Riddick (character)
Richard B. Riddick (played by Vin Diesel), more commonly known simply as Riddick, is the fictional Furyan protagonist of a number of films, including Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, and The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. He is also the star of a video game spinoff of the film series, entitled The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.
Physical appearance
Riddick stands around 6 feet tall. He has a muscular, athletic frame, and is extremely fit. His head is shaved. His eyes glow softly with a silvery whitish blue glow, due to his eyeshine. Riddick usually wears welding goggles during the day, due to his sensitivity to light. (See below).
His attire usually consists of a black muscle shirt, dark-colored cargo pants, an utility belt, and combat boots. He usually keeps knives on his person.
He has a deep baritone voice.
Personality
At the outset of Pitch Black, Riddick is viewed by the other survivors as a dangerous, cold-blooded killer. There is some truth to this; however, Riddick is by no means psychopathic. He usually kills out of necessity, much like a predator, when he is threatened, but feels little if any restraint when doing so. He seems to have a diminished opinion of the value of human life. He also appears to have a certain sense of honour-when Johns, a bounty hunter who captured him, "nearly" shot him so that Riddick would remember the way it could have gone, Riddick grabbed Johns' gun and did the same thing, apparently to ensure he wouldn't be indebted to Johns in the future.
It is revealed that the primary reason for Riddick's cooperation in Pitch Black is that he believes he will be set free after they escape. He was willing to leave the other survivors stranded, so long as he would escape. However, he eventually went back for the survivors, showing a lighter side to Riddick's "anti-hero" mentality. At the beginning of the movie, a survivor asks why the escaped Riddick would return to trouble them, then Johns states, "to work your nerves, or to take what you've got." Therefore, at the end of the movie, it appears he was simply trying to make it hard on Fry by initially presenting her the choice of whether to come with him or stay with the others.
Riddick is a brave individual; he is often willing to enter combat against unfavorable or even seemingly impossible odds, as evidenced by his facing one of the native creatures in Pitch Black even after almost everyone else who encountered them had been killed. He also escaped twice from Triple Maximum Security prisons. He has also instigated prison-wide riots and fought the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers, who is, considered by many, a quite formidable adversary. He is stealthy, always on his toes, and prefers to attack from the shadows.
He does have the capacity to care about others, although he doesn't show it often. The most obvious example of this is seen in his father/daughter relationship with Jack, a.k.a. "Kyra"; and his visible pain at her death in the last movie.
Riddick is apparently quite intelligent, and much more observant than most humans; in the film The Chronicles of Riddick, he quickly deduced almost exactly how a battle between a group of mercenaries and prison guards happened after the fact. He can also calculate how people can and will behave, after gathering enough information about them. After Riddick escapes in the opening of Pitch Black, he places his handcuffs on one side of the crash site, then heads in the opposite direction to confuse Johns, who has been chasing (and had recently captured) Riddick. Johns, being used to Riddick's trickery, knows what he is trying and heads in the right direction after Riddick anyway.
Riddick also seems to have a good knowledge of human anatomy and perhaps even xenobiology; he knows all the most lethal places to strike a human with a blade, and he is able to determine that the Grues, the antagonistic, nocturnal creatures in Pitch Black, have a blind spot by looking at a skeleton of one in the desert.
Eyeshine
According to Riddick, while in Butcher Bay he received an eye surgery, or a "surgical shine job," as he calls it, from a doctor that gave him superlative night vision, but, in turn, made his eyes more sensitive to light; thus, he wears tinted welding goggles to protect his eyes. According to Riddick, the surgery cost him twenty Menthol Kools. However, in the Chronicles of Riddick, it is implied that the story may have been made up. At one point in the film, Kyra (or Jack, as credited in Pitch Black, now with a more mature, feminine appearance) says: [after recounting the many prisons she's been to]"...only there wasn't any doctor here who could shine my eyes, not even for twenty Menthol Kools....Was there anything you said that was true!"
The video-game, however, (which serves as a prequel to Pitch Black) clarifies that Riddick's eyeshine is more than just something he picked up in a prison; after helping a character called "Pope Joe" retrieve his "blessed voice box," a radio that picks up religious programming, Riddick goes into a den to get stitches for an injury. After he is finished receiving stitches, Joe tells him how to escape, and, perhaps, coincidentally, warns Riddick not to "trust his eyes"; at that moment, a ghostly voice informs him that Riddick has "been blind for far too long...so I'm going to give you a gift...." It is at this moment when Riddick receives his Eyeshine.
The mysterious voice belongs to a character named Shirah, who serves as a "spiritual" guide, of sorts, to Riddick. She is featured in the video-game and in the Director's Cut of The Chronicles of Riddick to help Riddick "wake" the Furyan abilities that lie dormant within him. Little else has been revealed about her.
In a sequence from the Chronicles of Riddick, there is a scene which features scaly canine creatures, called Hell Hounds, with eyes surprisingly similar to Riddick's. The creatures are released into the Crematoria penitentiary at "feeding time," during which they attack inmates freely. Riddick is found by one while hiding behind a waterfall and confronts the creature with a stare. Incredulously, the creature is seemingly tamed by Riddick to which he offered the explanation: "It's an animal thing."
Strange "Energy Blast" Attack
Aside from helping Riddick unlock his eyeshine, the character Shirah also allows Riddick to unleash a sort of energy blast. It is shown in the Director's Cut of The Chronicles of Riddick after she lays her hand on Riddick's chest [leaving a glowing blue hand print that never] and says: "this mark carries the anger of an entire race... but it's going to hurt." Immediately, a large blast of blue energy explodes out of Riddick's body, sending the group of surrounding Necromongers out in every direction. This ability is also displayed off screen in Escape from Butcher Bay, although it appears he did this seemingly completely on his own, as opposed to Shirah "unlocking" it as she did in the Director's Cut of the movie, therefore it may be debatable as to if the Director's Cut scene can be considered canonical; that is, it cannot be determined if the incident in Butcher Bay is the first time he does this, or if the creators intended the Director's Cut scene to be the first time it is done.
Trivia
- Riddick was once in the military, as stated in the special features on The Chronicles of Riddick DVD; this also explains how he is an experienced pilot.
- His fighting style is a more aggressive, brutal variation of the martial art of Kali
- Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel has a character designed after Riddick as an easter egg.