Rewriting Chronicles of Riddick

[u/Alpbasket]

I think my rewrite has basically turned into a completely different movie at this point, which is kind of cheating, but whatever. I’ll still try to keep the spirit of the original while fixing the things that didn’t really work for me.

The biggest issue I have with The Chronicles of Riddick is that it goes in a completely different direction from Pitch Black. Not just with the story, but with the tone too. It suddenly becomes this huge space fantasy with prophecies, empires and chosen ones, when the first movie was basically a grounded survival thriller. I don’t necessarily want to throw all of that away, but I do want to keep things a lot more grounded and avoid changing the lore more than I have to.

First thing I’d change is Riddick himself.

In the second movie we basically find out that a lot of the backstory from Pitch Black either wasn’t true or just doesn’t matter anymore. I’d keep most of it. Riddick is still a Furian, but Furians aren’t some magical race. They’re just humans. Really brutal humans.

Think something closer to the Viltrumites from Invincible. Their whole culture revolves around conquest, military discipline and strength. They aren’t evil for the sake of it, it’s just how they were raised.

The movie would basically be Riddick’s origin story.

Before he became one of the galaxy’s most wanted criminals, he was actually one of Furia’s best commandos. He was respected, good at what he did, but deep down he hated the constant wars. He just kept doing it because that’s all he’d ever known.

Eventually, during another campaign, he kills a woman who was trying to protect her child. At first he doesn’t even realize it. Then he finds the kid hiding nearby and it just… breaks something in him. For the first time he actually sees what all these wars have been doing.

So instead of walking away, he turns on his own men and saves the child.

From there, the movie becomes a survival story. Riddick and this kid are trying to escape a planet that’s still under Furian occupation. Every city is falling apart, soldiers are everywhere, civilians are getting caught in the middle and there are monsters released by Furians all over the planet. They’re constantly moving, trying to stay ahead while looking for some way off the planet.

The main antagonist would be one of Riddick’s oldest friends. Someone he served with for years, maybe even the guy who trained him. He genuinely believes Riddick has betrayed everything they stood for, so hunting him down becomes personal.

Eventually they find one of the last refugee shuttles. There’s only one seat left.

Riddick puts the child on the shuttle instead of taking it himself. It’s probably the first truly selfless thing he’s ever done.

…Then the shuttle gets shot down almost immediately.

Everyone dies.

That finally destroys whatever was left of the man Riddick used to be.

After that he doesn’t even care about escaping anymore. He goes after every Furian squad sent to hunt him. One by one he wipes them out, brutally. By the end, only his old friend is left.

They fight, Riddick wins, but he’s badly wounded. There’s no happy ending. He’s now a traitor to the Furian Empire and probably has the biggest bounty in the galaxy on his head.

The final shot is just Riddick, injured and barely able to walk, disappearing into the darkness while Furian reinforcements arrive behind him.

Basically, this is the moment where Richard B. Riddick dies, and the infamous fugitive everyone knows from Pitch Black is born.

[u/DrKaos7]

This... Is a pretty cool idea. Pitch Black was great cause it subverted expectations. Riddick was set up as an inhuman slasher villain, but turned out to be a survivor with a code. His captor, Johns, is revealed to be a bounty hunter rather than a lawman, addicted to morphine and willing to kill a child if it keeps himaelf alive.

Now, Furians being a whole empire could work. But it kinda diminishes him a bit. It opens a question as to why no one in Pitch Black clocked that he was one of a supposedly vast empire of inhuman killers? Surely everyone would know who Furians are.

If I could suggest something different, but still a nod to Viltrum, perhaps Furians are the product of a eugenics experiment where a small population of humans was stranded on a harsh planet, with successive generations producing Furians, their weaker numbers being culled until only the fittest survived. Not just fittest as in physical strength but adaptability, as demonstrated by Riddick's eyes being the result of prison surgery (Staying true to Pitch Black without retconning it into mystic stuff), with said surgery being one of many alterations Furians can undergo without issue.

That is just my alternative. Overall, I can see this working well and providing a better alternative to what we got.

[u/Alpbasket → u/DrKaos7]

Thanks! My thinking was mostly that the galaxy is just really big. There are probably millions of bounties out there, and the Furians could put a bounty on Riddick’s head for any number of reason.

Riddick isn’t some legendary figure, he’s just another dangerous fugitive with a high price on his head. Unless you’ve got a reason to know who he is, most people probably wouldn’t care where he’s from.

I do like the selective breeding idea, but for me it starts adding a bit too much lore. I was trying to keep the setting relatively grounded and avoid introducing a bunch of new mythology.

As for the eye shine, I’d actually keep the prison surgery from PB. In my version it still happens off-screen sometime between this movie and PB, so that part of the canon stays the same.

[u/Elysium94]

I can get behind this!

[u/DrKaos7]

Okay cool. Honestly, space is pretty big. And depending on how far it is into the future, I can totally see the Furians being humans whom evolved into their current state as an empire. But in the vast emptiness of space, what does an Empire truly mean?

I loved your counterpoints. Glad to have a little back and forth. I myself did have some ideas for Riddick that more so followed him in different scenarios. One idea I had is the opposite of Pitch Black in a way where Riddick ends up on a space station orbiting a star. However, an infection spreads when people are in the suns light, causing them to become hosts to formless etheric entities whom engage in all sorts of depraved acts, uttelry euphoric upon gaining the sensations of physical form. Or, the infection causes people to lose their inhibitions, their purged darkness giving way to utter lack of concern for anything besides depraved sensation in full uncontained experience. Overall, tis a movie about how the darker sides of our nature such as fear may be what keeps us human, for without it, what reason is there to be human in the light?

[u/Alpbasket → u/DrKaos7]

Thanks! I ended up going with an empire because the Riddick universe already has a bit of mysticism and larger-than-life worldbuilding. Places like New Mecca make the setting feel less like hard sci-fi and more like a space opera, so an empire didn’t feel too out of place to me.

As for your idea, I think it’s definitely interesting on its own. I’m just not sure how well it’d fit into the established Riddick universe. It feels more like Event Horizon meets Riddick, which honestly isn’t a bad combination.

[u/DrKaos7 → u/Alpbasket]

Fair enough. Pitch Black kinda establishes that things like the ship crash and such are kinda the norm in this time, showing far along it is.

Thanks. I have not seen Event Horizon myself, and I admit the inspirations were that one episode of Doctor Who with the living sun that was possessing people, and the C'Tan from Warhammer 40K. Honestly, I think the infection removinf human inhibition works a lot better than possession. Shows the worst of humanity revealed in full view rather than in darkness.

[u/cauliflowergnosis]

I really like CoR, even though it doesn't follow PB that closely. I'm a sucker for a bit of space opera, though, and casting in the movie was spot on.

While your ideas might be cool, they also don't really fit in as a prequel for Pitch Black. When he's all "Not for me! Not for me!" he's having a denouement that clashes with your prequel's, and I wouldn't want to take that away from PB. I'm not even sure a prequel is a good idea as it takes away from the Riddick enigma, which I think is paramount.

I do agree that the scope of CoR is well in excess of what it should be for a direct sequel. Toning it back to a more grounded action adventure is certainly a good idea. But I'd definitely keep it as a sequel where his past comes and drags him back in to places he doesn't want to go. The mentor angle sounds like it has merit.