Blindsided is a 5 minute animated short that takes place shortly after the events of The Chronicles of Riddick (2004).

Riddick is now the Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, a position he never asked for and it's not a very safe place to be. Mulling over his next move he is in constant danger of assassination attempts and rebellion.

Essentially Blindsided is one single fight scene and little else. Animated in that comic book style which is mostly static it looks better than these things normally do. I personally hate this style of animation and had this been longer than 6 minutes I might have lost interest fast.

Vin Diesel and Karl Urban reprise their roles and deliver the best they can but ultimately this cannot be considered anything but a companion piece. It accomplishes nothing, it adds little to the story, and is a real blink and you'll miss it situation.

One for fans and fans only.

The Good:

Looks better than these things normally do

The Bad:

Stock screams

No resolution

Things I Learnt From This Short:

Vin Diesel NEEDS to do radio!

The movie Riddick is a very high budget fan film and I quite enjoyed it as such even though it had its limits and is a bit indulgent in its love of its cool main character – it is also much longer than it needed to be. However it could have been longer since the material in this short film was originally included in the film. In Riddick we see him as head of the Necromongers but rapidly he is removed; there are hints to more material here but it is an area edited down to nothing apart from a few shots. Riddick Blindsided uses that material to create this short film.

The plot see Riddick realizing he is slipping and not seeing the punch coming. It is based on story-boards which were created by the film and it is an odd mix of audio which has clearly come from the filmed material that wasn't used, over animated story board. The mix is interesting but not wholly successful. Visually it has a certain cool quality to it, and for fans I guess it is nice to see the story boards, however personally I did not care for the way it sort of moved but didn't always move. Specifically the character movement – in some areas they are expressive (eye brows for example) and can move but in other ways they are still and just a drawing. The style is cool but it looks a bit odd and isn't helped by the use of audio from the film.

The narration works well (probably because we are used to a stern and static Vin Diesel while we hear his words) but for the rest the delivery of the actors and the music and sounds of action sequences sit oddly with the mostly static images. It was hard for me to shake off the feeling that they really should have just used the material that they shot and made it a standalone short in the same way – and I'm not sure why they made half the decision but not the other half. It is still a little curio for fans but it is not a brilliant animation and it always feels like it would have been better to just use the live action material which had been shot already.

Dark Fury is a 35 minute bridging anime linking Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. You can watch the movies without Dark Fury but it does add some nice elements.

Blindsided is another bridging film (barely) between The Chronicles of Riddick and the sequel Riddick. It runs at 5 mins which is a plus. The animation is awful.

However the real issues is its completely pointless. It doesn't explain how Riddick ends up on this new planet AND literally EVERYTHING that is in this 5 minute short is actually in the film Riddick!!! WTF