Complex messiahs: The 12 greatest sci-fi saviors from film and TV
The return of Dune's Paul Atreides has us thinking about Neo, Anakin, and other unforgettable chosen ones
Film Features Michael Shanks
When Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters on March 1, we’ll finally get to see Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides complete his arc from sheltered royal heir to full-on space messiah. It got us thinking about the classic trope of the chosen one, and the other great examples in science-fiction films and TV shows. As Hitchhiker’s Guide To Galaxy author Douglas Adams once put it, “It’s one thing to think that you’re the center of the universe—it’s another thing entirely to have this confirmed by an ancient prophecy.”
Imagine being told that one day you’re going to save the world, and having no idea how to go about doing that. The path of a chosen one isn’t easy, but it makes for great storytelling. Maybe that’s why it’s so common, especially in genres heavy with allegory, like science-fiction and fantasy. There’s a lot of crossover there, but with Dune as our inspiration, we’re going to stick to science fiction here.
Not every heroic savior is a chosen one. With apologies to Thor, that’s what heroes do. What’s different about these characters is that they’re told of their destiny in advance, through prophecy or some other form of special selection. They have to live with the burden of that knowledge, which is often delivered to them before they’ve matured into adulthood. In fact, the whole concept of a chosen one, besides being a wish-fulfillment fantasy that allows everyone to believe they could be secretly exceptional or important, is a pretty solid metaphor for maturity. Plus, we just enjoy watching Paul and other characters on this list come into their own power.
39 Comments
OH, COME ON.
Clearly they had a set number of entries and they had to include at least three Wachowski movies
One of which was utter trash.
Yeah…how dare this pretentious French indie film stand in the way of…stone cold sci-fi…er, classic, Jupiter Ascending? At least Tatum and Kunis are probably the right pair of actors to have a sense of humour about the whole thing.
I was waiting for her on that list and it never happened. What a total fuck up.
Maybe she’s not complex enough.
I love Aang but sci-fi he is not.
That depends on if you (as do I) regard ATLA as taking place in a post-nuclear WW3 world where mutations happened, and what is left behind from the old world evolved into the bender nations.
Interesting theory but I think it applies a little better to Adventure Time
Bending is comparable to the force, and it’s on another planet. Put him on the list.
There’s a much stronger argument to remove Star Wars from the list than there is to add Avatar The Last Airbender to it
Avatar Kora gets a little closer what with the steam-punky-ness of it all.If they jump into Anime, though, clear the decks for like 3 dozen more saviors/messiahs.
pff
The lead in Kung-Pow is called Chosen One!And where are Bill & Ted? Or Bill Jr & Ted Jr, if we must.
So no mention of Klaatu from The Day The Earth Stood Still?The movie is pure allegory, not even science fiction, of the last days of Jesus.
Fun fact, that character later became the Beatles.
Wow. So now you’re just trolling us, eh?
In Valen’s name.
How about Lamia in X-Bomber/Star Fleet?
Star Fleeeeeeet!
The best thing May ever did.
Darth Vader is great, but Anakin? Come on now.Well, people tell me he’s great in the animated stuff, and maybe he is, but if we’re talking the prequels he’s a big old nothing. He’s not interesting. He’s not compelling. The performance is bad and the writing is worse. He’s high profile so I guess I can see why you’d include him on a list like this (and it will get dorks like me engaged and commenting), but that’s about all I can say in his favor.
Plus Luke is not just some random hayseed, he’s foreseen by the Emperor as a risk to the Empire and stuffed away on Tattooine as an infant to be protected by Obi Wan.
You ARE the Nick Nack Paddywack!
I would add these:Philip J. Fry, Futurama. During an adventure where he became his own grandfather, his unique brain pattern made him immune to the invading brain spawn.James Cole, 12 Monkeys. So many extraordinary circumstances led to a hero of time saving humanity and all of existence. If you haven’t seen the show, it has one of the most satisfying endings of all time.
Doctor Who.Hot Rod, The Transformers The Movie. Maybe Ultra Magnus or Galvatron could have ended the movie much earlier if they just stuck their fingers into the finger holes, but only one Autobot was able to do it.Tex Murphy, Under A Killing Moon. The Big PI in the Sky reluctantly acknowledges how he was fated to save the Earth. If only we could explode all the nazis in real life.
To each their own of course, but I preferred the Doctor when he / she / they were just some cosmic drop-out bumbling around the universe helping people out of jams because they were kind of a nice person, not the Secret Immortal Regenerating Time Lord God Thing With A Dark Past or whatever the recent showrunners have insisted on making them. Slapping increasing layers of Chosen One narrative on them out of some fannish insistence that they have to be Literally The Greatest And Coolest And Most Important Character Who Ever Existed Oh My God You Guys Wow has ironically just served to gradually sap what made them interesting in the first place away.
Superman in the Snyderverse
No boy who lived?
The list is specific to sci-fi.
I thought the same immediately, but I guess that falls under fantasy and not Sci-fi, though those lines are pretty blurry in most contexts
Even as a kid, I simply did not understand how the Jedi so greatly misinterpreted the “chosen one” prophecy. It was so obvious – you believed Anakin would “bring balance to the Force”, so why would you think that he would destroy the Sith? There are thousands of Jedi and they occupy one of the most prestigious positions in your interstellar society, meanwhile there are two Sith and they have to live in secret. The Force is very much out of balance already, so of course Anakin would bring balance to it by helping to drastically reduce the number of Jedi. Their misinterpretation also fed into the overall theme of the Prequels, that the Jedi’s arrogance and hubris led to their downfall, because they simply could not conceive of a prophecy like that that didn’t benefit them.
Then I found out that George Lucas himself said that no, actually the Jedi understood the prophecy correctly, they just didn’t realize that he’d have to spend two decades as Darth Vader before he would actually complete it. To which I say no, that’s dumb.
Lucas never understood the concept of balance. There are interviews from the 70s where he says balance is the good guys winning.
I haven’t heard that before but it’s not surprising.
Headlining a list of the “12 Greatest Sci-Fi Saviors From Film and TV” with Paul (Muad’Dib) Atreides at the top – way to tell me you haven’t read the full book series without actually telling me that.Spoilers from here onward (for those who haven’t read the book) – and I cannot seem to add spoiler tags to this so – please only read if you want to read the spoilery part…—————————- Spoilers Start here —————————- If you understand the follow-on books – Paul is NOT the savior – his war becomes a galaxy-wide Jihad killing millions, and ultimately guts the entirety of the Fremen society of everything that made them who they were.The few remaining ones despise what the end result is, and it is entirely because Paul was too weak to do the hard thing (which would have made him hated). Instead it fell to his children to have the courage to do it FOR him (and for the rest of humanity) and yes – it made them hated… He is not a savior – if anything he is a fake – someone who used a Bene Gesserit pre-seeded prophecy for his own purposes – to get what HE wanted (revenge among other things), and he rejected the hard path – to his ultimate personal cost.This is also why my ultimate hope is that we get Villanueve to give us ALL of the first 4 books – end it with God Emperor of Dune – Do the Crazy Thing! Because without understanding the “golden path” – no one really understands how utterly Paul failed – and how big the sacrifice he was asked to make (the one his kids undertook for him).—————————- Spoilers end here —————————-
I hate these listicles, and always hate myself for reading them.
BUT.
I love this title. “Complex messiahs.” That’s witty!
Carry on.
“Gaius Baltar (James Callis) is told he is one by the Number Six (Tricia Helfer) in his head, but is later revealed to be an actual angel.”The AI is getting confused by characters with the same name again.