Riddick is the third installment in the Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick series and was released in 2013 starring Vin Diesel, Katee Sackhoff, Karl Urban and Dave Bautista.
The film takes place five years after The Chronicles of Riddick and our “hero” is having a hard time maintaining order amongst the Necromonger’s due to his lack of their religious belief.
Commander Vaako (Karl Urban) offers Riddick a way off the Necromonger’s ship by giving Riddick his own vessel and the location to his home world of Furya. Needless to say but Riddick is double-crossed and left for dead on a desolate planet so that Vaako can take over command of the Necromongers.
As Riddick learns to survive on this new planet he comes into contact with one of the deadliest creatures that he has ever encountered, a poisonous scorpion -like alien predator that thrives in water. With a storm brewing on the horizon it will release a countless number of these alien predators so Riddick activates a distress signal that reveals his identity and location. Not one, but two ships answer the call, both bounty hunters. Now Riddick must find a way to survive the bounty hunters and get off the planet before the storm hits.
I really enjoyed Riddick because it was a no holds barred, R-rated action movie. It doesn’t pull any punches and it is not for the faint of heart. It looks dark and gritty but the effects are pretty good for a movie made with one third of the budget of any action movie released today.
The first half of the film with Riddick stranded on the planet reminded me of Tom Hank’s movie Cast Away, with very little talking and showing our hero overcoming the planets harsh terrain including Riddick domesticating a jackal/dingo alien dog as his version of “Wilson the ball”.
The second half of the film with Riddick is him trying to get off the planet and this was quite similar to that of Pitch Black, the first movie in this in franchise. This is where I was a little disappointed. After a nine year gap between the films I was expecting something a little more original than a rehash of Pitch Black. Don’t get me wrong it is still fun to watch, but they could have done something more.
What really made this movie worthwhile for me though was knowing of Vin Diesel’s commitment to get this film done. Since 2006 Vin Diesel had been on a crusade to get Riddick off the ground. He made a cameo in the Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in exchange for the rights to the Riddick franchise. He kept fans in the loop of its progress through his Facebook and Twitter accounts and when Riddick had budget problems, Vin Diesel mortgaged his home in order to get the film completed. Nice!
The bottom line is, Riddick is a decent sequel and it allows for a continuation of future installments.