![]() Initially she does not realize her life is transitioning away from her ordinary life BB-8 keeps his mission classified and Rey’s decision not to sell him to Plutt is motivated by empathy for the droid’s insistence on waiting for his master. She hears BB-8’s objections to his capture by Teedo, and frees the droid. After her meager dinner, though, Rey is propelled into her Call to Adventure. The story begins in Rey’s mundane world on Jakku, where her daily routine consists of scavenging parts from starship wreckage and trading them for food with Unkar Plutt at Niima Outpost. Like many tales, the stages may not appear in the exact order they are laid out by Campbell, but each of the stages unfolds during Rey’s progress through the story. Rey’s character arc in The Force Awakens follows the stages of Campbell’s description of the monomyth very closely. At the same time, though, The Force Awakens is also a very contemporary movie, and it fits neatly into Vogler’s framework, as well. Because The Force Awakens draws so heavily on the previous Star Wars films, especially the Original Trilogy and A New Hope in particular, it naturally shows a heavy influence of Campbell’s model just like Lucas’ initial work. While the two Hero’s Journey models have many similarities, they also have some significant differences. Campbell’s model divides the hero’s path into three phases of myth based upon the patterns synthesized from historical myths Vogler’s model is based on the three-act structure which dominates modern movie-making. ![]() Vogler, on the other hand, sought to identify the underlying story structure which propels successful modern stories, particularly movies, and he illustrates the applicability of his model not only with mythical tales like The Wizard of Oz or The Lion King but also films as wide-ranging as Titanic, Pulp Fiction, The Full Monty, Beverly Hills Cop, and An Officer and a Gentleman. Campbell focused on synthesizing commonalities across the myths of numerous centuries and cultures, and his model has particular appeal to storytellers, like Lucas, who overtly wish to create stories with mythic themes and resonance with legends of the past. Like Lucas, Vogler graduated from USC’s film school and began studying and analyzing stories in the late 1970s, and he praises A New Hope as a perfect encapsulation of Campbell’s model.īoth frameworks continue to heavily influence many contemporary storytellers. George Lucas drew substantially on Campbell’s ideas, especially in crafting the story and screenplay for the first Star Wars film. The other is the mythic structure model described by screenwriting and story consultant Christopher Vogler, initially in a 1985 memo written for Disney studio executives and later expanded and elaborated into his book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (third edition, 2007). One is the Hero’s Journey model set out in Joseph Campbell’s famous 1949 academic book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. For purposes of discussing Star Wars, two prominent formulations of the Hero’s Journey illustrate its influence on storytelling. The Hero’s Journey, also called the monomyth, has been a subject of study and discussion for many years. Much remains to be analyzed in future posts about the implications of Rey, Star Wars, and The Force Awakens for the Heroine’s Journey this post will focus on the classic Hero’s Journey framework. The film’s plot structure and protagonist’s character arc also provide an excellent touchstone for examining one of the iconic features in discussions of storytelling: the Hero’s Journey.įor the last few years, FANgirl’s ongoing series on the Heroine’s Journey has considered how existing visions of the Hero’s Journey should be updated and modified for mythic stories starring female protagonists while identifying and discussing some prominent and successful examples of Heroine’s Journeys in contemporary storytelling. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been a record-smashing box office success, a reinvigoration of the movie side of franchise for longtime fans, a launching point for new fans of all ages – and the origin story of a fan-favorite new character in Star Wars, Rey.
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