So as I said in my last post, I stayed up late to watch Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick, I really enjoy Pitch Black and Chronicles for the way they make you care for this anti-hero who mostly seems to be out for himself, and begruginly manages to help out others.

I think where Chronicles separates itself from Pitch Black, and possibly why it’s not so well recieved, is that Pitch Black seems a bit more grounded in some form of reality.  Granted it takes place on another planet which somehow orbits a binary star and a separate blue dwarf, and it has flying beasties that only come out at night (every 22 years) and murder the place, but the rest of the story is so very human.  It’s about how people make assumptions about a person’s worth, and how everyone is flawed in some way.

Chronicles breaks that a bit by making it seem as though Furians are somehow basically different (better?) than any other human, and to make matters worse, there are half dead people from the underverse with special soul stealing abilities and elementals.  Add in a bunch of new equally strange planets (how exactly does the planet Crematoria go from -300 degrees to 700 degrees just by having the sun come up), strange new animals, and fantasticly destructive weapons and it’s a wholly different universe to the one we live in.

That said, I think it’s still a fun movie to watch (along with the animated Chronicles movie which details the story between Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick) and look forward to any sequels this franchise produces.  I have heard that there were originally 3 scripts written as a trilogy and Chronicles of Riddick was the first in that trilogy, so we’ll see if they ever get around to making them.

Summary: I think it’s imperative to watch Pitch Black first, and if you like the Riddick character and want to see him do even more bad-ass killing, then definately see this movie.

• Movie Review
• Riddick
• Vin Diesel