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"Look at you. All back of the bus and shit."

One of the dorkiest, most conceptually tin-eared things ever, sort of a bro'd out Edgar Rice Burroughs. But hell if it isn't committed, and at least it has the good sense to be both relentlessly happening at you and bafflingly stupid, not to mention the killer final moments. Burns through plot like a gas explosion, and absolutely bursts with esoteric design and outlandish characters; there's a massive, occasionally downright gorgeous and deeply silly universe crammed into every little corner here. You can easily imagine Twohy and Vin Diesel hanging out after a long day of D&D, their faces plastered with the beaming smiles of proud fathers as they watch their personal, unreleased 4 1/2 hour cut of this. To call it kind of awesome is probably an overstatement, but it's definitely a kind of awesome.

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it's like fritz lang directed a mountain dew commercial

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vin diesel's self-image as the last great auteur actor, carefully cultivating an esoteric brand of genre dorkiness that both endears and alienates contemporary audiences & critics. the chronicles of riddick is perhaps the apex of diesel's twin desires to both make big-budget mass entertainment and to indulge in an illustration of his offbeat scifi/fantasy obsessions gleamed via tabletop RPG campaigns, anime and videogames. while dominic toretto is diesel's most famous archetype, one could easily claim that riddick is the role that truly codifies diesel's strengths as a performer: his burly physique, the growled baritones, the dreadfully sincere yet still playful tone, the literal animistic magnetism, and especially the pouty rugged distance that makes him not always a strict audience surrogate, but…

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This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"

The entire Riddick franchise, and Chronicles in particular, feels like the logical extension of Vin Diesel's love for Dungeons & Dragons. He's a nerd just like the rest of us, and this series gives him a perfect chance to play a pure Chaotic Good character. He loves Riddick so much that he reportedly leveraged his house to finance the latest installment, and this love makes him a wonderfully fun character to watch. It seems like he does the Fast and Furious movies to fund-raise for Riddick, and honestly that makes me love him. Anyone willing to make populist action movies in order to bankroll crummy science fiction is my kind of guy.

So…

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at one point, the antagonist rips a man’s soul out of his body and the camera shows the eyes of this cursed being as he realises that not even his god can save him from extinction. that’s not even the wildest thing in this fucking insane testament to space opera madness and glorious explosions on wild looking planet. blind Vin Diesel goes full beast mode for the entire runtime, evil Karl Urban has very aggressive sex with his wife Thandie Newton, Vin Diesel utters the line “a whole lot of Necro firepower” there are weird knight androids who fight on a cosmic desert wasteland for the sake of intergalactic religious fascism, nothing really makes much sense at all, the lore…

Review by Jamelle Bouie ★★★

I honestly could not tell you what happens in the second act of this movie other than it fucking ripped. Riddick rules, all hail the new emperor of the Necromongers.

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You probably wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen this. There’s a part where he puts his goggles on just so he can dramatically take them off again a few seconds later. 

It’s awesome.

Review by Bryan Espitia ★★★★ Liked

It’s wild that the response to Pitch Black being a small sci-fi horror hit was to make the next one a $100M epic space opera that feels like part of a completely different series. There’s arguably too much going on here but something about this ridiculously dense world is fascinating, it’s clear there’s so much love put into this which kinda offsets how silly and vaguely confusing the whole thing is. Riddick killing someone with a tea cup is amazing.

Review by cameron fetter ★★★★

fuck yeah dude. this kind of stuff shits all over the deadly whedon snark plague thats infected big budget genre movies. (its healthy for my mind and how i think about art to turn this into a culture war)
vin diesel is the doofiest mary sue, his tough guy outfit is a wifebeater and swim goggles, he has cool deadite eyes and he can tame alien wolves by just staring them down. plus he can do flips and make big explosions and he's the chosen one and he throws knives and stabs people :)
this movie has it all, it's got soul-stealing intergalactic baddies in chainmail and skull armor, a volcano planet called crematoria, judi dench as some kind of…

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A huge mess that feels like I'm dropping into someone's RPG campaign 3/4s of the way through. It's like DUNE, CONAN, MACBETH, a prison escape, and a sequel to PITCH BLACK all got together and threw a sloppy party.

I love it so.

I'd have paid ission to witness the terrified faces of the studio execs during the scripting, production and release phase.

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Libertarian Dune.

6/10