I enjoy them both very much.

By any reasonable standard? Sorry, that's extremely... short-sighted. It undermines the scale of good and bad when you declare a film like Riddick to be a bad movie. There are many, much more genuinely bad movies out there. Let's not dilute the meaning and power of these words by flinging them about so thoughtlessly. What the hell happened to average and all those other words we use to describe things that aren't at either end of the scale?

Okay, fine. Riddick is, by any reasonable standard, so far below average that it makes a mockery of the word "average" to describe it as merely being below average.

But I still don't care. I still love it.

Well, thematically it's a mess. The whole last-scion-of-the-godlike-aliens or whatever bit just has no business being in the movie at all — and as I understand it, it wasn't in the version that made it to cinemas. The Jack character doesn't actually play any real role; she's just there as a call-back to the previous film, and oh by the way, tits. Riddick's story is almost completely unlike the hero's journey, so it ends up feeling meandering and unmotivated. He doesn't so much go on a quest as he does stand there while a quest happens around him.

But damn, if I don't love it anyway. I'd pay more than I'm proud to admit to see a good movie set in the same universe, with the same production design and overall feel.

The Chronicles of Riddick: GAME OVER

Riddick discovers that his entire universe is actually part of a complex computer simulation, and the Necromongers were created to cleanse excess data. Riddick breaks free, finds the creator of the simulation, and kills him using only a keyboard.

The Chronicles of Riddick: ORIGINS

This prequel follows a teenage Riddick (back when everyone called him Richard) as he learns the ups and downs of love from a beautiful young woman named Mary. This film takes place entirely on Earth. There are no aliens or mention of aliens.

The Chronicles of Riddick: ANNIHILATION

In this lighthearted comedy-adventure, Riddick tries to defeat the Clown King, an evil overlord who kills his enemies with pies. Joining Riddick is Danny (Eddie Murphy), a wisecracking Necromonger who's always getting into sticky situations!

Welcome back Jeffery, we've missed you 'round here.  I agree, it's not perfect, and if the consensus is indeed that this is a bad movie, then so be it, I don't care either.  Show me one guy (or gal, we have a couple around here now, Woot!) around here that doesn't have a guilty pleasure movie on his shelf, and I'll show you...well just show me one, consider it a dare.  I can't remember if I said as much in the show notes, (and I'm honestly too lazy to look it up), but between this and Pitch Black, I'm more likely to pop this one in.  Pitch Black is great, I really like it and if it comes on the t.v. I'll stop what I'm doing and watch it.  This has a real cinematic feel to it, while Pitch Black feels more like a Syfy movie.  Mind, that's not me dissing Syfy, just stating a preference.  I'm glad to be at a point as a film critic to be able to objectively say when a film doesn't work, but still be able to shelve all that and enjoy it if it worked for me.

There is a level of badness that is set aside for films that are well made by good actors and directors with high budgets that just fail. Maybe we should come up with some other term for them to make you happy

But that's the thing. Riddick is at worst average on any scale. It's technically fautless. The fact that it's a bit of a mess in terms of story and/or characterisation isn't unique. There are plenty of sci-films that are like this, including some of the greatest like 2001.

The way people are talking about it, you'd think Riddick was actually worse than both Transformers and the last two Terminator films... is that really the consensus?

Hang on a sec. Can we go back to the part where you compared The Chronicles of Riddick to 2001? Cause I found that unaccountably hilarious.

Oh noes, did someone just diss 2001? They're both incomprehensible, just in different ways. In other news, Citizen Kane is not the greatest movie ever made.

Except 2001 doesn't actually have a story, it's a series of ideas and images ending with a philosophical punctuation mark. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing really there to comprehend. Once you've looked past its technical merits or had some pseudo-intellectual prat try to explain it, you just think "and?"... and that's at the end after you've been thinking "ok, so what is going on?" for the previous 2 hours. On the other side, Riddick is incomprehensible because there's too much stuff going on and you're thinking "wait, what?" and "how does this fit with that?".

So you have a film that's severely underwritten to the point that there's no script, whereas the other feels like it's been made with scripts for different films on set. Both clearly have story problems. You enjoy both, and I would guess you'd watch Riddick over 2001 any day of the week, so why is one bad or so below average it makes a mockery of mediocrity and the other fantastic?