The Chosen One is a trope that has waxed and waned in popularity throughout the history of storytelling. It has its weak points, such as robbing the main character of any agency or setting up a predictable “hero’s journey” template, but there are also plenty of examples when creators used the trope in new, surprising, and even funny ways.
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Not all of the movies out there that subvert the Chosen One trope are made the same. Many contain some kind of unique subversive element that puts the so-called “Chosen One” in a whole other light, whether itbe through comedyor intriguing twists.
7Life of Brian (1979)
One of the best parodies about the Chosen One is aboutthe most famous face of the trope, Jesus himself.Monty Python’s Life Of Brianwas controversial in its time for how it mocked and subverted the whole “Chosen One” concept to one of simple human error combined with a political feedback loop.
Like an actual Chosen One, Brian is dogged by his mistaken destiny in one way or another throughout his life. The is still relevant, tearing into the institutions and stereotypes that give rise to “Chosen One” figures, the rabble they attract, and the civic leaders that use them as symbols or scapegoats.
6Airplane! (1980)
This is the movie that brought parody movies into the mainstream, and it’s also an interesting example of what movies could get away with during this era in Hollywood. National Lampoon would be the driving force behind some of the decade’s raunchiest comedies and it kicked off withAirplane!
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Fresh from an era that was dominated by Biblical epics and musicals,Airplane!takes a modern trope, the hotshot pilot, and uses as many stereotypes as possible, lifting material from every war movie, romantic comedy, and television drama possible. That includes the main character as the “Chosen One” and in this kind of movie, it’s a running joke that this character can’t fail no matter how often he fails.
5The Last Unicorn (1982)
The writing style of Peter S. Beagle is defined by the way he subverts fairy-tale tropes, and the movie adaptation of his novelThe Last Unicornhas a few examples of this. The title character isn’t the “chosen” one, she’s thelastone, and this trope being used to describe the final survivor of an extinction isn’t exactly uplifting.
The typical chosen one characters in this story are more “cursed” than “chosen” and that’s the point. There’s the knight who’s destined to live out the trope for his whole life, the wizard who has to live forever until he stops being so awkward,and the damsel in distresswho’s not a damsel at all. Each one is a realistic and even bitter view of the Chosen One trope.
4Constantine (2005)
He’s the Chosen One in the sense that he has a special gift, but this is a situation where it’s more of a curse than a blessing. Like the Classical stories of ancient times that gave us the Chosen One, there’s a lot of history and occult activity in this story and it subverts the old trope in an interesting modern way.
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Constantine fights his own demons as with actual demons from Hell and has to deal with all kinds of weird supernatural entities using powers uniquely his own. It’s also an interesting twist that his attempt to make the stereotypical Chosen One sacrifice is subverted by Satan himself.
3Tarzan: The Legend Of Greystoke (1984)
It’s not the first adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel, but it’s one of the few that includes some information from the second book, in which he has a more conflicted view of his role as the Viscount Greystoke. Tarzanis the “chosen one"of two cultures, apes and humans, but he rejects one, and that’s not something the Chosen One gets to do very often.
Instead of being limited by his status as both the lord of the apes and the Lord of Greystoke, or being compelled by responsibility or tradition to do both, this Tarzan ends the movie by rejecting civilization and returning to Africa. This is similar to the plot of the second book which sees the family, which now includes Jane and their son Jack, moving away from the old estate and back to the jungle.
2Dune (2021)
The story ofDuneis about a Chosen One, except that it isn’t. This isn’t about destiny or luck, but about thousands of years of deliberate, selective breeding, brutal testing, and careful training. TheBene Gesserit orderspent eons manufacturing a Chosen One by controlling marriages and bloodlines and Paul Atreides is the culmination of their efforts, except that he isn’t.
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Paul’s mother Jessica was supposed to have a girl but gave birth to a boy instead, messing with their ultimate plan and yet succeeding anyway, or did she? This questions the authenticity of the whole concept of a “chosen one” since it makes it possible that the trope is entirely constructed, and not a result of destiny or the natural order of the universe unfolding as it should.
1The Jewel Of The Nile (1985)
Hardly anyone remembers the sequel to the much more successfulRomancing The Stone,but there was one and it took an interesting shot at the Chosen One trope. It also played on the audience’s expectation that the story would be about a simple treasure hunt like the original.
The Jewel of the Nilewas one of the first movies to use the now overplayed “the thing we’re looking for is a person” cliche as a way to mess with the Chosen One trope. It also tests the main characters by making them admit they’re a lot less enthusiastic about saving a human being as opposed to a valuable jewel.
