Chronicles of Riddick, The (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Oct 03, 2024
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

David Twohy

Release Date(s)

2004 (September 17, 2024)

Studio(s)

Universal Pictures (Arrow Video)

• Film/Program Grade: See Below
• Video Grade: See Below
• Audio Grade: See Below
• Extras Grade: A+
• Overall Grade: A+

Review

David Twohy’s Pitch Black may be derivative of Alien and a few other science fiction films, but it still felt like a breath of fresh air when it was released in 2000, enough so that it became a minor sleeper hit. The fact that it contained some inventive worldbuilding and a charismatic lead performance from Vin Diesel certainly didn’t hurt. So, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a sequel, but that’s where things took an unexpected twist. Pitch Black was a tight, self-contained horror thriller about a group of survivors from a wrecked spacecraft who encounter deadly alien creatures and struggle to endure the long night. As with many similar films, it was essentially Ten Little Indians in outer space, with the group continuing to dwindle as the characters were picked off one by one. On the other hand, The Chronicles of Riddick is... a sweeping epic saga about the fight for freedom against an intergalactic jihad led by a religious death cult? To say that’s not what fans of Pitch Black were expecting would be an understatement, but Twohy and Diesel followed their own particular muses, expectations be damned.

Ridley Scott’s Alien may have been derivative of Planet of the Vampires and It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but it still managed to establish a template of its own after its release in 1979. In one form or another, every other film in the franchise has stuck to the same basic formula (and Romulus is no exception). The details may change, but Alien sequels have usually involved a journey to an encounter with alien species, with the characters being picked off one at a time in a confined setting. Since Ken and Jim Wheat’s script for Pitch Black wore its Alien inspirations on its sleeve, they also followed that basic template. Yet the seeds of dissent were sown when David Twohy was hired to direct. He ended up rewriting their script, adding much of the worldbuilding detail that made the final film so memorable. More importantly, he also added the character of Riddick, but it was the fact that he cast Vin Diesel to play the part that really opened the door to a larger universe. Riddick was originally supposed to die at the end of the film, but as embodied by Diesel, he became so interesting that Twohy decided to have another character suffer that fate instead. The rest, as they say, was history.

The obvious approach for a sequel would have been to bring a different group of characters back to the planet from Pitch Black and have them face off against the same aliens. After all, that’s more or less what every single Alien film has done. Yet as memorably menacing as the photosensitive aliens of Pitch Black may have been, they weren’t half as menacing as Riddick, who became the ultimate antihero. The tagline on the posters was “Fight Evil with Evil,” and that ended up becoming Twohy’s real template for the rest of the franchise. So instead of aping Alien one more time, Twohy drew inspiration for The Chronicles of Riddick from a strikingly different source: Frank Herbert’s Dune. Not the settings or the characters, but rather in terms of the nature of intergalactic conflict driven by religious extremism and the messianic impulse. Riddick may have been chosen to survive in Pitch Black, but in The Chronicles of Riddick, he became an actual Chosen One.

Of course, Riddick is still an antihero driven by the instinct for self-preservation above all else, but just as that drive ended up benefitting the other characters in Pitch Black, this time his quest for survival benefits entire planets across the whole of the known universe. That’s because it puts him in conflict with the Necromongers, a warlike cult led by the Lord Marshal (Colm Feore). The Necromongers have been swallowing up world after world in their pursuit of crossing the Threshold into the Underverse, converting all human life that they encounter to their cause. When they target the New Mecca of Helion Prime, where fellow Pitch Black survivor Imam (Keith David) has settled, Riddick finds himself drawn into the conflict.

Not willingly, of course. There’s still a bounty on Riddick’s head, and bounty hunters like Toombs (Nick Chinlund) are on his tail. Plus, there’s dissent from within the Necromongers, with Lord Vakko (Karl Urban) and Dame Vakko (Thandiwe Newton) having plans of their own, and Riddick might be useful to them. (Dune may have inspired the overarching story, but Twohy freely borrowed Macbeth and Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare.) Riddick even finds himself entangled with his old acquaintance Jack (Alexa Davelos), who has taken her admiration of him in Pitch Black to the extreme and become a vicious killer of her own. Yet the one with the biggest interest in Riddick is the Elemental Aereon (Judi Dench), who believes that he’s the sole survivor of the Furyan race and the answer to a prophecy. Riddick answers to no man and no prophecy, but his survival instincts might just end up fulfilling that prophecy anyway.

