The Chronicles of Riddick (film)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

You keep what you kill.

The Chronicles of Riddick is a 2004 science fiction adventure film starring Vin Diesel, taking place five years after Pitch Black. It is the second feature film in the Riddick series.

The film begins by introducing a warrior race known as Necromongers. Conquering any world in their path as their great armada makes its way across space, they travel toward the gates to the Underverse, a dark alternate universe where death apparently has no meaning. Their new leader, the sixth Lord Marshal Zhylaw, makes this pilgrimage like those before him to add to his already vast power.

Riddick, who has been hiding on the ice world of U.V.6, when confronted by bounty hunter Toombs promptly kills his crew and steals his ship in the process. When he confronts Imam on New Mecca believing him to be the one who placed the bounty, he learns that Jack has been imprisoned on Crematoria and of a prophecy that a lone Furyan will bring about the Necromongers' downfall. Soon after this revelation, the Necromonger army attacks destroying all resistance within a day. Riddick is captured and the Lord Marshal soon learns, much to his discomfort, that he is a Furyan and orders his execution. Riddick has other plans and escapes to running into Toombs yet again and allows him to take him prisoner to gain passage to Crematoria. However, Necromonger forces are also on the way.

Tropes used in The Chronicles of Riddick include:

Aereon: [ever-so-slightly smug] Now what would be the odds of that?

  • Big No: Dame Vaako When Riddick, not her husband, kills the Lord Marshall. Overlaps heavily with Narm.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Kyra dies stabbing the Lord Marshall in the back to keep him from killing Riddick.
  • Black and Grey Morality or Evil Versus Evil: Riddick versus the Necromongers.
  • Black Dude Dies First
  • Blown Across the Room: Necromonger guns, which have no regard for "equal and opposite reactions". Apparently, they use gravity.
  • Bond One-Liner:
    • (Riddick is about to abandon a Bounty Hunter in frigid wilderness): Biggest mistake: Empty Gun Rack."
  • Chekhov's Gun: Riddick kills a Necromonger with a knife that was sticking out of his back, and then gets to keep it because the Necromongers "keep what they kill." Guess what he uses this same knife for later.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Toombs attempts to invoke this by going after Riddick with a four man crew, but Riddick takes a very dim view of this, and dispatches them easily.

"A four man crew for me? Fuckin' insulting."

