Take a Third Option/Film

Film[]

interstate 60 has many examples of this trope, which is basically the subtext of the movie, until the point in which, iconically, the hero drives his car off the road instead of choosing one of two roads he doesn't want to go down.
In Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abganale Jr. has to make a choice concerning whether he wants his mother or father to have custody over him: unable to choose, he runs away, thus beginning his trail of bank fraud and crime.
The movie The Adjustment Bureau has a big one. The main character is forced to choose between having a romance with the girl he was "destined" to be with and thus dooming her career, or breaking up with her and allowing her to become a famous and influential dancer. While initially he chooses to break up with her, he later finds out that because of this she's going to be hugely successful but very unhappy. So he takes option number three: he tries to convince God to change destiny.
In Titanic, Rose is unable to get Jack, but she neither wishes to marry Cal. She assumes a false name on RMS Carpathia having been rescued, thus distracting Cal and managing to run away from him and his family.
In The Matrix, Morpheus is captured by the Agents and Neo has the choice of letting him be forced to reveal all his secrets, which would doom the resistance, or unplugging his body from the interface, which would mean instant death for him. However, Neo refuses to make either choice and decides to go in and rescue Morpheus instead despite the formidable opposition.
- A much better example of this trope, though also a subversion: In Reloaded, Neo is given the choice between entering two doors, each of which will doom the human race in a slightly different way. He makes no attempt to even think of a third option, indicating that his mind is not nearly as free as he believes it to be. (In fact, when one finally presents itself, it's because it rather literally walked up and started punching him.)
- Neo offers the Machines the chance to do this in the third movie, turning the tables on them using pretty much the same situation: They can let the Matrix be completely corrupted and their city be destroyed out of stubbornness or they can accept a new status quo and establish a new equilibrium between humans and machines and the matrix. It seems like their whole cyclical plan was just WAITING for some human or machine to figure out a third option that would actually end the war.
In the first Spider-Man film, The Green Goblin forces the hero to decide whether to save Mary Jane or a street car full of kids. With great personal effort, and some help from the public, Spider-Man saves both.
In The Cat in the Hat starring Mike Myers, while the kids argue whether to get the dog or not, the Cat claims, "There is a third option... but it involves... murder."
In Batman Forever, the Riddler forces Bats to choose between his brand-new sidekick Robin or his prospect girlfriend Chase. Using his wits and a few of his many wonderful toys, he's able to save both, defeat both villains (Two-Face flips his last coin), and even secure his secret identity.
- In the Dark Knight Trilogy, this is both subverted and played straight. Batman saves Harvey Dent's life at the cost of Rachel's, since Commissioner Gordon would never make it in time to save her, with the added twist that the Joker purposely gave them the wrong addresses. Later on in the film, the civilians and the prisoners decide against sacrificing the other group in exchange for their lives like the Joker had originally planned.
In Superman: The Movie, Lex Luthor launches two nuclear missiles headed for opposite ends of the country so that Superman can't stop them both. By reversing the flow of time, he manages to do so anyway. This was perhaps not the fastest option, though.
In Who Am I?, Jackie Chan's character is confronted by two thugs on the roof of a building, who give him two choices: "Give us the disk and jump off," said disk being the MacGuffin of the movie, or "We take the disk and throw you off." Instead, Jackie says, "I like the third choice: I keep the disk and throw you both off." (During the ensuing fight scene, nobody actually gets thrown off.)
Subverted in The Rundown, when Beck first confronts Travis. Beck offers Travis two choices: Option A (come quietly back to LA) or option B ("Pretty much the opposite of A. But I wouldn't recommend that one.") Travis decides to go with Option C, and attempts to beat up Beck and escape; considering that Beck is the hero of the movie, and is played by The Rock, while Travis is played by Stiffler from American Pie, you can guess how that goes. Afterwards, Beck quips, "Like I said, there is no Option C."
In 1408, John Cusack's character is given the option of reliving the past hour forever (an hour he described as "the deepest level of hell"), or "taking advantage of our express check-out service" (read: killing himself.) He ultimately decides to burn down the haunted hotel room with him in it .
Subverted by The Proposition, in which outlaw Charlie Burns is given The Sadistic Choice: find and kill his older brother Arthur, or his younger brother Mikey will hang. He and Arthur attack the jail and rescue Mikey, but because of a meddling Smug Snake, Mikey dies soon after. And then Charlie ends up killing Arthur anyway, but for a different reason.
