Vin Diesel has an unlikely hobby.

Movie stars, by definition, tend to want to epitomize all things cool and trendy. Not Diesel, nevermind that he's today's all-action man.

Believe it or not, he's a huge fan of Dungeons and Dragons. When asked, he runs off a list of various games he has played within that universe for the last twenty years, starting with the basic three book set in the 1970s, through the Advanced D&D setup, to the modern games. He's a bit coy when he talks about it, but he did admit he may have recently been seen at Wizards On The Coast buying $800.00 worth of books.

With THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, Diesel and fellow fantasy fanatic Director David Twohy (previous efforts include THE ARRIVAL and PITCH BLACK) aim to play Dungeonmaster in a brand new universe of their own creation. "Where do you think the Elementals come from? Of course, the attributes have been augmented a little bit," says Diesel of Judy Dench's character Aereon. He's refererring air elementals, a godlike class of beings from the D&D universe that appear in the storyline. "[D&D] was a training ground for a lot of my adventures...I was literally playing Dungeons and Dragons with Judi Dench and Karl Urban at night after shooting."

The influence of modern fantasy is readily apparent, especially in its design. A hodgepodge of influences from HR Geiger and neo-Gothic grandiosity identify the world-killing Necromongers, Riddick's nemeses this time around. The film has a 'days of future past' look, incorporating knightly armor for the baddies. An emphasis on hand-to-hand and sword-to-sword fighting, as opposed to just blasting away with lasers, appears next to the film's high tech space travel (including intergalactic hibernation) and numerous planetary locations (a hellish prison planet called Crematoria, and the elegant governing planets of the U.V. system).

Below, Diesel talks about why he returned to Riddick, what he did to prepare, and his next war epic.

Q: Why was it important for you to revisit this character?

Vin Diesel: 'Cause he's the coolest fucking character I've ever come across.

Q: What makes him so cool?

Diesel: He's an antihero. He's the quintessential antihero. We all know how much I love antiheroes. It takes 45 minutes in the movie just for Riddick to understand the word heroism...You can invest in this guy's spiritual growth. He's a guy that embraces indifference and doesn't care what anybody thinks about it.

Q: Do you relate to him?

Diesel: Somewhat. I relate to his defiance. Yeah...I have a problem with authority. It's no secret.

Q: Did you bring the idea of an elemental as a character to the story, or was that character already there?

Diesel: We all know that David Twohy is incredibly proficient in the sci-fi world which I don't know that much about. I'm a fantasy guy. So I brought the fantasy element to the picture, he brought the sci-fi and it came together. You see that in every aspect of the film. If you watch the film, the movements and mannerisms and fighting styles and lurching through the air is right out of a [fantasy artist] Frank Frazzetta book. When you see Riddick flying, it may as well be a Frazzetta painting.

Q: What sort of physical preparation did you have to do to play this role?

Diesel: The Riddick workout started before I went up there. I was training with a UFC guy, an Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter. I got up there two months early and started training in a fighting style called Kali which originated in Spain and then brought to the Philippines by Spanish traders. It's a fighting style that's just now beginning to catch [on]...ambidextrous two handed fighting.

Q: Do you feel any pressure to make this film work, with the hype of your career?

Diesel: ...The second I finished my first day of shooting with Judi Dench, I won. I had accomplished a real goal. The second the studio green lit this epic that didn't spawn from a book that was in existence for 50 years, that didn't come from a comic book character, was completely an original project, I felt like I was satisfied.

Q: Whether it succeeds or fails, you're personal satisfaction is more important.

Diesel: Exactly.

Q: How did the cut of the film fall short of your original conception?

Diesel: Thank God I created a company called Tigon Studios, which created the video game [THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY]. I was able to add 25 minutes of story, so you see what he's been doing on the snow covered planet for five years. You witness the point in his life where his eyes are transformed and how that happens.

Q: You directed a short about what it's like to be an unknown actor in New York called MULTIFACIAL. At the time, you were penniless, trying to make it in the industry just like anyone else. Can you reflect a bit about what it's like to have gone from that guy, to the person sitting in your chair today?

Diesel: Well, for anyone that were to ask me advice about it all or to comment on the journey, I started acting at seven years old. It took me 20 years to understand that if I was going to make my dreams a reality, I had to take the reigns. I had to learn something about being productive and being self-sufficient. I had to be productive at all costs and I had to make product. Because I was going around, telling everyone I was an actor and unless you were coming to a theatrical play I was in, you would never know.

Q: So the short was a tool for you, a way to market yourself and get noticed?

Diesel: The short was an artistic expression that at that point. After that long, I wanted to make movies. [MULTIFACIAL] was the release of that desire, that drive. And something that people don't know is that I wrote STRAYS a year before I did [MULTIFACIAL]. But I couldn't get STRAYS made because it cost $50,000 and I didn't have the money. So what successful people know and what I learned was if you can't do it all, do what you can. So I wrote a short film, a 20-minute short film. I wrote it in five days, and I used the means that I had accessible.

Q: Why did you pass on XXX2?

Diesel: I never do sequels in a reactionary way. I don't mean that to be holier than thou. I had to do CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. I didn't do anything for a year, just to make sure everything was right with [this movie] and just make sure that the cast was right. The script was right. The mythology was right. When I was done doing the first XXX, at the end of production, when I would brush my teeth at times, I would see these two blue eyes staring back at me in the mirror, which was an indication it was time to revisit The Chronicles of Riddick. I wanted to, again, I didn't have the rights to the wonderful Tolkein books that inspired us all to play D&D. I didn't have the rights to comic book characters. I wanted to create a modern day futuristic mythology, so I dedicated everything to THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK.

Q: Are you considering FAST AND THE FURIOUS 3?

Diesel: I haven't seen a script.

Q: Would you consider it?

Diesel: It would be unfair for me to say that I would rule something out without seeing the script.

Q: Word is you're working on pre-production for a movie based on the life of Hannibal The Conqueror. Is that true?

Diesel: David Franzoni handed in an incredible script and you know what Franzoni has written, GLADIATOR and AMISTAD. Did you know that Sylvaine Dupris, who is Ridley Scott's storyboard artist and storyboarded GLADIATOR has been working with me for the last month?

Q: Is there a director?

Diesel: You're about to get me in trouble. Did you know that I was planning to do a multi-lingual version of Hannibal the Conqueror?

Q: What languages?

Diesel: In the ancient times, they were all speaking Greek. But Italian obviously, Roman for the Romans, an ancient version of French for the Gauls, an old ancient Latin for Spain, for New Carthaginia, a Carthaginian based language that I may use a Maltese language for. And all that in service of speaking to the fact that Hannibal, one of his greatest attributes was that he was able to amass a polyglot army of all these broken people to fight tyranny.

Rounding out RIDDICK's cast are the always regal Dame Judy Dench [SHAKESPEAR IN LOVE] as an air elemental who confronts the Necromongers, and veteran character actor Colm Feore [PAYCHECK] as the Lord Marshal, supernatural head of the undead army. Both actors were classically trained on the stage, and play their characters as such. There are other medieval influences. Despite the film's far flung future setting: watch for LORD OF THE RINGS alumnus Karl Urban as Lord Vakko, and Thandie Newton [TV's ER], who play ambitious Lord and Dame Vaako, characters who clearly owe a great deal to Shakespeare's Lord and Lady Macbeth.

While it pulls a great deal of its style from the past in story design and performance, in RIDDICK, you get what you see: an entertaining summer space flick, ambitious in its vision, and a loveletter of sorts to the newly revived fantasy genre from one of its most dedicated devotees: Vin Diesel.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK opens wide this Friday, June 11.

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