    • He comes with more people next time. Just five. And Riddick allows himself to be captured.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: You can easily survive right next to air that's heated to hundreds of thousands of degrees, so long as you're standing in the shade.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Riddick kills a guy using a teacup.
    • He then places a small skate-key on the rock where the teacup had been sitting a moment ago with obvious implications.
  • Disability Superpower: The Quasi-Dead take this trope to its logical conclusion. As the name suggests, they are practically dead. This near-death state, however, gives them amazing psychic powers.
  • Dressing as the Enemy: Riddick disguises himself as a stormtrooper to get inside the Lord Marshal's ship. Subverted, though. Dame Vaako, one of the only Necromongers who actually knew what he looked like, still recognized him--she just decided to let him have his shot. He also had to kill a couple guards who caught onto him.
  • Evil Is Hammy: See Large Ham, below. Note that all three characters mentioned are Necromongers.
  • Eye Scream: Dame Vaako apparently applies eyeliner with a soldering iron.
  • Faceless Goons: The Necromonger troops, unless they're high-ranking officers.
  • Five-Bad Band:
  • Galactic Conqueror: The Lord Marshal.
  • Genocide Backfire: When the Lord Marshal slaughtered all the Furyans in response to a prophecy that one of them would kill him, he provided Riddick with the motivation to do just that.
  • Genre Savvy: Aereon apparently takes the fact that the movie's only half over into her calculations at one point.
  • Groin Attack: Done to a prison guard with a knife.
  • Humanoid Abomination: The Lord Marshal of the Necromongers, perchance?
  • Human Resources: The Necromongers turn some of their men into nearly-dead telepaths and heavily-wounded soldiers into living sensor drones, though this may be consensual in some cases.
  • Invincible Hero: Riddick is practically omniscient in his plans, is never even touched in battle, and is never in any sort of danger until the Big Bad fights him. This has been one of the criticisms of the movie. Every other entry in the series depict Riddick as more human and killable: Pitch Black, the animated movie, the videogames, even a little flash short created for the Pitch Black website.
  • Knife Nut: Kyra and Riddick use a lot of knives throughout the film, though they're not above using guns if necessary.
  • Lady Macbeth: Dame Vaako manipulates her husband into making an attempt on the Lord Marshal's life.
  • Large Ham: Colm Feore (The Lord Marshal), Karl Urban (Vaako), and Thandie Newton (Dame Vaako).
  • Lighter and Softer: Pitch Black was rated R for a good reason. Chronicles of Riddick was trimmed down by execs to a PG-13 rating and while it was still uber-violent, it was mostly Bloodless Carnage, though the unrated directors cut has more blood.
  • Meaningful Name: Crematoria, a planet where anyone unlucky enough to get caught in the sunlight is incinerated.
  • Men Don't Cry: Riddick is close to tears after Kyra's death. The fact he was in front of a the Necromonger army at the time, who were known to assassinate their leaders for showing weakness, might have had something to do with him manfully holding back the tears and turning them into white-hot rage.
  • Mind Probe: When the Greater Order of the Quasi-Dead probe Riddick's mind to learn more about him.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: The Lord Marshal heard a prophecy that a Furyan would kill him, so he slaughtered all the Furyans. That turned out well.
  • Nigh Invulnerability: Aereon shows off two advantages to the Made of Air version. When she's on a plane another character threatens her while she's standing by an open trap door, (which would make her fall out of the plane) and goes to take a swipe at Aereon with a sword, asking if Aereon (as an Air Elemental) can fly. Aereon goes insubstantial to avoid the sword, then drift across trap door before becoming solid on the other side, where she replies: "No, we can't fly, but we do glide very well." Made all the more awesome by the fact that Aereon is being played by Judi Dench, complete with a little smirk as she says her reply.
  • Once Killed a Man with A Noodle Implement: Riddick threatens to kill a man...with his teacup. Which he does. He lets the victim's friends live, but takes his toothpick and carefully sets it on the rock...
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Played with when the Lord Marshal uses every means at his disposal to try and kill Riddick, before deciding to fight him personally. It's a Double Subversion. In the backstory, he heard a prophecy that a Furyan could kill him, so he slaughtered pretty much the entire planet.
  • The Other Darrin: In Pitch Black, Jack was played by Rhiana Griffith. In Chronicles, Alexa Davalos took over the role, with a new name and a completely new look. Her only explanation for how changed she was: "I'm a whole new animal." Many fans were not happy.
    • Ooh, ooh! Plastic surgery to try and evade the authorities!
    • Salt in the wound is the fact that Rhiana Griffith was willing to reprise the role - and Vin Diesel apparently wanted her, but was told by executives she needed to "toughen up" for the role.
  • Outrun the Fireball: The burning sunlight on Crematoria. Initially played with when the bounty hunters try and make planetside before they get hit by the sunrise, played straight later.
  • The Plan: Discussed. "Because that was my plan."
  • Play-Along Prisoner: In Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick uses this trope with the bounty hunters sent to collect him, in order to get to a specific prison planet to find someone, knowing that the relatively short-ranged bounty hunter's spacecraft could only go to one of a few prison planets.
  • Precision F-Strike: "Give me your soul." "Fuck you!"
  • Redshirt Army: The Necromongers defeat the Helion forces in a single night, which only takes a few minutes onscreen.
  • Religion of Evil: The Necromongers.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: see Genocide Backfire.
  • She's All Grown Up: Kyra.
  • Sherlock Scan: Subverted. Riddick climbs up into a room where a fight took place, and is able to instantly deduce what happened. When he's incredulously asked how he figured all of it out, he growls "because that was my plan."
  • Shut Up, Kirk: The Lord Marshal does this to an outspoken prisoner trying to rally the others against conversion by ripping out his opposition's soul. Considering that Helion's essentially a religion melting pot world, this is actually the perfect way to get to them.
  • Slap Slap Kiss: Dame Vaako and her husband are a rather literal example. He slaps her, she tries to attack him, they have sex.
    • Further, a line of dialogue right before the "Kiss" part indicates that this is not only "normal" behavior for the both of them, but it's also considered foreplay.
  • Spiritual Successor: Inverted. Chronicles of Riddick literally is a sequel to Pitch Black, but nothing about it feels so. The first was a pretty standard horror movie with humans in a futuristic setting, while the second has elements of sci-fi and fantasy giving it a completely different feel (Riddick is an alien, now?), right down to the titles of each film. It'd be like placing Hannibal Lecter in an Urban Fantasy as a Noble Demon and calling it a sequel to Silence of the Lambs... which is kind of what they did.
  • Subliminal Seduction: In The Chronicles of Riddick (Unrated Version), during the quick cuts of the action during the fight scene between the mercs and the prison wardens on Crematoria, you will see a quick shot of only the female merc's (clothed) breasts as she turns - for no apparent reason. You cannot see her face or hands or weapons - just breasts.
  • Telepathy: The Quasi-Dead possess powerful telepathic powers.
  • Tempting Fate: "So you're gonna kill us with your soup cup?"
    • No. It's a tea cup, he's going to kill you with his tea cup.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Kyra, sometime between Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Arguably, Riddick and Kyra.
  • What Beautiful Eyes!: Dame Vaako tells Riddick this when he removes his shades.
  • X Meets Y: Conan the Barbarian In Space.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: With a dash of Klingon Promotion thrown in. Part of the Necromonger religion is the principle that "you keep what you kill". If an enemy strikes you down, they get what you have. Within the ranks, however, it's expected that the one doing the killing has a legitimate reason for it, which is why the Lord Marshall isn't simply being challenged left and right for his spot (that and he's a supernatural badass).
  • Your Soul Is Mine: The Lord Marshal, after visiting the Underverse, gained the ability to partially separate his soul from his body. In addition to inhuman speed, this also gave him the ability to literally rip the soul straight out of a person's body. The victim lives so long as the Lord Marshal is holding their soul, but drop dead as soon as he throws it to the floor.
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