Considering the fact that very little of this has anything to do with Pitch Black, it’s a ton of lore to establish in a short period of time. Aside from the three returning characters, that’s a lot for viewers to absorb, especially when it’s all so unexpected. Pitch Black had stayed tightly focused on the one planet, offering only a few vague hints as to the larger universe around it. The Chronicles of Riddick giddily flings viewers to and fro throughout that universe while giving them little time to catch up with what’s happening. There are different planets like U.V., Helion Prime, and Crematoria (never mind the whole unmoored worlds of the Necromongers). All that, plus a variety of peoples and cultures. It’s wildly ambitious, arguably to its detriment sometimes. The Chronicles of Riddick is equal parts portentous and pretentious, with little of the energy and wit that had driven Pitch Black. That’s not a criticism, but it’s something that some fans of Pitch Black have had a hard time accepting. It’s the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t nature of franchise filmmaking: give the people what they expect, and they’ll complain that it’s too similar, but give them what they don’t expect and they’ll complain that it’s too different.

To be fair, some of the voluminous lore in The Chronicles of Riddick feels a little underdeveloped. Part of that is due to the contractually mandated two-hour theatrical running time that Twohy had to deliver. For home video, he was granted the opportunity to create a director’s cut that fleshed out some of those details and cleared up some confusion (although it did expand one plot angle that creates some confusion of its own). Still, if Alien and Pitch Black taught one lesson, it’s that the most effective world-building is the kind that remains in the background, with most of the tantalizing details left unexplained. (Finding out the origins of the Space Jockey only serves to diminish its impact). There are plenty of tantalizing glimpses of otherworldly elements in The Chronicles of Riddick that are left for viewers to sort out, like the way that the Necromonger technology seems to be based on death and decay. While that can make for a confusing first viewing, it’s ultimately more satisfying not to know what it all means.

Viewed from that limited perspective, The Chronicles of Riddick is a largely successful attempt to bring the character of Riddick into a larger universe. Twohy has a genuine gift for worldbuilding, carefully working out all the details of how things work even though he doesn’t always explain it to the audience. He absorbed visual influences as varied as David Lynch’s Dune and Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars and synthesized them into a distinctive whole. The narrative may waver at times, but the worldbuilding never does. In fact, there’s a good chance that Denis Villeneuve absorbed some of the visual influences of The Chronicles of Riddick into his own version of Dune. The great circle of influences never stops, and The Chronicles of Riddick has earned its place along that arc. It may not be the greatest sequel ever made, but it’s one of the most ambitious in terms of how widely it diverges from its source material. As flawed as the results may be, that was a left turn worth taking.

Cinematographer Hugh Johnson shot The Chronicles of Riddick on 35mm film (in Super-35 format) using Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL and Panaflex Platinum cameras with Panavision spherical lenses. Post-production work was completed as a 2K Digital Intermediate, framed at 2.40:1 for its theatrical release (theatrical prints were anamorphic blow-ups). This version is based on a new 4K 16-bit scan of the original camera negative that was done at Universal, with the additional material for the director’s cut upscaled from the 2K source files. (As a result, the frame jumps that David Twohy references in his old introduction are still present.) It does appear that at least some of the composite work in the film was done optically, but any digital composites may also have been upscaled from 2K. Digital cleanup and grading was performed by Silver Salt Restoration in London (High Dynamic Range is offered in both Dolby Vision and HDR10). The entire digital restoration was supervised by James White and James Pearcy at Arrow Films, with David Twohy approving the final results.

There’s a lot of effects work in The Chronicles of Riddick, and regardless of the source, it does tend to look a bit softer than the surrounding material. Yet the rest of the film shows significant gains of resolution in 4K, with the closeups looking particularly sharp and refined. Unsurprisingly, though, this version of The Chronicles of Riddick is all about the HDR. While it’s still a relatively dark film overall, the contrast range is excellent with deep black levels and glowing highlights where appropriate—sunrise on Crematoria really stands out in that regard. The overall range of colors is intentionally somewhat limited, but there’s a dazzling array of shades withing that range. Like Pitch Black before it, every specific environment in The Chronicles of Riddick has a distinctive color palette, and it’s all reproduced beautifully in 4K with HDR.

