Not all writing is correct, and this movie tries WAY too hard to try to come up with an entire universe for Riddick to play in, but they do what that first movie did with the creatures that could never have survived on the desert rock they somehow evolved on - they ignored the way THIS reality works in favor of something more exciting. The problem is that these rules are so new and different that they make the transition from what we are used to very jarring.
There is a race of bad guys who are mostly part of a religion of death worshipers (yes, it's more complicated than that, but that's what I'm going with). They are hopping from one planet to the next, converting as many people as they can and then killing everyone else. For some reason, most of the rest of the universe has a slight understanding of what these guys are about, but they really don't seem to give too much of a crap, and there appears to be no coordinated effort to stop them.
Instead, we have Riddick, who is of a race that is all but extinct. The reason that comes into play is because legend of old and an Air Elemental played by Dame Judy Dench both say that someone from this extinct race will be the one to kill the leader of the bad guys, played by Colm Feore. Colm played King Laufey (the Ice Giant King) in the Thor movie, so playing powerful kings is nothing new to him. Here, he plays his role a tad insane and way power hungry, which is about right.
The young boy we saw from Pitch Black comes back as a girl. Okay, we found out that she was a girl towards the end of the first movie, but why is it that every superfluous character in these kinds of films destined to grow up to look like Alexa Davalos does - hot and smouldery? Well, at least they didn't try to make Keith David work out or anything for his role. Power to the people!
Come to think of the characters created here, there are quite a few that could reasonably be called developed. I mean, they aren't full, three dimensional favorites or anything, but even the bounty hunters have slightly better than one dimensional paper people that you would probably expect in this kind of movie.
Directing was good
Story was okay - a bit forced
Acting was good
Effects were a bit mixed. They look dated pretty quick.
Cinematography was pretty good
2.75/5