In Fate's Hands: Movies About Creating One's Destiny
A common question among first-year philosophy students, religious types, and stoners is: are we in control of our own destiny? Is free will an illusion or do we have some ability to steer ourselves to where we want to go? People who claim to have the answers to any question in this vein are just giving their best guess. But here, in this article, we’re going to get to the bottom of these pressing issues that have been weighing on humanity since our consciousness flicked on and we became aware of ourselves in the universe.
That’s right: I have the answer for you but instead, I’m just going to talk about movies. Gatekeepin’ girl boss over here.
At first glance, these films might not even seem to have that much in common but they each represent a different version of what we think of as free will, control, or destiny. For some of the characters, they are at the mercy of forces much bigger than them. Others reject that there could even been a force more powerful than they are when they’re on a mission to get what they want. And for a few, they think they have a grasp on their direction only to have that pulled away from them.
We’ll start with the lighter, most accessible of these three movies: Lisa Frankenstein (2024). Yes, it might be funny to consider a film with so much slaughter ‘light,’ but you’ll see what I mean as this piece progresses.
Lisa Frankenstein is a reimagining of the classic monster story through the lens of high school, eighties pop culture, and freak supernatural occurrences. Lisa (Kathryn Newton) is a pretty typical, unhappy goth girl whose mother was brutally murdered in front of her and whose father remarried fairly quickly considered the circumstances. She is now dealing with her senior year in a new school with a popular and caring stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) and a cruel stepmother, as per usual. During a lightening storm one night after a party, Lisa accidentally resurrects a handsome young victorian man buried in a neglected and supposedly haunted graveyard.
The creature (as Cole Sprouse is credited) is missing bits and pieces of himself, and Lisa initially says there’s nothing to be done. Then the creature kills her stepmother and they are able to attach her ear to his head with sewing supplies and a malfunctioning tanning bed. They begin to make plans to get other pieces, which lead to an inadvertent murder and Lisa being the prime suspect.
Now, Lisa as a character might be truer to teenage reality than most teens we see in TV and movies. She’s sullen even in the face of people being nice to her, impulsive and completely unable to cover her tracks, but if nothing else, she has her hand on the wheel. At the start of the movie, she’s rudderless and very nearly taken advantage of by a ‘nice guy’ type nerd in her class. By the end, she’s plotted out a way to get everything she wants and also not be put in jail for murder. In the world of Lisa Frankenstein, free will exists. With a bit of luck and moxie, a goth teen in a bad situation can come out the winner if she goes for it. Fortune favors the bold, after all.
For something still uniquely feminine but less about creating fate and more about surrendering to it, we move to She Is Conann (2023). This is another reimagining of a classic tale but this time it’s Conan the Barbarian warped through the fantastical world of Bertrand Mandico. In She Is Conann, the titular barbarian is in the vortex of life, essentially in the ether, and is being moved through the beats of her own story, knowing there is no way to change anything. Each iteration of her is tied to the destiny of becoming Conann, even a detour of years where she tries to escape and lives as a lesbian stunt woman. Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), a half-dog half human creature, narrates the story to Conann and explains that some debts cannot go unpaid; some things are written.
For the various Conanns in the film, they are moved through time and location but always tethered to their core persona. They are all the same woman: barbaric, strong, and dangerous. The locales change bits and pieces but what can’t be shifted is what they are made of. They are all destined to be leaders, to be the person who everyone’s eyes go to when they enter the room. A later iteration stresses the danger of this type of person but still, Conann evolves into her next version in a way that feels helpless considering the sheer power of the warrior. It doesn’t matter if Conann herself wants to stay floating in the ether; when fate beckons, she has no choice but to follow.
From the fantastical to the real and the very sad: The Iron Claw (2023). Where Lisa and Conann either took hold of destiny or could see the mechanisms behind it, the characters in The Iron Claw were swept up in theirs. The Von Erich family, consisting of only boys aside from their mother, was a group of professional wrestlers in the late seventies and early eighties who just met with one tragedy after another. Led by a brute of a father, the boys pushed to extremes in everything they did, causing one to ignore signs of serious health problem which killed him and two others to take their own lives for various reasons.
The only surviving son Kevin (Zac Efron) spends most of the movie not being able to make decisions for himself. He’s either under the oppressive control of his father or kneecapped by his fear of the family curse. The concept of being cursed is woven throughout the entire movie, including in the second suicide where the brother calls Kevin beforehand and explains he can’t live with it hanging over his head. For a family that seems to be able to make their own destiny – creating a career and lives out of professional wrestling – the Von Erichs continue to see a spector over them, one that drives their fates in a specific and dark direction.
Kevin alternates between being ineffectual, at least in his own mind, to being uncontrollably violent; he is disqualified in a very important fight for holding a move for too long, he nearly chokes his father to death, and he often has outbursts towards his brothers and family. On the other hand, he literally hides away from his wife and children and sleeps in a wrestling gym in order to avoid them catching the curse he feels is connected to him. In a small, quiet scene, he gives his son a different surname to make sure he doesn’t have the curse passed along to him. Kevin isn’t a man in control of his fate though in the end, he manages to build the future he wanted for himself.
Between three different characters, we see three different versions of destiny and control. Lisa, who never really had much vision, is able to seize moments as they happen. Conann, who is trapped in between lives, makes futile attempts to change what she is told is set in stone. Kevin, who believes he is haunted and has no grasp on his direction, walks helpless through the world before he is able to take control of where he ends up. But even with three different perspective, the question remains: is it free will or fate? What exactly is the driving force here?
Wouldn’t you like to know.
