½ The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury
(34:49)Caution: spoilers (including some for Pitch Black)
This is a 2004 direct-to-DVD animated short film that bridges the gap between the 2000 live-action movie "Pitch Black" and its 2004 sequel, "The Chronicles of Riddick," which was released theatrically just a few days before this DVD short came out. But I didn't see it until 2018. The short was directed by Peter Chung, who's familiar from things like Aeon Flux and Reign: The Conqueror, and it definitely has the look and feel of his work.
The only three people to survive the original movie were Riddick, an imam named Abu al-Walid, and a girl named Jack. (The actors from the first movie voice the characters in this short.) The small ship they escaped on at the end of that movie now gets captured by a huge merc ship owned by a woman named Antonia Chillingsworth (Tress MacNeille); though we don't actually learn her name in the movie itself. Her main henchman is a guy named Junner. After Riddick kills a bunch of the mercs who work for them, he and his companions are captured, and Riddick is forced to fight some alien creatures, to entertain Chillingsworth. She intends to add him to her collection of mass killers, whom she has frozen as living statues. But Riddick and his companions escape, and Chillingsworth sends more mercs (and a monster) to chase them down. The main merc is a guy named Toombs, and while we don't actually see him fight Riddick, he's the only one to survive. And so I figure he should be important in the next movie, probably. Anyway, Riddick steals another small ship to escape from the huge merc ship. He plans to drop his companions off on New Mecca.
That's pretty much all there is to say. It's an okay film, I guess, if you like this kind of thing.