Since The Chronicles of Riddick was shot full frame on Super-35mm film and later cropped to 2.40:1, Arrow is also offering an alternate version of the theatrical cut framed at the full 1.78:1 home video aspect ratio. Aside from the framing differences, the video quality is identical. While The Chronicles of Riddick was always intended to be exhibited at 2.40:1, Johnson protected for open-matte and it appears that the visual effects were also rendered to take advantage of it, so it’s anything but dead space. While many of the compositions do look more comfortable at 2.40:1, the extra real estate does benefit all of the environments in the film. The Chronicles of Riddick is all about worldbuilding, and there’s an argument to be made that it’s more effective at 1.78:1.

Audio for all three versions of the film is offered in English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio with optional English SDH subtitles. For both versions of the theatrical cut, Arrow is also offering a new English Dolby Atmos mix that was created at Deluxe Audio in London. The theatrical mix for The Chronicles of Riddick has always been a lively one, with plenty of surround activity and decent bass extension. Graeme Revell’s bombastic score sounds appropriately thunderous. Yet the new Atmos mix improves on that foundation by providing more precise steering, even deeper bass extension, and noticeable activity from the overhead channels. The theatrical mix is still a viable option, but the quality of the Atmos track leads to a quandary.

The director’s cut has some definite advantages over the theatrical cut, but it’s 5.1 only. Unfortunately, that means you can’t have it both ways. The director’s cut is still the best way to experience The Chronicles of Riddick for the first time, since it plugs some narrative holes (even if it introduces others), but the Atmos mix breathes new life into the theatrical cut. Yet the real audio/video sweet spot (left of the spine, fourth lumbar down) might just be the 1.78:1 version of the theatrical cut with the Atmos soundtrack. It’s still worth watching the director’s cut first, but if you’re already familiar with the story, the open-matte theatrical cut in Atmos is arguably the best way to fly. It’s certainly the most spectacular one.

THEATRICAL CUT (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): B-/A/A
DIRECTOR’S CUT (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): B/A/A-

Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of The Chronicles of Riddick is a three-disc set that includes each version of the film on its own separate UHD (Arrow is releasing a Blu-ray edition separately). The insert is reversible, featuring new artwork by Dan Mumford on one side and the original theatrical poster artwork on the other. It includes a foil-embossed slipcover with a slightly different version of the Mumford artwork (compare the two and you’ll understand why). There’s also a 44-page booklet featuring an essay by Walter Chaw; the original production notes from 2004; and the Chronicles Compendium that was created for the 2009 Blu-ray. The following extras are included—gather around the fire, my children, because we’re going to be here for a while:

DISC ONE: THEATRICAL CUT

• Ambition on Another Scale: Chronicling a Blockbuster Sequel (HD – 73:48)
• Realizing Riddick (HD – 13:49)
• Back to Black (HD – 10:42)
• Chronicles of a Cult Film Society (HD – 10:17)
• Trailer Gallery:
  • Teaser Trailer (Upscaled SD – 1:28)
  • Theatrical Trailer (Upscaled SD – 2:22)

All of Arrow’s newly-created extras for The Chronicles of Riddick are offered on the first disc. They kick off with Ambition on Another Scale, a feature-length documentary on the making of the film. It includes interviews with David Twohy, Keith David, Linus Roche, miniature effects artist Ian Hunter, storyboard artist Brian Murray, concept artist Matt Codd, and matte painter Dylan Cole, with some limited behind-the-scenes footage mixed in for good measure. It covers the conception of the story and the new characters, plus the production design, sets, miniatures, matte paintings, and the mixed reaction to the film. Twohy says that he was the science guy while Vin Diesel was the fantasy guy, and for this film, they met more or less in the middle between the two. Twohy loves taking characters in unexpected directions, and this story gave him the opportunity to do so. There are some interesting details provided here, like how Twohy ended up making an indirect cameo in the film as a part of the design of one of the spaceships. There’s also some discussion about the final results of all this creativity, with Keith David admitting that the film wasn’t always successful in the scope of its ambitions.

