The problem with "Chronicles Of Riddick" was specifically that it was "Chronicles Of Riddick". It was intended to be a sequel to a homage to Aliens called "Pitch Black" where the character Riddick becomes the unlikely hero, being an escaped criminal/prison inmate turned anti-hero by the situation he finds himself in and the bounty hunters that had captured him being even worse than he is.
Riddick as a character was popular because he was... dare I say it... down to earth, despite the outlandish premise of his movie. You could sort of see how prison could make a hardened criminal even tougher, and almost believe in the context of a movie that he would be unusually effective in the situation he found himself in. It was a change of pace stylistically from the "Han Solo" style of space criminal that had been being ripped off pretty much everywhere.
The thing is that "Chronicles Of Riddick" goes from making the title character simply a tough guy who was able to do some unexpectedly amazing things, to pretty much the over the top centerpiece to an entire universe. He just wasn't down to earth anymore. Sure, the guy was an infamous space outlaw, but him being pretty much #1 on a galactic scale, fighting armies of Warhammer 40k inspired space aliens, and then being revealed to be an alien himself... it just wasn't the character or universe people came to see. If "Chronicles Of Riddick" is to be believed "Pitch Black" shouldn't have been remotely suspenseful, and Riddick stepping up to do the things he did shouldn't have surprised anyone.
This movie would have been perfectly serviceable as a science-fiction action movie if they had just gotten rid of any pretensions of tying it to "Pitch Black". What is otherwise a decent movie was actually destroyed by being a "Riddick" movie and coming with those expectations. Most people going to see that movie had fond memories of the character from "Pitch Black" in their mind, and a title that reminds them of what the movie is supposed to be like, in watching the movie it becomes almost impossible to reconcile the first movie with this one.
I say this a lot, but I notice on MDF little attention is paid to why franchise movies failed, what else was out there, and what expectations they were selling to the fans and then failed to deliver on.
To put this into perspective, if you were running a PnP RPG game, and someone pitched you a character "Like Riddick from Pitch Black" and the handed you the "Furian Chosen One, destinied to destroy and absorb the power of the necromongers and capable of fighting subspace warping alien ninjas in hand to hand combat using nothing but improvised bladed weapons" would you think the guy mis-represented himself? "Chronicles Of Riddick" seemed like the guys who planned it wanted to use the name recognition of Riddick, and Vin Diesel, but had no other reasons for it other than t generate hype.
