I thought the sequel was too dark and the religious/fantasy, as said, fucked up an interesting universe. Be nice if the next sequel does an about-face from that crap. I did think the escape from the prison world in the sequel was a lot closer in feel to the original. But there was just too much Necrom crap, they were not even interesting villains … buncha gloomy, depressed sadomashochists.
Riddick had some sort of illegal surgery done on his eyes to enable him to see in the dark.
I hadn’t seen Pitch Black when some friends invited me to see Riddick. I didn’t know it was a sequel. I had no clue what was happening.
Well, that is what he said. The girl ends up in the same jail because she wanted the same enhancement, but realized Riddick had lied about it. At least that is how I remember part of the second movie playing out.
However, one of the Riddick computer games, Escape from Butcher Bay I think, has a segment where Riddick does get some sort of surgery to enhance his eyes.
I agree that the society in CoR is completey different than the one you imagine in PB. Though honestly the thing that bugged me the most in CoR was the prison economy - who’s paying for these crazy prisons on otherwise uninhabitable planets? Why do the prison wardens negotiate high payments to mercs for handing over wanted fugitives? That part made absolutely no sense.
Right, he said he paid 20 menthol kools for a surgical shine job.
In the second movie we find out he’s a Furian, and his crazy eyes are just part of his genetic makeup. Presumably Furia was a very dim planet, since he can’t see in normal daylight without his dark goggles.
Escape from Butcher Bay came out right before Chronicles of Riddick, so they presumably didn’t know the corrected backstory of his eyes when they were writing the game.
I found the sequel to be pretty forgettable, so I didn’t remember that. 
I like Chronicles. It’s really different from Pitch Black, but a lot of that can be put down to the scenario and setting of the first movie anyway.
The Chronicles universe isn’t incompatible - it’s just one of many possible supersets of the Pitch Black universe that could have been invented.
It’s not unlike the way some Firefly episodes are dirty cowboy/settler/heist scenarios, with spaceships, and Serenity (movie) is a big epic space drama, with cowboy/settler/heist scenes - the other is a superset of the one (although admittedly, the shift is more pronounced in Riddick)
It’s sort of like the Alien.
Pitch Black hinted at some larger story universe. But in reality, the story is just a locked room puzzle about a group of people trying to assemple the parts they need to escape without being in the dark long enough to get eaten.
Aliens effectively expanded the Alien universe by introducing the world of the Colonial Space Marines, some more details on the Wayland-Yutani corporation and some more context around humanity’s expansion into interstellar space. But it didn’t do this at the expense of the story.
The seccond Riddick film sort of failed in that it tried to create this sort of huge Conan / Lord of The Rings in space-esq sort of mythology over the course of a single film. It just seemed to cram all this fantasy crap for it’s own sake.
That and the Necromongers were gay as shit.
The game suggested that Riddick’s memories of how he got his night vision was altered by an unknown figure. Probably by one of those spirit-folk from COR as he keeps hearing a woman’s voice in the game guiding him. The whole game is happening in a flashback on the ice-planet Riddick is chased on at the beginning of the film.
The intro to the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAtDqWsghFU
It’s a shame the movie wasn’t based on Escape from Butcher Bay. It was a fun blend of Escape from New York and Aliens with badass setpieces.
Ah, I didn’t know that. Too bad it didn’t work out.