Spoofed somewhat at the end of the Peter Sellers comedy I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! Faced with the choice of confining-but-stable upper-middle-class marriage or free-spirited-but-superficial hippie life, Sellers' middle-aged hero runs away from his second attempt at marrying his fiance from the former group. When asked by a passerby where he's going, he admits he doesn't know, and he doesn't care. He is determined to find a third option - the one that will bring him happiness.
In Star Trek II, it's not entirely clear whether Kirk is using this or the Dungeon Bypass tactic when he reprograms The Kobayashi Maru into a winnable scenario.
- The film is a heavy deconstruction of Take a Third Option: Kirk has made a career on taking the third option, so when situations finally arise where there quite literally and definitely is no third option, he's completely unprepared.
In a slight subversion in Willow, the main character and two others are asked by a wizard, holding up his hand, which finger contains the power of magic. Each chooses a finger, and the wizard declares that they're all wrong. Later, in private, Willow tells the old man that he had thought of choosing his own finger, but rejected the idea. The wizard confirms that this was, in fact, the correct answer.
In Snatch, Irish Traveller character Mickey is given two choices: perform in a fixed Forced Prize Fight that he has to lose by knockout in the fourth round, or watch as the gangsters forcing him to do this murder his entire clan. (And just to prove they will, they set fire to his mother's caravan — with her inside.) Instead, they decide on a third option. Mickey and the entire clan bet a shitload of money on Mickey knocking out his opponent, which he does, and before the gangsters can do anything about it the clan kills all the gangsters assassins and the head of the mob as well. Moral of the story: don't fuck with Pikeys.
In the first Iron Man film, Tony Stark is given a choice of building a Jericho missile or getting his head blown off. Stark instead uses the parts to build a suit of Power Armor and fight his way out of the base.
Fox Mulder did this in the first The X-Files movie. When he followed the not-so-mysterious government trucks he came to a T-intersection and didn't know wether they went left or right. He then decided to drive straight ahead into some sort of field or some such. Needless to say, being Fox Mulder, he was right.
Subverted in Punisher: War Zone: the villains trap Frank in a Sadistic Choice that basically forces him to kill one hostage to save another. Frank instead elects to Take a Third Option, killing one hostage taker to release his captives, consequently sacrificing the other captive to the other hostage taker. However, since said hostage had already offered his life to Frank beforehand to save the others, Frank essentially made a choice that accomplished the same result, but without the hostage's blood in his hands.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Lando Calrissian is forced into a deal with Vader - he betrays his old friend so Han will be bait for a trap, and afterwards the crew will be safe on Cloud City, and the city itself will then be ignored by the Empire, which will kindly not destroy it. But the deal gets altered repeatedly. So Lando made plans to free the crew of the Falcon and get the citizens to flee, though he could only execute them after Han had been frozen in carbonite. The third option was only partially successful, but things turned out all right in the end. Even Cloud City apparently escaped harm - the Star Wars Expanded Universe tells us that it fell under Imperial control, but never got destroyed(perhaps the gas mines were too profitable), and eventually the New Republic got it back.
- And in Return of the Jedi Luke has the option of either killing Vader and Palpatine or joining them. What does he do? He chooses to die, and in the process inspires his father to save him, killing both Sith in the process and bringing balance to the Force.
In the 1999 movie Wing Commander, Maniac offers Hunter the option of either kicking his ass, or drinking the booze that Maniac brought. Rosie suggests a third option: kickingg Maniac's ass, then taking his scotch.
In National Treasure, Nicolas Cage's character is given a choice by the feds; do nothing and go to prison, or help the feds rescue the stolen Declaration of Independence from Ian and still go to prison. Initially, Cage accepts the second option but when the plan goes south, he declares, "Sadusky, I'm still not against you. But I found door #3, and I'm taking it." He then makes his escape via diving in the Hudson river.
- Later, Ben uses the Declaration as a bargaining chip with Sadusky. When he caps it off with a request to not go to prison, Sadusky tells him, "Someone's got to go to prison, Ben." Ben tells him, "Well, if you have a helicopter, I think I can help with that." Cue Ian trying to break into the Old North Church in Boston only to be busted by an army of feds who were led there by Ben himself.
"I choose Buzz Lightyear!"

