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** Possibly they have a 23-year breeding cycle, and either hibernate or subsist on subterranean prey between eclipses, when they emerge to gorge themselves and fatten up for reproduction.
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** Possibly they have a 23-year 22-year breeding cycle, and either hibernate or subsist on subterranean prey between eclipses, when they emerge to gorge themselves and fatten up for reproduction.
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*** No life ''any more'', at least not in the area that the movie happens in. As stated above, there could be who-knows-what living in other areas of the planet. As for why they evolved to exploit a 23-year cycle? They probably *didn't*. They evolved to tolerate the near- or total-darkness of the caves. The 23-year cycle just let them get out and about once in a long while, like creatures that live in smaller ponds that periodically flood to the point of forming a larger, temporary lake.
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*** No life ''any more'', at least not in the area that the movie happens in. As stated above, there could be who-knows-what living in other areas of the planet. As for why they evolved to exploit a 23-year 22-year cycle? They probably *didn't*. They evolved to tolerate the near- or total-darkness of the caves. The 23-year 22-year cycle just let them get out and about once in a long while, like creatures that live in smaller ponds that periodically flood to the point of forming a larger, temporary lake.
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** Sure it is. They shine a flashlight on a corpse of one and it’s enough to start burning the thing’s skin. Sunlight (from three suns, no less) would be downright fatal.
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** It's never confirmed that light kills or even seriously harms them. They're just extremely sensitive to it.
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** Imam mentioned he had a pretty good grasp of the length of the eclipse from the model, and Fry moves the model a little once it reaches the 22nd year mark, from the looks of things, the orbits are all staggered until every 22 years where they all sync up for at least longer than the group can survive for on what supplies they have, it sounds like it's longer than a single "night".
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*** Do we ever actually see them ''eating'' each other, though? They kill one another, but the carcasses that rain down into the canyon don't seem to have been fed upon, after which they're left to lie there. Indeed, the creatures seem more than capable of devouring human victims on the wing, so if the bioraptor-on-bioraptor killings were for food, the carcasses shouldn't have been allowed to drop out of the sky in the first place.
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*** The ringed planet which is shown emerging over the horizon appears huge enough to obstruct a large fraction of the sky, but not the whole thing. Possibly if the world where the crash occurred had been a ''moon'' of the ringed planet, it might work, but the orrery makes it clear that it isn't.
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* why did they wait for the eclipse to begin happening to drive all the way out to fetch the power cells. I get that they wanted to wait til last minute to install the cells to minimise risk of riddick stealing the ship and stranding them there but there wasn't any reason a couple of them couldn't have driven back to the ship got the power cells loaded and them waited for the ringed planet to make an appearance before heading back to the geologists camp. By not doing this they didn't give themselves enough time to get there and back and ended up stranded and surrounded when the eclipse hit.
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* why Why did they wait for the eclipse to begin happening to drive all the way out to fetch the power cells. I get that they wanted to wait til last minute to install the cells to minimise risk of riddick stealing the ship and stranding them there but there wasn't any reason a couple of them couldn't have driven back to the ship got the power cells loaded and them waited for the ringed planet to make an appearance before heading back to the geologists camp. By not doing this they didn't give themselves enough time to get there and back and ended up stranded and surrounded when the eclipse hit.
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** Also, take into account that the crew only discovered about the eclipse shortly before it happened with no way to be sure when it would happen beyond that it would likely be soon; by the time they realised they had a time limit, there was too little time for them to do anything about it.
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** Because Riddick isn't an idiot. He'd realize something is up if they didn't try to leave the second they had the chance.
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** Well, there's the old saying of safety in numbers. Plus, with multiple people it would be easier to get the cells out of the ship faster if they had more time (as we see in the film, it took some of them to be able to drag the sleigh with the power cells before Riddick took over by himself). Not to mention, when the lights went out, the group staying at the skiff would have been defenseless without light (the two power cells were enoug to run system checks, but we don't know if they could have powered the lights inside the skiff, let alone how long they could have. And the raptors with enough time may have broken through the front screen of the skiff, leaving the entire group with a skiff with no front window to leave orbit in).
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** Presumably the geologists who built the outpost didn't intend to do any prospecting in the dark, so they never bothered to equip their solar car with a battery. They'd built the vehicle during the ''previous'' 22-year day, and had expected the multi-eclipse to be nothing more than a temporary stay-cation from their labors.
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** Presumably the geologists who built the outpost didn't intend to do any prospecting in the dark, so they never bothered to equip their solar car with a battery. They'd built the vehicle during the ''previous'' 22-year day, and had expected the multi-eclipse to be nothing more than a temporary stay-cation from their labors.
labors. Had the bioraptors not shown up and eaten them all, they'd have resumed driving again when the suns came back.
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** Presumably the geologists who built the outpost didn't intend to do any prospecting in the dark, so they never bothered to equip their solar car with a battery. They'd built the vehicle during the ''previous'' 22-year day, and had expected the multi-eclipse to be nothing more than a temporary stay-cation from their labors.
