It wasn’t just The Fast and the Furious that put Vin Diesel on the map. A sci-fi film followed closely on the racing giant’s heels, with a sequel that would follow a few years later, effectively launching a franchise—and Diesel’s passion project. And while none of them were perfect, and they never reached critical acclaim, each managed to build a dedicated fanbase, easily becoming cult classics. The IP eventually found a streaming home on Netflix, but now it seems they’re slated to be pulled from the platform—and there’s no word on whether or when they’ll move to another streamer.
Pitch Black was released in 2000 and starred Vin Diesel alongside Keith David and Radha Mitchell. It follows the survivors of a spacecraft crash as they realize the planet they landed on, normally in constant daylight, will soon enter an eclipse, unleashing deadly creatures that thrive in the dark. Their only hope for survival seems to be a convict who was being transported on the ship. The Chronicles of Riddick, which eventually spawned a threequel simply titled Riddick, brought even bigger names to the screen, with Diesel playing a criminal on the run from intergalactic bounty hunters and starring opposite Karl Urban, Thandie Newton, and Dame Judi Dench.
The Riddick franchise never really cracked the ratings with critics. Pitch Black brought in 58%, while Chronicles of Riddick only managed to pull in 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Riddick, though, brought the numbers up a tick, back to 58%. Despite that, it’s safe to say that each of the movies became cult classics, with fans still singing their praises and hoping for the long-rumored fourth installment, Riddick: Furya, which is said to follow Riddick back to his homeworld, where he finds other Furyans fighting for their survival. “Brilliant. David Twohy did good here. Very well written and directed. Good, solid story. Not at all derivative, imo. Great premise and very fast-paced. This surely put Vin Diesel on the map,” says one fan.
And while some critics sang the series’ praises, with Alan Jones saying of Pitch Black, “With its first half sporting a brilliant desert surrealism and the second loaded with stylised gore, director David Twohy’s futuristic frightener is a vivid, pulse-pounding achievement,” others weren’t particularly impressed. Critic Ron Gonsalves summed up the majority of the critic sentiment, calling the first film in the franchise “a thriller without enough confidence in itself or its characters to calm down for two seconds and let the actors speak to each other like human beings.”
But if you’ve been hoping to fill your time with some genuinely underrated sci-fi, you officially only have until September 1st to catch this trilogy.
