I find Riddick to be an enigmatic and engaging character. He's stoic in the face of danger, self-preserving and ruthless but has a set of values which in his first story saw him attempt to lead the less capable to safety.
This time around there is more in jeopardy than the lives of a disparate band, there is the diversity of the universe at stake as the religious cult of The Necromancer invade and mind-wash one planet at a time.
Riddick can not manage to avoid the maelstrom of The Necromunger because it has been foretold that he alone will be their downfall, so quite unintelligently the Necromancer peruse their fate instead of letting him to his naturally selfish ways. This sets us up for some awesome set pieces, the most exciting of which is a race against the dawn to the last ship off of a planet where the sunlight will burn you to death.
Dame Judy Dench appears in a career misstep as a ghostly fortune teller, and even with her credentials this movie will only ever be of the B-type. All other principles are capable and the dialogue is chucklesome rather than absurd. But despite the grander setting over the stars and the story about the sanitisation of culture through extremist worship, Chronicles is simply a balls out action movie and probably more enjoyable for it too.
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