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** If the creature would evolve underground, and the surface is pretty baren and ''really'' sucks most of the time for them, then it is strange that they are so eagerly flow out as soon as eclipse starts. Like, why bother?
** Then again, maybe it's a mating season...
** Then again, maybe it's a mating season...
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*** However, going on the theory that they '''may''' be an introduced species, it's possible that they were brought to a planet that has eternal daytime so that they could be studied with minimal danger; ie, if any specimen gets loose, just keep away until it almost immediately dies. Note that this would have had to have happened before the arrival of the geologist team, who were aware enough of the system that they built a model capable of predicting the eclipse. However, the entire premise of this question could be why they never expected a species that waited for the nighttime to feed.
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** And then there's the MathematiciansAnswer: film stock designed for picking up bright studio lights is not exposed correctly to pick up the faint light of stars.
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** There is literally an animal on earth that lives underground for 17 years and has wings when it comes out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicada Seems plausible something similar is going on here.
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*** They don't have to be. There's a discussion in the original novel of ''Relic'' that talks about the theory of a predator evolving that's so efficient it causes what's effectively an extinction level event. That an apex predator just becomes too good at what it does that all the other checks and balances of nature don't have time to catch up to it.
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** There is a lot of advanced technology in the setting, even though not all of it is obvious or constantly on display. It's entirely possible there's some sort of "inertia dampening" field in place behind the windshield or in the cabin to prevent something like, say, a micrometeorite penetration from being instantly fatal if it hits a pilot.
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** Pretty much all these questions about "how did the eclipse work" are answered by watching the movie. There's a model of the solar system and how it orbits that shows the large planets all lining up and their orbits syncing with that of the planet they're on to create the extended eclipse.
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*why did they wait for the eclipse to begin happening to drive all the way out to fetch the power cells. I get that they wanted to wait til last minute to install the cells to minimise risk of riddick stealing the ship and stranding them there but there wasn't any reason a couple of them couldn't have driven back to the ship got the power cells loaded and them waited for the ringed planet to make an appearance before heading back to the geologists camp. By not doing this they didn't give themselves enough time to get there and back and ended up stranded and surrounded when the eclipse hit.
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**its possible that the creatures are a fairly recent evolution in that worlds history. They don't appear to have any predators apart from themselves so their population was able yuk keep growing until it grossly outnumbered their surface dwelling prey leading to the extinction of surface dwelling life. Those giant skeletons could be from the eclipse preceding the geologist teams arrival. I think this would tie in with the extinction level event theory. Given that there was meant to be an entire underground Eco system it's possible the extinction event is only occurring on the surface.
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* its possible that the creatures are a fairly recent evolution in that worlds history. They don't appear to have any predators except for themselves so their population was able to continue growing with each eclipse until they grossly outnumbered their surface dwelling prey leading to the extinction of surface dwelling life. I think this would tie in with the extinction event theory. Given there was meant to be an entire underground ecology it's possible the extinction event is only occurring on the surface. Those giant skeletons could even be from the eclipse preceding the arrival of the geologist team.
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*its possible that the creatures are a fairly recent evolution in that worlds history. They don't appear to have any predators except for themselves so their population was able to continue growing with each eclipse until they grossly outnumbered their surface dwelling prey leading to the extinction of surface dwelling life. I think this would tie in with the extinction event theory. Given there was meant to be an entire underground ecology it's possible the extinction event is only occurring on the surface. Those giant skeletons could even be from the eclipse preceding the arrival of the geologist team.
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* There's a far more mundane, far more believable explanation for it being pitch black with no visible stars: cloud cover. After all, it started raining at the end of the movie. The planet caused an eclipse, and cloud cover then formed and blanketed the area, so you wouldn't see any stars.
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Simple explanation is simple.
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* There's a far more mundane, far more believable explanation for it being pitch black with no visible stars: cloud cover. After all, it started raining at the end of the movie. The planet caused an eclipse, and cloud cover then formed and blanketed the area, so you wouldn't see any stars.
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** My pet theory is that the creatures were an introduced species that completely destroyed the planetary ecosystem.
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** Apparently one of the earlier versions of the script explains that there is in fact a whole underground ecology down there, with their taking to the surface presumably having some purpose other than feeding; perhaps just stretching their wings. That being said, their resorting to mass cannibalism seems to support the recent extinction theory.
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** In the commentary, they point out that Riddick seems to somehow know what is going on.
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** There are at least two types of creatures, assuming the tiny batlike things that strip the skeleton of one of the hapless extras weren't a young version of the full-sized monsters. If we do assume that, the bats may breed fast and in large numbers, giving the big monsters a food source other than themselves. (Similarly, the bats may prey on wounded or dead full-size monsters.)
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*** This is probably a dumb concept, but could the multiple alignment of the planets have effectively created an eclipse of the entire sky rather than just of the sun? If the planets were closer together or one was larger than we're used to?