The rest of the extras on the first disc are extended interviews that were recorded during the sessions for Ambition on Another Scale. Realizing Riddick is with Twohy, who explains more about the character of Riddick and how the sequel developed, including some unused ideas that the studio nixed, and he also describes his involvement with some of the ancillary media like the comic books and video games. Back to Black features Brian Murray, who talks about his involvement with the development of the entire saga. Finally, Chronicles of a Cult Film Celebrity is with Keith David, who openly acknowledges that he prefers Pitch Black to The Chronicles of Riddick. He also discusses some of his other legendary cult movie appearances.

All that, and we’ve barely even scratched the surface yet:

DISC TWO: DIRECTOR’S CUT

• Audio Commentary by David Twohy and Vin Diesel
• Audio Commentary by David Twohy, Karl Urban, and Alexa Davelos
• Introduction by David Twohy (Upscaled SD – :48)
• Creation of New Mecca (Upscaled SD – 11:10)
• Riddick Rises (Upscaled SD – 13:15)
• Keep What You Kill (Upscaled SD – 17:28)
• Visual Effects Revealed (Upscaled SD – 6:02)
• Interactive Production Calendar (Upscaled SD – 24:39, 33 in all)
• Production Vignettes (Upscaled SD – 33:59, 4 in all)
• Deleted Scenes:
  • Aeron and Imam on Helion (Upscaled SD – 1:35)
  • Original U.V. Planet 6 (Upscaled SD – 2:55)
  • Toombs’ Demise (Upscaled SD – 3:13)
• Virtual Guide to The Chronicles of Riddick:
  • Conquest Icon (Toombs) (Upscaled SD – :32)
  • Crematoria (Kyra) (Upscaled SD – :28)
  • Crematoria (Toombs) (Upscaled SD – :28)
  • Elementals (Aereon) (Upscaled SD – :35)
  • Elementals (Dame Vakko) (Upscaled SD – :28)
  • Helion Prime (Imam) (Upscaled SD – :36)
  • Planet UV (Toombs) (Upscaled SD – :30)
  • Lord Marshal (Purifier) (Upscaled SD – :50)
  • Necromonger (Aereon) (Upscaled SD – :37)
  • Necromonger (Dame Vakko) (Upscaled SD – :39)
  • Necropolis (Lord Marshal) (Upscaled SD – :44)
  • New Mecca (Imam) (Upscaled SD – :37)
  • Quasi-Deads (Purifier) (Upscaled SD – :42)
• Toombs’ Chase Log (Upscaled SD – 9:59, 25 in all)
• Vin Diesel’s Guided Tour (Upscaled SD – 3:10)
• Riddick’s Worlds:
  • The Basilica Center Floor (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • Helion Fountain Square (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • Crematoria Main Hanger (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • The Lord Marshal’s Throne (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • Imam’s Living Room (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • Quasi’s Grotto (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • Planet UV6 (Upscaled SD – :26)
  • The Slam Center (Upscaled SD – :26)
• On-Set Interviews:
  • Vin Diesel (Upscaled SD – 3:14)
  • Dame Judi Dench (Upscaled SD – 2:44)
  • Thandiwe Newton (Upscaled SD – 3:17)
  • Karl Urban (Upscaled SD – 3:29)
  • Colm Feore (Upscaled SD – 3:05)
  • Alexa Davelos (Upscaled SD – 1:43)
  • David Twohy (Upscaled SD – 2:31)
  • Scott Kroopf (Upscaled SD – 1:40)
• Promotional Interviews:
  • Vin Diesel (Upscaled SD – 3:10)
  • Thandiwe Newton (Upscaled SD – 2:18)
  • Karl Urban (Upscaled SD – 3:27)
  • Alexa Davelos (Upscaled SD – 3:50)
  • Colm Feore (Upscaled SD – 4:53)
  • David Twohy (Upscaled SD – 4:22)

The second disc compiles all of the voluminous archival extras from Universal’s DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Chronicles of Riddick, starting off with two different commentary tracks. The first one was recorded for the 2005 DVD, teaming Twohy with Alexa Davelos and Karl Urban. The second one was added for the 2009 Blu-ray release, this time pairing Twohy with Vin Diesel. Both tracks can be a little sparse at times, but while Davelos and Urban do contribute to their track, the one with Diesel may be preferable for most listeners. Diesel was a producer on the film with plenty of creative involvement, and the character of Riddick is clearly near and dear to his heart. He also has great chemistry with Twohy. Both tracks have their points of interest, but if time is limited, opt for the second one.

