In describing how to best tell a science fiction story, author Orson Scott Card once wrote, “usually you want your audience’s sympathy to be with your main character, if only because it’s a lot harder for a writer to make an anti-hero work well in a story.” Card’s brow-furrowing politics aside, the guy knows his science fiction. If Riddick director/writer David Twohy were more of a Card fan, I might not have to explain why his alien anti-hero fails to endear himself to audience members above the age of 15.

“Riddick” is the third installment of a budget-strained series following the mostly monotonous exploits of Riddick, a Furyan convict who occupies his (and our) time by toying with, and finally dispatching unlikeable stock characters before trying to run away from unstable planets. With little variation, this constituted the spit and gum plot holding Riddick together.

“Riddick” finds himself abandoned on a planet teeming with nasties, befriends a tabby inspired computer generated dog who helps him plod through dubious encounters before finally being tracked down by two contentious factions of bounty hunters. Laughably written snark flies while Riddick shows everyone how clever he is by picking them off, and secretly watching their lone female crew member take a shower.

After a failed attempt at diplomacy, Riddick’s ambitions shift to escape and stealing the ship’s fuel nodes. His Furyan sense tingling, he prophesizes the planet’s mutant earthworm populace will be roused by the coming storm, a point we’re admonished to be scared about.

While the planet is gearing up for a kind of horror that could only rival the meandering premise of Chronicles of Riddick, Twohy can’t seem to escape the ghosts of his misogynistic treatment of female characters. Still reeling from some creepy lines that survived post-production, we’re treated to an obligatory crowd-pleaser showdown before testosterone levels finally drop enough for the people Riddick hasn’t killed to work together in the shared interest of survival.

For all of its failures, “Riddick” was a functional story, managing a few interesting moments. When an injured Riddick teams up with Boss Johns, the man hunting Riddick for years to make him answer for the death of his son, to fight their way out of an infested planet surface, glimpses of Heinleinian magic ensues.

Franchise devotees may be pleased to find the film marks a return to the origins that spawned its moderate cult success. While Riddick never quite suffers from the platitudes of an Independence Day or the cornballing lines of Battlefield Earth, being judged by how you compare marginally better to the worst sci-fi examples Hollywood has isn’t the best starting point.

I’m not immune to the fun of the occasional mindless escape sci-fi. Predator, The Last Star Fighter and Starship Troopers all made us eschew our Guilty Pleasure Meter in favor of anonymous fist-pumping, but when you can’t conjure enough energy to care if the cast gets consumed by overdeveloped computer generated worms, you leave wishing it had spent more of its superfluous two-hour run-time developing the forgettable cast, rather than who might win a tough-guy competition.

“Riddick” walks and talks like a science fiction movie, but there’s little going on once you open the hood.