Cool Hand Luke may not be the most obvious pick for top existential warrior, but dig beneath the surface and his existentialist credentials are hard to deny. The film, which takes place in a shabby prison in the South, stars Paul Newman as the titular prisoner. At first an outcast among the felons, Luke's ability to take heavy beatings and punishment, and yet still remain aloof and unfazed, quickly endears him to his fellow inmates. This attention though makes him a target for the warden and his minions, leading to Luke's eventual destruction. The film heavily employs Christian symbolism, but there are also a lot of existentialist undertones at play. Luke's rebellious attitude is not one of aggressive agitation, but is rather one of simply existing. The warden, his lackeys, and the whole prison system itself, attempt to shape Luke in the image of their own liking, but Luke's rebellion is made all the stronger by the fact that he does not reactively oppose their scheming, but rather simply refuses to budge. Luke is a constant pillar of the sort of radical freedom that is at the heart of existentialism. They can beat him, they can torture him, they can manipulate him psychologically, but nevertheless, he remains: Cool Hand Luke. Some of the previous characters on this list may espouse more of the teachings and ideas of existentialism. Other characters no doubt had a better intellectual understanding of the tenets of existentialism and would make more obvious text book examples of existentialist characters in film. However, no other character has just lived the life of an existentialist as much as Cool Hand Luke, and for this reason, he tops the list of the greatest existential warriors in the history of film.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
