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Pitch Black
Theatrical Poster
Directed by	David Twohy
Produced by	Tom Engelman
Written by	Story: Jim Wheat Ken Wheat Screenplay: Jim Wheat Ken Wheat David Twohy
Starring	Vin Diesel Radha Mitchell Cole Hauser Keith David Lewis Fitz-Gerald
Music by	Graeme Revell
Cinematography	David Eggby
Editing by	Rick Shaine
Distributed by	USA Films Universal Studios
Release date(s)	February 18, 2000
Running time	109 minutes
Language	English Arabic
Budget	$23,000,000
Gross revenue	$53,187,659
Preceded by	PITCHBLACK: Slam City
Followed by	The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Pitch Black (also known as The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black^[1]) is a 2000 science fiction action movie directed by David Twohy.^[2]

In the film, a dangerous criminal (Richard B. Riddick) is being transported to prison in a cargo spacecraft. When the spaceship is damaged in a meteor shower and makes an emergency crash landing on an empty desert planet, Riddick escapes. However, when predatory flying alien creatures called "Bioraptors" (dubbed "Big Boys" by Riddick) begin attacking the survivors, Riddick joins forces with the crew to develop a plan to escape the planet.

Taglines:

• Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Be Afraid of What's in the Dark

• Fight Evil with Evil

• One Rule: Stay in the light

• Afraid of the dark? You will be...

• A New species of Terror

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Related works 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Plot

As the movie opens, the Hunter Gratzner, a cargo spacecraft with basic accommodations for 40 passengers en route to the Tangiers system, accidentally crosses through a meteor shower while on auto-pilot (due to all passengers and crew being in cryo-sleep) and suffers catastrophic damage. With the captain having been killed during the initial meteor strike, the docking pilot Fry, awoken by the ships computers, wants to dump the passenger cabin after dumping the previous two compartments to level out the spacecraft as it plummets to the planet below so the crew can survive. The navigator Owens (also awakened) keeps her from doing so by jamming a door open with a piece of equipment, preventing the ships computer from accepting Fry's order. The ship eventually crash-lands on a strange, brightly lit desert planet M6-117 (actually the moon of a larger gas planet) and only 12 people survive. Two crewmen, Carolyn Fry and Greg Owens, survive, but Owens is mortally wounded in the crash and dies shortly afterward. Among the other survivors are a dangerous criminal (Richard B. Riddick, headed for a new prison), his captor William J. Johns, a Muslim Imam with his three sons (Hassan, Ali and Sulieman), a young stowaway named Jack, an antique dealer named Paris, and two Australian settlers, Zeke and Shazza.

Riddick manages to escape, and Johns leaves to track him. Zeke and the others take it upon themselves to bury those who died in the crash. While Shazza and Jack are searching the ship for bodies, a shadow alerts them to the presence of a nearby person. They fear it is Riddick, but their fears prove baseless when it turns out to be another unknown survivor. Zeke, however, not knowing what Riddick looks like and fearing it may be him, shoots and kills him before being told it was not Riddick, who has used the commotion to sneak into a chair Paris was using to keep watch under a parasol and relaxes with Paris' drink for a moment. When Zeke goes on to bury Owens and the survivor he killed, he notices a small hole in the wall of the pit in the sand. He uses his hands to shovel sand away from the hole and creates a man sized opening. Crawling inside, he is attacked by unseen creatures and brutally killed. Shazza comes to investigate his screaming and sees Riddick, who had also just arrived at the pit. She accuses him of killing Zeke, and he runs away, only to be caught shortly afterwards by Johns, who was hiding behind a stone and surprised him. Riddick is questioned as to whether he killed Zeke, and replies that although he has killed many people, Zeke was not one of them. When Fry investigates the cave, she soon discovers that some kind of vicious creatures exist underground.

While searching for water, an abandoned mining settlement is discovered several miles from the crash site. To the great excitement of the survivors, they find a large supply of water and even a small ship capable of leaving the planet (once its power is restored). While exploring the settlement, young Ali goes into the coring chamber and accidentally disturbs a nesting brood of young creatures, who rip the skin from his body. This finally demonstrates to the others not only that the creatures (henceforth called 'Bioraptors') do exist and are incredibly dangerous, but to their relief it also shows they have a strong need to avoid sunlight as well. However their relief is short lived when Fry discovers (via a moving model of the solar system they are in) that every 22 years, for one month, the planet undergoes a total solar eclipse. She also realizes that it must have been during the total darkness of the last such eclipse that the creatures were able to kill all the previous residents of the settlement and, to everyone's dismay, this last eclipse occurred almost exactly 22 years ago. Now knowing they must escape the planet before the eclipse starts and the creatures emerge, Fry remembers that there are energy cells back in the Hunter Gratzner wreckage that will power the skiff they found. The survivors decide to use a solar powered ATV to go back to the crash site, retrieve the power cells, and then try and get back to the skiff and escape before darkness falls.

Unfortunately, while only a few hundred yards from the crash site, the eclipse begins, causing the solar powered ATV to stop. Even worse however, as they are walking the rest of the way to the wreckage in the fast approaching darkness, huge swarms of Bioraptors suddenly emerge from large mounds all over the desert. Shazza is torn in half while running to the ship, but the rest make it inside. However they are now trapped inside a cargo container at the crash site without adequate supplies and with seemingly no safe way to get back to the skiff and escape.

