What alignment would Riddick be?

[Zuoken]

Remember, towards the beginning of the CoR, he did say that all he wanted was to be left alone. The only "evil" thing that I saw him, doing in that movie was going after the priest (but he did at least talk to him).

I would therefore vote for True Neutral with evil tendancies at the end of CoR, probably a lot closer to Lawful Evil if he accepts what is, pressed upon him at the end.

 

[Navar]

Neutral Evil here he is evil, he is into revenge, but he does have a personal code, so he isn't CE.

 

[DarkCrisis]

In PB:

He could have went with the Mercs plan to sacrafice a party member. Riddick said nay although it ws a good plan.

Riddick also saves Jack when the monster was attacking her when he could have kept walking

He planned to leave everyone but went back to help after hearing the Captains plea.

He shows true remorse when the Captain is killed in his stead.

In DF:

He could have easily gotten the upper hand in the 1st battle if he let Jack die

He also later leads the monster away so the Priest and Jack can get to safety.

In CoR:

He goes into seclusion to prtect Jack

He protects the Priests wife and child just because

He goes allows himself to be caught and taken toa prison planet JUST so he can save Jack/Kira.

He risks his life many times to save her including at the end when he fights the Emperor for her.

I'd say Choatic Neutral. He goes where the wind blows him. Does what he needs to survive but wouldn't kill just anyone for the heck of it. He also protects those he feels are his family/friends. Seems druidish to me.

He is labeled a murderer but he doesnt seem the person to just kill for the heck of it. I doubt he murdered innocents. Perhaps it all started with a bar fight or something?

 

[Sejs]

From the material we've been shown, he used to be quite the monster.

It's the events that took place in Pitch Black that started to turn him around - Riddick's avoided having anyone rely on him in the past, but the crash in PB forced the issue. He didn't have a choice; without him, everyone there was going to die. Normally he would have just left them to their fate and not thought twice about it, but some of the people there endeared themselves to him. The Imam who was open with him and treated him like he was a fellow human being, rather than just being afraid of Riddick. Jack, who looked up to him, and in whom he saw a sort of reflection of his own past. Carolyn, who he grudgingly admired for her flat-out refusal to just give up and let everyone be killed.


In context, really, the two films give a pretty good example of what sort of things can lead up to a character undergoing an alignment change. At the beginging, he's evil. Downright, dyed-in-the-wool evil. And in another situation he would have walked away and not looked back - taken care of Number 1 and left it at that. But everything that happened really made him start to look at things in a different light. It really culminates in the begining of CoR, when we find out that he's gone into hiding for the last five years in an effort to keep the people he cares about safe from the effects of being associated with him.

 

[Privateer]

An interesting arguement I find in this thread is "he's not CE because he cares for someone" and "he's not chaotic because he had a personal code." A CG person can hate someone just as well as a CE can care -- it's not as normal for it to happen, but that one human emotion wouldn't move a CE to CN. Also, a personal code does not a lawful person make. Robin Hood had a code of sorts, but most agree he was CG.

Having someone you care about, and having a slight code of morals doesn't make you not CE, it makes you CE with a personality -- instead of the typical depiction of CE, a crazed psychopathic killer who eats babies and a side of puppy steaks with cute kitten sauce.

 

[Acid_crash]

Diesel Neutral, Vin Evil

 

[Felix]

Chaotic Evil

Just because he's the ruler at the end of the film doesn't mean he immediately becomes Lawful; at every turn he is trying to remain free and unbound by the Law. Unfortunately, at the end of the film, he finds himself in charge of the Law, and doesn't know what to do about it. Chaotic.

We don't know what happened before Pitch Black, even though he eludes to being sent into the worst slams in the universe... but then he gets sent to the slam again in Chronicles, and it wasn't because he did something terribly Evil, so it's possible that his previous offences were similar to his offences in Chronicles: he killed when people they messed with him. Similarly, nowhere do we see his enjoyment of killing. It seems like a business to him... something that must be done that he has gotten good at to let him survive... shoot, he's been hunted since he was a little Furion boy, so its no wonder he has developed some incredible survival/killing instincts. So, he doesn't enjoy the kill, and does not kill without reason. These definitly swing him over to the Neutral section of the G-E axis.

Chaotic Neutral, without a doubt.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Having just seen the movie yesterday (and my wife asking the same question the moment the credits rolled). I figure I'd chime in.

First, I haven't seen Pitch Black, so I'll confine my comments to The Chronicles of Riddick.

I'd call him CN with both good & evil tendincies. He's VERY independant the entire film, caring little for any of the laws of any of the people he comes across. Personal freedom & choice is his MO the entire film. He's Chaotic, to say the least.

