Pitch Black was something of a marvel when it first appeared on our screens. A small cast, a charismatic anti-hero and two clever concepts: aliens that only attack at night and a character who could see in the dark. It may not sound like much on paper but the factors all came together to bring us an absolutely gripping sci-fi horror that assured Vin Diesel's future in movies and proved once again that you don't need $200 million to make a hit.
The first trailer for The Chronicles of Riddick is now online and, while it's difficult to tell at this stage, it has a lot of potential. Diesel's back in the role that made him famous with his distinctive engine-idling growl and imposing presence reminding us why we liked him in the first place - before xXx turned him into a sub-Bond studio star. The look of the film is astonishing and if nothing else someone should probably give lollipops to the men and women who handled the set design.
But with the expensively constructed burnished metallic backdrops and the pleasing presence of Judi Dench, the sequel is a very different affair to its predecessor. Abandoning one of the two clever concepts (the alien planet is now but a distant memory) and ramping up the production scale considerably, The Chronicles of Riddick seems likely to become everything the first film avoided and, while we hate to say it, may be suffering from delusions of grandeur.
Judi Dench cries
havok in Pitch Black 2
17/02/2003
She's one of the biggest action stars in the world. Her granite jaw and bladder-weakening stare have seen many a man reduced to a blubbering wreck. This one-woman-army brings death and destruction wherever her uzi-toting wrath should fall. She is five feet of pure adrenaline. She is Dame Judi Dench and she is coming for YOU!
That's right, the leanest, meanest mother ever to emerge from the Royal Shakespeare Company, has signed on to star alongside Vin Diesel in Pitch Black sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick. After ruling the Empire with an iron fist in Mrs Brown, terrorising Kevin Spacey in The Shipping News and bringing whole nations to ruin in Iris, Dench is in final negotiations to join the cast of the sci-fi horror sequel and may God have mercy on the universe.
The second film will see Diesel's escaped convict and murderer, Richard B Riddick, on the run and caught between two warring space factions. Colm Feore has signed on to be Diesel's nemesis, playing Lord Marshal, a warrior priest and leader of an intergalactic crusade. Dench is in line to take the role of Aereon, an ethereal being and ambassador to the Elemental race who will help Riddick unearth his origins.
All joking aside, the sequel to a low-budget, sleeper sci-fi film is hardly the place you'd expect to find the 68-year-old Oscar-winner. Still, they do say that diversity is the secret to a happy and fulfilling life so why shouldn't Dench try her hand at a transcendental alien and spiritual guide to the muscle-bound space convict? We're sure she'll do a fine job, though we do reserve the right to have a psychotic episode if she takes up a pulse rifle and starts laying into the scum of the universe.