The next four extras are behind-the-scenes featurettes that offer interview with the cast and crew, as well as clips and on-set footage. Creation of New Mecca examines the design of Helion Prime; Riddick Rises looks at Crematoria; and Keep What You Kill explores the worlds and culture of the Necromongers. Those are rounded out by Visual Effects Revealed, which covers the integration of the practical sets and the digital extensions, as well as other effects like the wispy Elemental and the creatures.

The rest of the extras compile the various bits of “interactive” content from the DVD and the Blu-ray into far more usable form. The early days of HD-DVD and Blu-ray were all about interactivity, to the detriment of the formats. Since that’s fallen out of favor these days, it’s easy to forget just how annoying that navigating content could be in that era. Some of these extras came from the annoying Picture-in-Picture track, while others came from other poor attempts at interactivity. Thankfully, it’s much easier to view them in this iteration.

There’s an Interactive Production Calendar and Production Vignettes that offer some behind-the scenes footage, as well as some Deleted Scenes that can be played with or without commentary from Twohy. The Virtual Guide consists of brief animated segments that try to explain the voluminous lore in The Chronicles of Riddick, narrated by actors from the film who are speaking in-character. Similarly, the Toombs’ Chase Log is an in-universe diary from Toombs where he explains his travails in tracking down Riddick. Vin Diesel’s Guided Tour is a walk through the sets with the actor, while Riddick’s Worlds offer stitched-together 180° to 360° camera pans around the various sets. Finally, the On-Set Interviews and Promotional Interviews feature the cast and crew being interviewed during different EPK sessions.

And no, we’re still not done yet:

DISC THREE: THEATRICAL CUT (1.78:1 VERSION)

• Escape from Butcher Bay (Upscaled SD – 33:42)
• The Lowdown (Upscaled SD – 22:04)

The third disc offers some additional bonus content—the extras’ extras, as it were. Escape from Butcher Bay is a compilation of all the cut scenes from the 2004 first-person stealth video game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. The game was developed by Starbreeze Studios with Tigon Studios, and it was first released for PC and the original Xbox. The story is considered canon in the Riddick universe, so it’s nice to have it collected here for anyone who has never played the video game. Unfortunately, it’s all standard-definition video from the original version of the game rather than the remastered cutscenes from the 2009 remake/expansion Assault on Dark Athena, so it looks pretty rough, but the gist of it is still clear.

The Lowdown was a 2004 promotional television special that tried to prime audiences for all of the lore that they were going to experience in The Chronicles of Riddick. It includes interviews with David Twohy, Vin Diesel, Thandiwe Newton, Judi Dench, Colm Feore, Karl Urban, Alesa Davelos, production designer Holger Gross, art director Kevin Ishioka, producer Scott Kroopf, stunt coordinator Bob Brown, and fight coordinator Bradley James Allen. Some of this material is from the interview sessions included on the second disc, and some of the footage comes from featurettes like Vin Diesel’s Guided Tour. Yet it does offer some interviews and footage that’s not available elsewhere. Overall, it’s actually a pretty good introduction to the worlds of The Chronicles of Riddick.

That does appear to be all of the archival extras from the previous releases of The Chronicles of Riddick, plus a significant quantity of new ones. Since the interactive content has been reworked here, it’s possible that some minor bits and bobs have been omitted, but it’s nearly impossible to compare things directly in order to make sure. The DVD and Blu-ray releases did include a brief Easter egg featuring Colm Feore, and according to Arrow’s listing, they also have an Easter egg. Presumably it’s the same one, but it doesn’t look like anyone had located it yet (and the abundant menu selections won’t make that easy, either). We’ll update this if and when it’s uncovered.

In any event, Arrow’s UHD for The Chronicles of Riddick offers a staggering quantity of extras, both cuts of the film, a gorgeous new 4K master with HDR, and a fine new Atmos mix. It’s a fantastic set and a massive upgrade over Universal’s Blu-ray version, by every possible metric. The only minor quibble is that there’s no Atmos track on the director’s cut, but for Furya’s sake, don’t let that hold you back. Arrow’s The Chronicles of Riddick is one of the best releases in a year that’s been filled with fantastic releases. Don’t miss out on it.

- Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).