4. William Johns' Father Pursuing Riddick
Perhaps the cleverest move in the film, and one that caught a lot of the fans off guard, is the big reveal of William Johns' (played by Cole Hauser in
Pitch Black) father, Boss Johns, aiding on the hunt for Riddick. In
Pitch Black, we had a drugged up mercenary escorting Riddick on a transport ship to the nearest prison facility, when the ship crash lands on a remote planet that happens to suffer from a year-long eclipse every twenty two years, of which they made the terrible timing of landing just before the eclipse occurs. Darkness consumes then all, and Johns is murdered by the creatures that only come out at night, thanks in part to his need to kill Riddick after Riddick himself offers his assistance in helping them escape the planet as a group. It must also be noted that Johns went a little off the deep end before his ultimate death, offering to kill the youngest of the group so that he could continue living. He basically evolved from honorary mercenary looking for a paycheck to a desperate, selfish morphine addict who wanted to be the last man standing. This all comes full circle in
Riddick unexpectedly, for when Riddick becomes trapped on yet another remote planet, he finds a settlement shack in which he uses to signal for "help" (as in "help", a way off the planet), which brings two separate groups of mercs looking to collect on Riddick's bounty. One group carries the father of Johns, known as Boss Johns, who not only looks to bring Riddick to justice, but search out answers to his son's death, who he believes was killed by Riddick himself. This presents an interesting dive into the storytelling of
Riddick, which most people thought was a more updated version of
Pitch Black with a stranded group of survivors fighting off monsters. In fact this is miles away from the truth, for the film is more of a unresolved checklist of events that perspired in the first two films that David Twohy and Vin Diesel wanted to bring to the surface by way of continuity.
When Boss Johns confronts Riddick of the past dealings between him and his son, it ignites a conflict that presents a stark contrast between both father and son. Riddick tells Boss Johns the truth about his son, where he was willing to put innocent lives in danger in order to survive, going against his directive of protecting them. He also informed Johns of his son's morphine addiction, how he shot up and lost focus due to a few needles in the eye. He flat-out called young Johns a coward to his father's face, and of course it doesn't settle well with daddy, where he believes Riddick is falsifying information about his son that he knows isn't true. Both Riddick and Boss Johns eventually learn to trust one another, with Boss Johns going back to retrieve a wounded Riddick during a near-death struggle with the planet's predators. In the end it reveals to Riddick that Johns isn't as low as his son was, not taking a human life for granted and leaving a man behind, even if that man is a convicted killer. It creates a parallel spanning over 13 years later after
Pitch Black, and adds a thick layer of intrigue in the third entry of the Riddick franchise that really seals the hatch on an important plot point from the first film.