After they discover (at the cost of Hassan) that the Bioraptors are actually harmed by light, and knowing that while in prison Riddick had a procedure, "eyeshine," performed that allows him to see in the dark, the group decides to arm themselves with flashlights, fluorescent lights, and rifle-sized glow-wands and move out into the open to try and make it back to the skiff (dragging the heavy power cells behind them), using a makeshift sled with a rig on it which provides power to the various flourescents and glow-wands. During the trip, Paris panics and runs away from the group, accidentally destroying the light-providing rig. Paris remarks to himself that he was supposed to die in France but never even saw it. Alone in total darkness, he takes a swig of alcohol and spits out fire (via a lighter), revealing for a moment that he is surrounded by Bioraptors.

The rest of the party light torches using strong alcohol salvaged from the cargo container. After coming upon their previous tracks they realize that they have been walking in circles. Riddick has done this deliberately to buy time due to the hundreds of Bioraptors in the canyon ahead. We find out that young Jack is not a boy but a girl, and is menstruating. The Bioraptors hunt by scent, and smell her blood. Riddick also learns after examining a dead Bioraptor's skull that they 'see' through echo location and, because of their widely separated eyes, have a blind spot directly in front of them.

Johns privately speaks with Riddick about the prospect of killing Jack and dragging her behind them in order to keep the Bioraptors occupied. Riddick feigns interest in the plan to see if Johns is serious. When its clear that he is, they get into an argument that becomes increasingly violent until Riddick wounds Johns and leaves him for dead. A Bioraptor soon decapitates him with its axe-like head.

The group moves on into a canyon, and Suleiman is wounded when a Bioraptor attempts to grab his leg. He manages to drive it off with light, but he is soon attacked again and dragged away before he can be saved. Another Bioraptor attacks Jack, but Riddick quickly kills it in the nick of time. It begins to rain, causing the torches to fail. Riddick finds a small cave and tells Jack, the Imam, and Fry to get in and wait for him to return. Fry finds bioluminescent larva and puts them in a bottle, which she uses to ward off the Bioraptors as she journeys to the escape ship to find Riddick. Riddick was preparing the ship to leave without them, having determined that he could not help them get to the skiff alive. Fry orders him to come back with her and get the others, but Riddick refuses, and tries to convince her to abandon them. Fry is overwhelmed with guilt and begins to weep, before remembering her attempts to purge the passenger compartment of Gratzner, and she attacks Riddick.

Riddick, enraged by her sudden attack on him, tackles her and puts his knife to her neck, and asks her if she would die for them. She says she would. Riddick merely says: "Interesting."

They go back to the cave, and all four leave together for the escape ship, but Riddick trails behind and is attacked by a Bioraptor. Using its blind spot, he is able to hide directly in front of it and it begins to leave. His plan is thwarted when a second Bioraptor lands behind him, since he cannot hide from both of them at the same time. After the others arrive at the skiff, Fry goes back for Riddick. She finds him badly wounded and tries to help him to the ship, reminding him that she said she would risk her life for the others, not him. She is then suddenly grabbed and pulled away by a Bioraptor.

(At the very beginning of the movie, the viewer is shown a scene of what at first glance appears to be an ordinary pan-out of the camera from the landing site and from Riddick's face; at the point of Fry's death, however, it becomes clear to the viewer that what was actually shown at the start of the film was Fry being carried off into the night by one of the creatures after being impaled, from her point of view.)

This results in an epiphany for Riddick, because he is amazed that she would sacrifice herself to save him. He says she shouldn't have died for him. Riddick gets into the ship and, in a final act of defiance, allows dozens of the creatures to swarm the outside of the ship before starting the engines, thereby incinerating more of them, and crushing many more with the skiff's windshield. He explains this to Jack as: "We can't leave... until we've said good night."

As they are leaving M6-117, Jack asks Riddick what to tell anyone they encounter on the trip home. Riddick delivers the film's final line, "Tell 'em Riddick's dead. He died somewhere on that planet." Riddick, Jack, and the Imam fly off into an uncertain future.

[edit] Cast

• Vin Diesel as Richard B. Riddick
• Radha Mitchell as Carolyn Fry
• Cole Hauser as William J. Johns
• Keith David as Abu "Imam" al-Walid
• Lewis Fitz-Gerald as Paris P. Ogilvie
• Claudia Black as Sharon "Shazza" Montgomery
• Rhiana Griffith as Jack / Jackie
• John Moore as John "Zeke" Ezekiel
• Simon Burke as Greg Owens
• Les Chantery as Suleiman
• Sam Sari as Hassan
• Firass Dirani as Ali
• Vic Wilson as Captain Tom Mitchell
• Angela Moore as Dead Crewmember

[edit] Related works

Main article: The Chronicles of Riddick (series)

The setup of the movie is close to the short story Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.

The movie's sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, was released in 2004 and was also directed by David Twohy. A short animated movie, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury, directed by Peter Chung, was also released that year. Dark Fury bridges the gap between Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick. In 2000 a prequel to Pitch Black was released named Into Pitch Black, which was supposed to be a Documentary movie. The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a game for the Xbox and the PC, was also released in 2004.

[edit] See also

• Solar eclipses in fiction

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official movie website
• Pitch Black at the Internet Movie Database
• Pitch Black at Rotten Tomatoes
• Pitch Black at Box Office Mojo

v • d • e The Chronicles of Riddick series
Films	Pitch Black | Dark Fury | The Chronicles of Riddick
Video games	Escape from Butcher Bay | Assault on Dark Athena