"What? That's not a choice!"

Occurs in the 1948 film The Red Shoes. The main character Vicky is forced to choose between Julian, the man she loves, and dancing ballet, which she considers as important as living. At one point, she has a relationship with him, but keeps it a secret. When they are discovered, things get more complicated and in the end she decides to commit suicide by throwing herself in front of a moving train.
In The Princess Bride, the third option was planned ahead of time: "They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocaine powder."
In Minority Report, Burgess; the inventor of Pre Crime detection is cornered by John Anderton for committing a past murder. A Pre Crime report shows that Anderton is to be killed by Burgess, and Burgess holds Anderton at gunpoint. Anderton gives the villain a dilemma: if the villain kills Anderton, he proves that PreCrime detection works but he gets a life sentence for murder. If he doesn't kill, he proves that Precrime is folly. Burgess takes the third option and shoots himself instead.
- Actually that was the second option, only that he didn't have to see the results.
- Of course, neither of them had any knowledge that there was a prediction anyway (they state at the beginning of the film that mere intention to kill is not enough to set off the alarm). Thus, Burgess had a good chance of not shooting Anderton without proving Precrime false. He'd still go to jail but for something else.
Played with in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, when Will is trying to decide between killing Jones in order to save his Dad, which would mean he would become the new undead captain of the Flying Dutchman or remaining alive and marrying Elizabeth, Jack proposes that he "avoid the choice entirely. Change the facts" by letting someone else kill Jones. Of course, in the end, this doesn't work out, because Jones stabs Will, and in order to save his life, Jack helps will stab Jone's heart.
In the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, Bond and General Gogol confront each other over possession of the ATAC nuclear weapons transmitter, after killing the Big Bad, Kristatos. Bond then destroys the ATAC by throwing it over a cliff, prompting Gogol to comment, "that's détente, comrade. You don't have it, I dont have it."
In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Holmes' final confrontation with Professor Moriarty over the Reichenbach Falls boils down to a choice between letting Moriarty go, knowing that Moriarty will take revenge by killing Dr. Watson and his new wife, or trying to fight the former Cambridge boxing champion while suffering from a serious shoulder injury, which he deduces will result in his own death and Moriarty going after the Watsons anyway. Holmes' third option is to grab Moriarty and throw them both over the Falls.
- According to How It Should Have Ended, there was a fourth option that Holmes hadn't considered - calling Watson to even the odds. Moriarty may be a former Cambridge boxing champion, but Watson was a soldier and is also much younger.
In the 1985 version of Brewsters Millions Brewster's "None of the Above" political campaign results in neither of the two candidates wining thus forcing another election.
James P. "Sulley" Sullivan is left in charge of Monsters, Inc. with a dilemma: continue to operate the company harvesting the screams of small children, after seeing how terrified it makes them? Or let the company collapse, leaving him in poverty and shame and Monstropolis in an eternal electrical blackout? Sulley goes public with the discovery of laughter, a power source ten times more potent than screams, compatible with existing Monsters, Inc. technology, and entirely kid-friendly.
Referenced in The Avengers. Steve lectures Tony that he isn't a real hero because he would not be willing to lay on a wire to help his fellow soldier over it. Tony counters that he'd prefer to just cut the wire. This exchange becomes somewhat ironic as Tony later proved willing to sacrifice himself for the team and the city of New York, without trying to Take a Third Option.

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