It was a solidly entertaining movie, producing more than its share of copycats. It also produced one of the most effective and startling anti-heroes to grace the silver screen since Kurt Russell’s Snake Plisken, the muscled escaped convict Riddick, portrayed with a quiet fury by Vin Diesel. The role catapulted the actor into superstardom, leading to his casting in box office successes “The Fast and the Furious” and “xXx.” But while those movies reached a broader audience theatrically, it was this character and this movie that truly captivated viewers, “Pitch Black” quietly becoming one of the most sought-after titles in DVD history.

So now Riddick returns, and along with original writer/director David Twohy they have much, much more of Universal’s money (a reported $100 million) to spend this time around. And while the duo could have chosen to just rehash the adventures of “Pitch Black” on a grander scale, they instead decide to up the ante altogether, choosing to craft one of the most ambitiously audacious sci-fi epics to grace movie houses in ages. Dubbed “The Chronicles of Riddick,” this is an adventure that spans worlds and galaxies. It is a complex, hard to follow onslaught of characters and concepts rooted in mythology and classical literature. And while it isn’t completely successful by any means, it is still something completely original and new.

This time around, our not especially likable hero with the shimmery eyes finds himself being hunted by a group of mercenaries financed by a man he thought his friend and ally. Heading to Planet Helion, a richly textured place of rich coppers and glowing in a lithe metallic sheen, Riddick tracks down the religious holy man Imam (Keith David), a man whose life he saved five years earlier battling a particularly hostile alien life form. It is he who has put the new bounty on the convict’s head, but not for the reasons Riddick expects.

Instead, Imam has tracked him down to introduce Riddick to Aereon (Judi Dench), an ethereal being of light and whispers with a particular interest in the loner’s origins. It is quite possible he could be the last of a race long though extinct, a breed of man known as Furian. Why is this important? Well, there just so happens to be a race of religious fanatics called Necromongers gallivanting through the cosmos, destroying planet after planet on their way to a plane of existence they choose to call the Underverse. They are led by a particularly vicious half living, half dead man known as the Lord Marshall (Colm Feore), and according to prophecy it is a Furian that will bring him down, and it just so happens they are on the way to Helion.

None of this impresses Riddick too much. It’s not his fight, and he doesn’t want to get involved. His goal in life is to remain neutral, only dealing with those that choose to upset his solitude. But when the Necromonger onslaught begins, Riddick finds himself caught knee-deep within it, doing his best to stay out of the fray until one of the Lord Marshall’s soldiers slices Imam to pieces.

But before Riddick can really do much more than dispatch Imam’s killer, he’s captured by Toombs (Nick Chinlund) and his band of mercenaries and taken to the prison planet of Crematoria. It is there he runs into another survivor from five years a go, they ferocious and feral Kyra (Alexa Davalos). She blames Riddick for running out on her and Imam and has spent the last few years doing all she could to find him, even going so far as to become a brutal killer herself.

Unknown to everyone, the Lord Marshall has sent his trusted lieutenant Vaako (Karl Urban) to track Riddick, killing him before he has a chance to live out Aereon’s prophecy. He’s unhappy about the assignment, furious that the Lord Marshall would ever require such a valued soldier as himself to a lowly task. But his consort Lady Vaako (Thandie Newton), every inch a Machiavellian Lady Macbeth, convinces him to bide his time and do the Lord Marshall’s bidding. Soon it will be there time to strike and, when it is, in pure Necromonger tradition they will indeed keep what they kill.

There is enough going on here for four films, let alone one, and at only 107 minutes it is apparent early on that Twohy and Diesel’s ambitions are going to get the better of them. This is a picture that spans galaxies, going from one to the next so quickly you literally can’t absorb all that’s taken place before your suddenly whisked away someplace else. It is a giant mess of a movie with characters and subplots galore, and I for one cannot help but think there is a larger, more expansive cut of this film lingering in Universal’s vaults. It is as if the studio did not have faith in Twohy’s vision, forcing the director to cut his opus down into a more manageable length today’s typical short attention span audiences would respond more favorably to.

If that is the truth, than it is a true shame for “The Chronicles of Riddick” is some of the truest, most irresistible science fiction to come our way in ages. Everything about the picture is a testament to those that made it. From the superbly innovative production design by Holger Gross to Ellen Mirojnick and Michael Dennison’s amazing costumes to High Johnson expressive photography to Graeme Revell’s excellent score, all of it just screams of originality. The worlds of “Riddick” feel alive and lived in, their sights and sounds near as real to you and me as they are to the various tribes of humanity inhabiting them.

Twohy directs with amazing skill showing a gift for large-scale epic filmmaking movies like “Below” and “The Arrival,” for all their strengths, failed to express. Even despite the rushed and almost fractured pace to the picture, “Riddick” still succeeds because of its director’s devotion and attention to detail. Not only do the action sequences sparkle and come to brutish life, but Twohy is completely unafraid to let his film grow quiet and introspective, thus granting the viewer access to many of the inner mechanisms of his character’s complicated lives.

It is obvious from the very first moment he steps on camera Riddick is the role Diesel was born to play. He’s a killer, but only one that takes life to survive or for retribution. He only wants to be left alone to his own self-loathing, and yet the universe keeps going out of its way to surround him with people. Diesel plays the character with a subtle humanity that’s both humorous and captivating, grounding the character with quirks and body gestures uniquely his own. It is a bold, brawny central performance and I cannot imagine this picture without him.

The rest of the cast is not quite as successful, but it is by no fault of their own. Of them all, Dench and Urban connect the most, managing to turn their sketchily etched out characters into something memorable. Feore does what he can, but his Lord Marshall is still too mysterious and disconnected by the end to be particularly scary, and his comeuppance – while spectacularly played out – isn’t exactly surprising. As for Newton, the lustily beautiful actress appears to be reveling in her maniacally evil character, but she’s so aloof and one-dimensional that her fury and hatred seem almost misplaced.

And yet, despite all these faults “The Chronicles of Riddick” is a picture that needs to be celebrated. Once it started, I found it near impossible to take my eyes off of it. There is so much going on that feels unique and new, so many sights I hadn’t seen on a motion picture screen before, I found myself completely immersed in Twohy’s dystopian universe. It is a sprawling, multifaceted epic with more on its mind than the next explosion or laser blast, and that alone makes it that much more the must-see.