Movies or TV that says you can beat fate

Submitted by Beau_bell t3_yfkl3i in movies

Looking for media that goes against the trope of "You can't change fate" or if you do, it will end up negative in ways you can't imagine, or you will end up dying anyways because "fate" will correct itself (like the Final Destination series).

I want some media that goes against this idea, instead once you see you future, you can change it for the better. As in it truly is a gift.

The Dead Zone is an example where the protagonist prevents a war (where the opposing country calls for peace, but the future president wants to press the buttons regardless) by exposing a politician for being a bad person in public. Later he doesn't get elected and commits suicide.

The protag dies in the process but it prevents devastation so it has a happy ending in a sense where fate can be altered once you know what will happen if you act on that agency and intervene.

Anything else like this that sorta says, fuck fate?

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Dove_of_Doom t1_iu3uw9t wrote

Minority Report

Devs, a science fiction miniseries by Alex Garland.

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meowskywalker t1_iu3w9sp wrote

T2 claims there is no fate but what you make, but all the following movies go back on that and suggest that at best you can delay fate, but fate will always happen in some form.

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BEE_REAL_ t1_iu3uvig wrote

Not sure if these are exactly what you're looking for, but these movies are all about a characters refusal to succumb to seemingly inevitable/inescapable circumstances:

On the Waterfront

The Trial (1967)

The Big Heat

Pans Labyrinth

High Noon

Michael Clayton

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naynaythewonderhorse t1_iu40fo2 wrote

Phineas and Ferb does this a lot. To the point where it’s used as the weapon against the enemy in both movies. The entire fucking Universe has it against Candace. She cannot bust her brothers. The universe will not allow it.

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16incheslong t1_iu3w1n2 wrote

so youre talking scifi right? Arrival maybe? doesnt exactly change of fate, but sortof

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meowskywalker t1_iu4ouej wrote

What? Arrival claims that fate is inexorable and even being able to see the future means nothing because you’re doomed to live out the future you’ve already seen. That’s the exact opposite of changing fate.

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Notoriously_So t1_iu3zlqk wrote

X-men: Days of Future Past. All Terminator movies.

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sielingfan t1_iu454pl wrote

A Knight's Tale comes to mind immediately

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repola81 t1_iu3vis9 wrote

I'm thinking 'Butterfly Effect' because of the good ending even though he had to try and change course of many lives and actions that were going on countless of times and the endings were always horrific for some one but I'm pointing out this one just because of the ending that turned out well.

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Herne8 t1_iu3zr1x wrote

The Adjustment Bureau

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choma90 t1_iu421qi wrote

Not a movie but Berserk (I know there are movies, just don't watch them)

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Archamasse t1_iu42nsr wrote

Terminator's the big one. First one's a bootstrap loop, ie fate asserts itself and future events guarantee past ones.

T2 is a Grandfather Paradox - the loop is broken by conditions supplied by the loop itself, creating a paradox in which relics of a future that won't happen have an effect.

Dark Fate is a kind of hybrid. It's the half way point of a bootstrap loop, but the characters intend to force a paradox, I think "fuck fate!" actually comes up in dialogue

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meowskywalker t1_iu4pco9 wrote

Bootstrap and grandfather paradox are both the same thing. The only way Fry can be his own grandfather is because he already was his own grandfather. Terminator 2 is just a normal old could never happen because by changing the past you create a new future where time travelers will never try to change the past paradox.

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Archamasse t1_iu4pq3y wrote

Grandfather Paradox is the opposite to a Bootstrap Loop, and it predates Futurama - the premise is that you have travelled back to kill your grandfather, not be him, thereby preventing yourself being born, which means you couldn't have gone back to kill him.

T2's Grandfather Paradox is that by preventing the war, they're preventing Kyle being born (and incidentally, John) and the time travel tech he used existing, which should mean it's impossible to prevent the war.

Futurama inverted it as a meta joke.

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meowskywalker t1_iu4s6qp wrote

Weird. I always heard it used to describe how Skynet can’t exist unless it’s sends terminator back to be used as the building blocks for Skynet, long before Futurama. Why do we need that term when paradox already describes it? I understand why we need bootstrap or predestination because it describes a scenario where we sidestep that issue even while the paradox already exists.

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Archamasse t1_iu4vrk0 wrote

There are other theoretical types of paradox in conversations about time travel, though most are about how "real" time travel would affect the world.

For example, the Fermi Paradox - "where is everyone?". The idea is that, if time travel will ever be possible, travellers should already have started coming back way in the past already and any character or person learning about it for the first time should probably take it for granted.

Another, arguably a Grandfather Paradox variation, is the Hitler Paradox. Say for example I headed back in time to prevent something happening, did it successfully, and headed home. This is a paradox, because now there's no way I could have known about the event I just prevented in order to prevent it. There was no reason for the time travel to happen at all and the future I go back to shouldn't be the same as the one that sent me. So how did they send me, and will there be another me when I get back?

The Grandfather Paradox is specifically about the traveller's own existence. They have prevented themselves existing to prevent their own existence.

Skynet's situation is sort of another Bootstrap Loop, it seeds itself in the past just as John ensures his own conception, by steering Kyle towards it.

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meowskywalker t1_iu4wfhc wrote

See I guess I have the same issue of why do we need a different term for “Hitler” and “grandfather” paradox. They both describe the same logical problem. You can’t go in to the past to change the past because by changing the past you create a present where you wouldn’t be able to go back and change the past. Whether it’s because you were never born or because you’ve never heard of Hitler seems to be splitting hairs.

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