Pitch Black & The Chronicles of Riddick Two Pack Edition
Riddick hits Blu-ray in this two pack film extravaganza beginning with his introduction in the survival story of Pitch Black and continuing in The Chronicles of Riddick.
Film making 18/25
Cinematography 18/25
Audio 18/25
Bonus Features 20/25
Total 74/100
Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick in a two pack on Blu-ray is about the most Vin Diesel sci-fi action anyone could want. Vin Diesel stars as Richard B. Riddick in Pitch Black and continues the story in the sequel The Chronicles of Riddick.
Pitch Black starts with Riddick in custody being transported to a prison along with other more upstanding citizens who are going to a colony nearby. The ship is on auto-pilot and the crew and passengers are in hibernation during the long interstellar flight and the ship flies through the tail of a comet.
Some of the crew and passengers are killed when meteors from the comets tail damage the ship and the ship makes an emergency landing on a nearby planet. The planet’s system has three suns and the orbits make for a very long daylight cycle on the planet of 22 years.
When the sun goes down creatures that hide in deep caverns emerge and take over the night, feeding on anything they can find, even themselves. When the crew and passengers recover from the crash and take stock the bounty hunter that had captured Riddick says he is a lawman and warns the others about Riddick.
One by one a few of the passengers are taken by the creatures when they are working near the caves or the mining operation that was found on the planet. It would seem that years before a mining site was in full operation and then suddenly shut down leaving everything behind.
The copilot that survived takes charge of the passengers and works to get the small survey craft at the mining operation back in order using parts from the crashed ship. While at the ship trying to get the parts the suns set and darkness takes over the planet releasing the creatures who were hiding from the light.
Riddick is quite at home in the dark thanks to a surgery that enhanced his night vision but leaves him vulnerable to bright lights like daylight so he wears welders goggles when outdoors. At first the passengers that survived are afraid of Riddick because the bounty hunter tells of terrible tales of murder and mayhem but they see he is only looking out for himself.
He ends up helping the group get parts back to the small ship at the mining facility but several of the group are picked off by the creatures. Riddick ends up having a last confrontation with the bounty hunter when he plans to kill Riddick to ensure their own escape and not allow Riddick the chance to escape without any of them.
Riddick proves him wrong after allowing the creatures to kill the bounty hunter and then helping the rest to escape the planet including a small but tough girl named Jack and a shaman named Abu al-Walid. Pitch Black was a pretty good film but did not go beyond a pretty decent science fiction movie, being more of a cult type film for many.
The movie had its good moments and of course had the brutish Vin Diesel as Riddick who was always sure of what he was doing and what was going to happen. The film dealt a lot with the emotions of survival as well as the people dealing with this situation and Riddick was always the one on top of the situation at all times.
The Blu-ray edition of Pitch Black has a lot of bonus features including a commentary track, picture in picture additions while the movie is playing, several making of features, a game preview for Escape from Butchers Bay and a few others. The bonus content is a wide variety of movie additions, making of features and some of the Riddick game and animation additions for a good entertaining variety of bonus content.
The Chronicles of Riddick did not fare as well at the theatres as the first Riddick film but is a good glimpse into what Riddick is and why he so feared. Chronicles starts out sometime after Pitch Black with another bounty hunter group after Riddick on a frozen planet where they try to capture Riddick.
Riddick ends up killing all of them except their leader and stealing their ship so he can continue his escapades, but first he needs to find out who sent the bounty hunters after him. On another planet we are introduced to the people responsible for wiping Riddick’s people out except for a few, the Necromongers.
The Necromongers are led by the Lord Marshal who has supernatural abilities and can steal people’s souls from their body. The Necromongers are out to conquer the universe one system at a time by forcing people to join their religious cult or die.
Once a prophecy was told that a Furyan would kill the Lord Marshal so he had the planet wiped out and his army killed every Furyan they could find. Riddick is one of the last Furyan people but does not want anything to do with the Necromongers.
Riddick goes to the planet that he found out the bounty for him originated to find the old shaman that was a survivor from the previous film. He talks with the shaman about the bounty to find out that the shaman only told one person and then the Necromongers attack the planet.
Once the defenses are down the planet leaders meet with the Necromonger’s Lord Marshal and Riddick goes to confront the soldier who killed the shaman Abu in the attack. Riddick easily kills the soldier who was one of the best fighters and the Lord Marshal has Riddick taken to the psychics to find out who he is.