He also kills just for the fun of it, seems to take delight in the suffering of other (particullarly in the beginning of the film). Yet, by the end, he displays an inordinate amount of concern, just not for those he knew (kira, the priest), but for those he barely knows. Ie. the preists kid & wife, the elemental, even some of the prisoners he tried to escape Cremetoria with.

At the start of the film, I'd say he was CN with evil tendencies. By the end, I'd go with CN with good tendencies. Perhaps use Often Chaotic Neutral.

Riddick does acts of both good & evil. He is undecided, his alignment is undergoing transiton between good & evil, yet always seems to drift back to Nuetrality. If you are going to try to confine Riddick within the defintions of D&D's alignment system, your best bet is CN with Evil/Good tendicies.

In other words, don't pidgeon hole the man. (By the way, I was surprised by the movie, much better than I thought it'd be). The necrons would make a cool LE empire to threaten an entire campaign world.

Vraille Darkfang

 

[Aaron L]

He's pretty clearly the definition of Chaotic Neutral to me. He wants to be left alone and will kill you if you mess with him. He won't seek you out to kill you, he doesn't lay awake at night imagining killing people for fun, we wants to be left alone to be free. I could go with him being Chaotic Evil pre and beginning of Pitch Black, and I loved PB as a study of an evil man becoming something more.

 

[argo]

Just because Riddick manages to feel the barest ammount of emotion for a couple of people he knows personally does not make him any less evil. Evil guys can have pets too ya know

I also don't buy that he is non-evil because he mostly kills people who are threatening him. Bad things happen to Bad People. Would Riddick have every prision in the galaxy willing to pay to house him if he wern't such a bad guy already? He gets himself into most of the tight spots in the movie. We are told the the Lord Marshal wants to kill all Furions but the Lord Marshal doesn't know that Riddick is a Furion until Riddick himself gets the Marshal's attention. I think this all falls under the category of Looking For Trouble.

And I strongly disagree with the whole "Riddick performed a good act when he left for five years to protect kira and the priest". That was NOT a noble act of self sacrifice. IMHO he left because he couldn't hack living on a civalized world/being a father figure (and possibly because he might have a thing for young girls and had just enough decency to decide that putting some distance between him and kira might be a good idea). Both kira and the priest were angry with him for leaving and both scoffed at his rather pathetic excuse for why he did it. Kira was so desprate for a role model that in his absence she tried to reconstruct what she knew of his life and look at how that turned out (not saying things would have been better had he stayed but....). Leaving was a cowardly act and a major Character Flaw and I think that, for myself at least, recognizing it as such is important to apreicating the character. Riddick is not perfect, he is a screw up and a failure on many levels, he does not always make the right decision and like many many Bad Men he has an excuse for everything. We are not always meant to believe everything he says.

For me I think that the defining motivation of the Riddick character is his pride. He is a man intensely driven by pride ("Furions, defiant to the last"). He is an alpha male's alpha male. He can barely tolerate being around someone who considers themselves to be badass (the Prison Leader) so long as that person acknowledges his own badasosity. In the event that someone questions his dominance Riddick feels the overwhelming need to kill that person to establish that he is top dog. Consider the Necromonger who killed the Priest. Riddick killed that guy for revenge but was it really an act of devotion to a friend? A friend Riddick himself was willing to kill just a few hours ago. A friend who when the space fleet invaded Riddick ran off and left with no way of knowing he could find later in a city being overrun at night (indeed I beilieve it was just chance that Riddick found them and that he protected the wife and kid only because they were hiding in the same alley). When Riddick confronted the Necro did he try to force the necro to feel remorse, toss off a "this one's for Bob" line? No, when I watched that scene I got the vibe that it was all about "you broke my stuff.... nobody breaks my stuff". Similar thing with the prison guards who tried to rape Kira. If Riddick was really so pissed about them assaulting this special person why didn't he leap in there and kill them all in an instant? Why first get their attention and then offer them the chance to leave? Because it was more important for his pride that the (surviving) guards acknowledge that he has a larger manhood and faster car than they do and bow out respectfully. It was selfish and had nothing to do with the feelings of Kira, only that she was under his protection and therefore off-limits to the smaller dogs.

Don't get me wrong people. I agree that Riddick is an example of how an evil character can be something more than a target for a hero to knock down. I think that he is a facinating character and that they managed to pack a suprising ammount of depth into a summer action flick. It's why I like the movie so much (though I do wish the camerawork durring the fight scenes was better).

But I still think he is evil.