Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick are two of my brother’s favorite movies and it struck me as weird that I never got around to seeing any of these two movies. The most that I’ve seen of these two films is the last eight minutes of Chronicles of Riddick where he was crowned Lord Marshall of the Necromonger fleet, beating out Vaako (Karl Urban) for the coveted post.

Now, almost a decade after the last movie, Vin Diesel returns to reprise his role as Richard Riddick, who, after being crowned as ruler of the necromongers, decides to strike a deal with Vaako. In exchange for directions to his home planet of Furya, Riddick agrees to renege the throne to Vaako. But a double cross leaves Riddick stranded in an unknown planet rife with dangerous monsters. As a storm threatens to unleash a horde of demons his way, Riddick triggers the alarm which invites mercenaries to the planet in the hopes of collecting the bounty set on his head.

The third film in the franchise hardly has anything to do with the first two movies. Aside from a flashback of his short-lived rule as leader of the necromongers, and some reference to the events in Pitch Black, the story of Riddick could very well become a standalone movie. This is good news for those who have not seen either of its two predecessors but I’m not quite sure if this movie contributed to the franchise at all. I felt that while it was not a bad movie, it was unncessary to the franchise if not to jumpstart interest in the Riddick fanbase to see if another sequel would be feasible.

Technically, Riddick was hard core sci fi. Alien monsters and high tech weapons reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stint in Predator, it was also cool to see Dave Bautista (Batista) of WWE fame in this movie as one of the muscles of the bounty hunter team.

I must say though that this is one testosterone laden flick as it features only one female character. Well, technically, there were two but in terms of screen time, Dahl’s character was the only one who mattered.

I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed the movie more if I had a better background of the first movies but since I didn’t, it was good that I was still able to connect the events and understand most of what the characters were discussing.

All in all, David Twohy did good in providing this film with direction but I would have preferred for the franchise to stop at Chronicles… Compared to the ending of this one, which was rather open ended, I thought that the end of the second movie made much more sense to close the franchise.