Riddick escapes when the psychics figure out he is the one foretold in the prophecy and runs into Toombs, the bounty hunter from the beginning of the film. Toombs has hired a new crew after Riddick killed the previous one and captures Riddick rather easily but Riddick has a plan.
They need to take him to some prison colony or facility that can hold him and Riddick knows they will only be able to take him to Crematoria. Jack, the small girl from the previous movie has killed a few people and been sent to Crematoria according to the shaman and Riddick knows he will be taken there by Toombs as the only place that can hold him.
At Crematoria, a large planet that has a very hot day cycle, Riddick is sent below with the other inmates and the bounty hunter crew negotiates with the guards for the bounty on Riddick. When Toombs asks for more money than the guards are willing to pay they say it will be a few days before they get an answer from people that will pay for Riddick.
Riddick meets Jack who now calls herself Kyra and has become a lot like Riddick in his callousness and hard core physique. The guards and Toombs crew argue over the price of Riddick and end up in a shootout in the jails control center that is able to move up to the surface of the planet to get fresh air for the underground facility.
Once the bullets stop the inmates go up to the office to find the doors leading to the train that rides to the surface blasted closed and the train destroyed. Some of the guards are going on foot to the surface and the spaceship in a hanger there while Riddick and a few of the inmates move out to the surface to run to the hanger.
The surface of the planet is a cool temperature during the night but gets to be in the hundreds during the day so anyone caught in the daylight will be incinerated. The inmates including Riddick and Kyra run across the surface and have a few confrontations with the guards from escape tunnels.
The guards make it to the hanger only to be confronted by a contingent of Necromongers sent by the Lord Marshall on the trail of Riddick to kill him. They shoot it out with the guards and Riddick with Kyra are in the hills overlooking the hanger with daylight quickly approaching.
Riddick, Kyra and the other inmates have a last fight with the Necromongers and the guards with almost everyone ending up dead. Riddick ends up hurling the last of the group using a blast of power he received from a spirit named Shirah, saying it is the power of a defeated people of his race.
The commander sent to kill Riddick leaves before doing so, escaping the rising sun and leaving Riddick and a high officer of the Lord Marshals on the planet but taking Kyra with him. The Profiler, the officer sent to see to the end of Riddick tells Riddick the Lord Marshal will leave him alone if Riddick promises to never look for the Lord Marshall.
The Profiler knows Riddick will never agree to this and tells Riddick he is also a Furyan from the same planet as Riddick just before he commits suicide by walking into the daylight and incinerating himself. Riddick uses the cargo ship the bounty hunters used to get to the planet to return to the Necromongers and seek out the Lord Marshal as well as rescue Kyra.
Riddick fights the Lord Marshal but ends up not being able to get the upper hand until Kyra who has been transformed into a Necromonger fights the conditioning and stabs the Lord Marshal in the back. When the commander that was sent out to kill Riddick takes the opportunity in the fight to try his hand at killing him the Lord Marshal uses his powers to avoid the attack.
Riddick senses the Lord Marshals move and stabs the Lord Marshal in the head when he moves simultaneously between two points in the room to avoid the attack by his officer. The Necromongers have a saying and code, you keep what you kill, which means whoever kills the Lord Marshal will become their new leader and Riddick has now fulfilled the prophecy and done just that.
Kyra was mortally wounded when the Lord Marshal threw her into a stone pillar with a spike protruding from it and Riddick holds her as she dies. The end of movie has Riddick sitting on the throne of the Necromongers and all of them bowing to him.
The Chronicles of Riddick has even more bonus features than Pitch Black with several making of features, commentaries, picture in picture, and deleted scenes. The extras here revolve around the film as well as the legend of Riddick and his survival skills that include a great feature Anatomy of a Fight Scene.
Both films include the unrated versions as well as the theatrical release and have features that are exclusive to one of the versions or the other. They both have the high definition picture and sound with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and all the other features of Blu-ray like subtitles and such.
The Chronicles of Riddick also includes a special BD-Live feature commentary from David Twohy and Vin Diesel that is the first BD-Live feature I have come across that is worthwhile. This is a commentary created in January 2009 for the Blu-ray release of The Chronicles of Riddick added to the unrated version of the film.
Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick are both pretty good movies and for science fiction fans and well worth the cost of the two pack edition for some fast paced Vin Diesel action and adventure as Riddick.