Throughout my whole life I merely viewed films as entertainment, passively sitting in multiple theaters blindly watching all genres of films for my enjoyment. At the time, I did not realize that all films, no matter the genre, had a common link between them. This common link was recently taught to me as a part of the mythology and Beowulf unit we just covered in class. That common link was the Hero’s Journey, and I found that this journey can be shaped and morphed to fit any story ever told. This knowledge has changed my film watching experience from being a passive audience member to now constantly sitting at the edge of my seat, awaiting the next step of the Hero’s Journey to occur.
Joseph Campbell is known as “the best-known comparative
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After discussing and learning about the Hero’s Journey and if Beowulf was a hero, I came to realize something very strange: Do all stories fit this broad idea that one single man crafted in the 1940’s? That was my mission, to seek out if every story tolled can be categorized as a type of Hero’s Journey.
I met with my mentors, including Joseph Campbell, who taught me the entire Hero’s Journey. He also taught me what it means to be a hero. Again a hero does not have to be the likes of Superman or Batman. This made me even more curious. I asked myself the question again with a few alterations. Is there any film out there without a type of Hero’s Journey? If everyone can be a hero then why can’t this type of storytelling fit all films?
I crossed the first threshold and dove into the supernatural world, which was the makeup of my time doing research to answer this unanswered question I generated for myself. I watched a film. I film I know and love and thought to myself there is no way this is possibly an example of Hero’s Journey. It turns out Sing Street, a film about young Irish schoolboys forming a band to escape bullying, fits right in like pieces connecting together to form a puzzle. This is when I began to believe my absurd