JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 11, 2010
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
For Big Lebowski fans who also played Dungeons and Dragons when they were kids -- I imagine the overlap is large -- here is a chart of the movie's major characters by alignment. My only quibble is that Walter should be Lawful Good. ("This is not 'Nam. There are rules.")
4 comments
Hmm -- I'd switch the Nihilists and Treehorn, and I'm not sure the Stranger's "bar" quote represents Lawful Good very well. But still.
- frippo
March 11, 2010 at 12:52pm
Yeah, Walter's not Lawful Good. His contribution to the Dude's predicament is a double-cross that (as far as he knows, whatever he claims afterward) puts a kidnap victim in peril, and that'll lose you your paladin powers in a heartbeat. I think I'd make the Dude Chaotic Good, and swap out Maude Lebowski for the Malibu Police Chief as my Lawful Neutral. "Keep your ugly fuckin' goldbrickin' ass out of my beach community!" Walter's really more of a True Neutral himself, because he's far too much of an asshole to be truly Good, but lacks the impulse toward cruelty for its own sake that characterizes Evil, and he mixes the authoritarian bent of Law with the self-centered myopia of Chaos.
- austinexpat
March 11, 2010 at 1:40pm
I'd call Walter Lawful Neutral and the Dude Neutral Good. Obviously the Nihilists are Chaotic; I can go either way on Neutral or Evil. But where is The Jesus?
- rhubarbs
March 11, 2010 at 4:05pm
Geez, I like the movie a lot, unsusal for me and the brothers C. But this kind of getting into it, is beyond any measure of my interest. But then again I never played D and D. But then again Vin Diesel did, and to him I woldn't say word one about it: he may be the most oxymoronic nerd, past nerd, on the planet.
- basman
March 11, 2010 at 4:40pm