Stages in the Film Plot
Content
All narratives and stories have common elements and Stages that can be found within.
In fact, despite their countless variations, a universal standard that can be found in all types of
storytelling texts, whether movies, tales, epic narratives, myths, and dreams as well. Christopher
Vogler explains the twelve stages that a hero goes through in the journey at hand (2007). The
Writer’s Journey takes the traditional hero’s journey and breaks it down in twelve stages. The
thorough breakdown and evaluation follows and draws points on the Hero’s journey which is
evident and seen in the majority of stories created, in mostly all forms of art. In order to get a
better perspective on the Hero’s journey this essay will focus only on its most prominent stages
and explain them through references to popular films.
The twelve stages follow a progression that goes from the Ordinary World to a Special World,
where the adventure takes place and the protagonist is going to face the antagonist in order to
solve the universal conflicts of his quest. These conflicts have to be universal in the sense that
everyone in the spectators has to be able to identify with them, while particular because they
have to be coherent and specific to the story. They also have to be inner conflicts which have to
do with the Hero’s soul and internal weaknesses, but also conflicts related to the world that
surround him, usually characterized into the rival to be faced and defeated.
The Hero is the Protagonist who goes through the journey that is set before hand. The main and
central character whose main purpose is to be set apart from the ordinary world by sacrificing
him or herself for a service which is challenging, but with the completion of the quest or task at
hand, balance will be brought back to the Ordinary world. In terms of a movie that strictly
follows or conveys a hero’s journey, the trilogy of batman. The Batman Trilogy which started
with 2005’s Batman Begins tells the story of a young Bruce Wayne who has witnessed the
murder of both of his parents by the hand of a robber. The ordinary world is the world in which
the audience understands Bruce Wayne’s life before his calling to the special world. The world
that allows us to know and be able to identify with the hero before the journey takes off, which
is Bruce’s childhood. In the stage of the ordinary world opportunity to know and identify what
the hero’s problems, urges and drives are conveyed while also showing other characteristics that
help in shaping the hero’s identity. However, depending on the unforeseen journey, the
characteristics and other aspects that helped identify the hero to the audience may change. The
problems the hero faced in the ordinary world and what he understood may drastically change
later on, and thus . In the film Fugitive (1993), Dr. Richard Kimble who is played by Harrison
Ford demonstrated the unreliability of solely depending on the knowledge constructed from the
ordinary world. The problems he faced in the ordinary world drastically changed when his
journey begun in the special world as a fugitive from justice. The model he thus constructed at
the beginning is turned upside down by the adventure he undergoes, and by reacting to it in a
way that puts the story forward, his personality changes for the better.
The hero’s journey is also a way a character is challenged for personal growth. To be victorious
in a competition, to be able to find love and heal wounds are all part of the journey. As
previously stated, to enter the special world the hero has to be undergo a sacrifice, willingly
most times, always related to an important choice triggered by a Call to Adventure. In order to
find the force to cross the threshold however, the Hero needs a sort of inner push which is
usually provided by a mentor, whether as an object or a character. The Hero must then confront
an event that forces him to commit to entering the special world form which there is no turning
back. The Event will determine again the Central Dramatic Question that propels the story
forward. An example can be found in The Italian Job (2003) when the villain Edward Norton
steals the money and kills the fatherlike figure of Mark Walberg, played by Donald Sutherland.
This leads the character to decide to seek vengeance upon the antagonist. What the crossing of
the threshold always implies is the fact that it always requires the Hero to undertake a task of
personal growth.
In the new world, or during what Vogler defines as the Second Act, or initiation/departure. The
Hero here is brought to explore the rules of the game that populate the new field. But to do so,
he has to go through a progressive process of discovery, by encountering allies and enemies,
traitors and advisors who will constantly test his assertiveness and strength. As Vogler says,
bars and saloons are perfect neutral areas where these encounters occur, but action doesn’t.
What happens is transactions of information or perspective on things that let the Hero
understand who is on which side in the town, in the world, or simply on the path that leads the
hero to his goal. Two examples of this can be found in the movie Shrek (2001), where the
protagonist finds the Donkey in the forest and becomes his ally, while in Shrek 2 (2004) Puss In
Boots is met in a bar as mentioned before. Another recent film that features a meeting in a bar is
Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), where the protagonist meets a mystery man which is the
embodiment of the unknown and pure fear.
By Approaching the Inmost Cave, the hero gets closer to the climax, the dangerous place. In this
phase it often required to stop at the gates to prepare one self, plan and overcome the guardians
of the shadow. The hero is forming a new perception of himself and others, hence he has time to
wear a suit, an archetype mask or to gather the weapons to defeat the antagonist in the fatal
encounter. It is usually the moment where to balance back the team out of disputes that
happened during the course of their path. This can happen by giving a little help to a friend,
apologizing, and encouraging others. Making sure everyone is set towards the same goals is
vital in order to reach the inmost cave ready for the battle. To reach this balance there could
even be a battle amongst the team to certify the positions and who’s the leader. Example of this
fight can be found in Anderson’s film The Master (2012), where the two protagonists in order to
carry on their ultimate struggle against the scientific institution and common beliefs –the enemy
in that situation are lead to fight against each other and also sacrifice part of their pride in order
to work as a team.
