To be honest I’d completely given up on finding out what happens next to Riddick after David Twohy’s bonkers sf movie The Chronicles of Riddick bombed at the box office.

Of course, by all reasonable standards, The Chronicles of Riddick is cobblers - sadly, however, it’s exactly the kind of cobblers I love. Which is why this nugget from Io9 genuinely perked me up on a bad morming. Vin Diesel told an MTV interviewer:

David Twohy right now is writing the scripts. The only question is whether we take a page from the Lord of the Rings guys and try to shoot the two chapters at the same time. There are two more in mind… The Chronicles of Riddick was presented as a three part trilogy that would answer Pitch Black in the same way that Lord of the Rings answered The Hobbit.

You can read my review of The Chronicles of Riddick (from issue 169 of the BSFA’s Matrix) after the crease.

If I was a proper film reviewer what I’d be telling you about The Chronicles of Riddick would be that the script is a mess, much of the acting is wooden and that the plot is so ludicrously complicated that it requires not one but two character narrations to keep the audience up-to-date with what’s going on.

If I was a proper film reviewer I’d be telling you to avoid The Chronicles of Riddick like the plague.

But, if I was a proper film reviewer, I’d have left something crucial out of my review: I love this film!

It has all the flaws mentioned above and more, but at the same time (and maybe precisely because of those flaws - I’m a sucker for the underdog) I got such a thrill from watching it that I’ve been back to see it twice more.

The Chronicles of Riddick is old-fashioned space opera, I was constantly reminded of Gordon R Dickson’s Dorsai books, and most of the problems with the film come from over-ambition.

Director Twohy obviously has a vast back plot in his mind - humanity has fractured into differently powered sub-species - Riddick (Diesel) discovers he is one of the last of the warrior race of Furyans, Aereon (Dench) is a computer-minded Elemental, while the Lord Marshal (Feore) leads the Necromongers, who are bent on destroying the rest of humanity. One problem is that that background information is often dropped into the film in vast, indigestible lumps leaving the actors with undeliverable lines and plodding speeches.

Another problem is the complexity of the story. The film zips back and forth across a bewildering variety of settings and, at times, verges on the incoherent. Against his will, Riddick is forced into the struggle between the remnants of humanity and the death-worshipping Necromongers who aim to convert all to their creed. Riddick then gets sidetracked to rescue Kyra (Davalos) - the young girl from the Pitch Black, now grown up in a (literally) hellish prison and then returns to face the forces of the Necromongers. And then there’s the bounty hunters, the psychics who can fly, the plotting within the ranks of the Necromongers… The over twisty plot makes life hard for the viewer though, to be fair, each individual sequence is more than competently delivered.

Diesel is never going to win an Oscar but he does well enough delivering action hero one-liners (despite the fact that a few are real stinkers). Dench is fine, if a little stiff and clearly feeling out of place in this production. But many of the supporting actors are less successful. It seems cruel to single out one, but Urban and Newton - who play Vaako and his wife - seemed particularly inept.

On the positive side, the special effects on a relatively small budget movie are sometimes superb. The planetary invasion early in the film is particularly effective. And the ending of the film is a revelation -looking back I realise that Twohy has been absolutely fair and signposted what will happen and still sprung a huge, cliffhanging, surprise.

The Chronicles of Riddick is certainly deeply flawed, but then so is most space opera. Whether you enjoy it or not will, I think, depend on whether you can forgive it its stupidities and occasional stiffness and just go with the flow. I would not argue with those who think The Chronicles of Riddick is terrible, because on lots of levels it is, but it contains all those elements that once made me fall in love with science fiction - scope, adventure, daft thrills and improbably heroes. It makes no sense, but I will be watching it again, I’ll be buying the DVD and I’ll even be praying for a sequel - I have to know what happens next.