The heroic authority figure has a dark side. Women need to prove their toughness.
Religious men have a basis for their belief - even in spite of voluminous evidence to the contrary.
And, of course, mass murderers are actually highly intelligent. Pitch Black hits on all of these, turning what could have been a truly intriguing action movie into a trite, albeit fun to watch, character study. The story begins in deep space. Our characters are in cryo-sleep on a passenger ship, when disaster strikes. The ship is drilled by debris from a rogue comet, killing the captain and hurtling the ship toward the surface of an unknown moon.