures, and Twohy shows that he's got real SF chops in creating worlds and peoples viewers haven't seen before. But the movie ends up a little too reminiscent of everything from Dune to Alien Resurrection to Star Wars: Episode II, and the story doesn't delve deeply enough beneath the armor plating to dredge up anything strikingly new. One wishes to have learned more about how and why the Necromongers (i.e., "death dealers") do that thing they do, for example. Also, the parallels with the original Crusades are evident (with one image even recalling the siege of Baghdad). But no.
