Though Pitch Black was a cool movie, I'm not sure anyone was really clamoring for a sequel. Certainly I wasn't. The main thing that made PB such a gem was simply that it was surprisingly good, not that it was any kind of wildly original or gigantic sci-fi classic. In making a sequel, the element of surprise is lost, so The Chronicles of Riddick suffers from the burden of expectation. It needed to be fuckin' great. Sadly, it's mostly Riddick-ulous. The enigmatic, almost Zen-like confidence and power of the character was nicely presented in the original PB ensemble … because Riddick was one ambiguous character among many with shifting loyalties, he kept you guessing. Was he evil? Was he good? Was he the villain or the hero? In Riddick, the ambiguity is gone; you know he's a killer and a convict, and that he swears allegiance to no one, but also that he's got a moral center. And taken out of the context of a more or less equal ensemble cast, Riddick becomes a hero to such an overglorified extent that despite some amazing visuals, the audience is left to chuckle at the pomposity of it all. There are so many upward shots of Vin Diesel standing defiantly against impossible obstacles that it starts seeming more like propaganda than popcorn movie. And Mr. Diesel, sir, I knew Adolf Hitler, and you are no Adolf Hitler. The story is pure SciFiCon hogwash, with Riddick being called into service as the universe's sole hope of survival against the invading Necromongers, a sort of Borg Scientologist sect looking to convert all humanity to its faith, and to kill anyone who won't convert. The Necromongers dress in Gothed-out Arthurian chain-mail (with the requisite S&M leather quotient) and have ships and cities so straight out of H.R. Giger that watching the film feels a lot like staring at someone's Emerson, Lake, & Palmer collection. There's a doubting second-in-command, a treacherous Lady MacBeth type (played by Thandie Newton in presumed homage to Aaliyah), and the return of Jack, now Kira, the sexy teen girl who was the boyish young girl survivor in PB. Riddick and Kira are totally a BDSM Batman & Robin fantasy, which isn't such a bad thing. What is most disappointing about the movie is that while it executes its clichés perfectly and with much visual excitement, it doesn't manage to actually invert or rise above any of the clichés. So while it certainly looks better than a typical Star Trek or Alien flick, it's ultimately hard to get excited about anything that happens, 'cause you've seen it all before. I enjoyed it, then forgot about it later the same day. As with Vin Diesel's specious attempt to craft an x-treme James Bond franchise with xXx, Riddick mainly proves that even if they're kinda cool, most movies just don't need to be made.
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