The critical moment, or The Supreme Ordeal, of the story is the confrontation between hero and
antihero, he who detains moral value and is attached to the audience as the positive side of the
story, and the element of conflict within the story, which is the shadow. Here the suspense is
unleashed and by risking everything in a lifedeathissue. As Campbell writes in his writings
(1949), this is a moment of penitence, where the hero finds himself in a situation where he has
to face his deepest fears and traumas, and only by overcoming them can the enemy be defeated.
As previously stated, this model is flexible and allows variations: an example of these variations
is Antoine Fuqua’s movie Training Day (2001) starring Denzel Washington. At the end of the
movie the hero is confronted with his neighborhood and his colleague under training; despite the
fact that in all senses he was bound to lose and had somehow already lost, since he had a gun
pointed at his face, Denzel gives probably his best performance by acting as if everything was
on his side. This attitude of refusing loss and forcedly maintaining a winning behavior can be
seen as a common attitude of antiheros, and another example of that is The Joker, whose
carelessness defeats any resemblance of defeat.
Whether the hero has completed the task as a winner or has lost the battle, the beginning of the
Third Act starts with the Road Back to the reality of the beginning. The adventure has come to a
deeper resolution but it hasn’t finished yet. The hero is not out of the ‘forest’ yet and has to face
the choice to go back to where he came from in order to bring the message he learned from the
battle. This choice is usually led by fear, fear that this acquired wisdom might vanish in such a
transient place like the special world. The need to bring it back to the stable origins is thus what
drives the hero to cross this other threshold.
This is the last big task for the hero. Even though it’s not comparable to the difficulty of the
Supreme Ordeal, the Resurrection is another lifeanddeath issue, one last dangerous meeting
with death. It can be thought as a ‘cleansing’ or purification that has to happen in order for the
hero to prove he came out of the land of the dead as healthy and pure. It is usually in this
encounter that the heroic status of the protagonist is finally brought to the ears of the people
surrounding him, even thought it might result in the hero’s death in the case he sacrificed
himself for the greater good. An example of this last stage can be found in Dragonheart (1996)
very explicitly, even though in a somehow different form of Vogler’s definition: being the
antagonist tied to the dragon by physically sharing half of its heart, when he gets defeated, the
dragon dies as well. But being the dragon an emotional and fantastical expression of the
protagonist’s emotional strength, his death can be considered an ultimate sacrifice on the side of
the hero in order to bring back peace to the village he was fighting for. In this case, the dragon’s
–and hero’s somehow resurrection is visually shown by the dragon’s body morphing into
gleaming particles and flying to the stars the film depicted as the constellation of the dragons.
Finally, as previously anticipated, the peace upon the starting place is brought by bringing back
what Vogler defines as The Elixir. The elixir is in fact the wisdom he acquired during the
adventure, it can be physically symbolized or told, or simply represented by the hero’s presence.
Even the tragic end of a Hero’s Journey can provide the best elixir of all, securing the audience
with a greater awareness of us and our world, as it is shown in the old film Citizen Kane (1941).
Concluding, to contextualize everything with my particular crew function in both productions,
as a writer/director this text made me understand how paradoxical the nature of storytelling is.
No matter how particular and unique certain stories can be, there will always be a certain degree
of universality in them, and viceversa these universal features can be shuffled in countless ways.
This can take place with the use of different art forms and techniques among which cinema,
with lighting, props, and stages, with what certain camera angles imply and how the characters
are constructed and evolve. It also made me understand that under these circumstance the best
way to generate a story is to let it originate from the depths of our inner creativity, getting
inspired but not influenced, impressed but not marked. Only then a framework can be used as a
tool to enhance the uniqueness of the story rather than suffocating it with schemes and
frameworks that have already been used for decades. From an actor perspective as well, the
importance of truly representing a character by delving into the depths of our experiences is
necessary to grasp the details of the character’s experience. Only through this process can a high
degree of authenticity be portrayed on screen and reach the hearts of the spectators before us.
Filmography:
Anderson, Paul Thomas. 2012. The Master.
Cohen, Rob. 1996. Dragonheart.
Dreamworks. 2001. Shrek.
Dreamworks. 2004. Shrek 2.
Davis, Andrew. 1993. The Fugitive.
Fuqua, Antoine. 2001. Training Day.
Gray, F. Gary. 2003. The Italian Job.
Lynch, David. 1997. Lost Highway.
Nolan, Christopher. 2005. The Dark Knight Trilogy: Batman Begins.
Welles, Orson. 1941. Citizen Kane.
References:
Cambpell, Joseph. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. USA: Pantheon Books.
Vogler, Christopher. 2007. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. USA: Michael
Wiese Editions.
In fact, despite their countless variations, a universal standard that can be found in all types of
storytelling texts, whether movies, tales, epic narratives, myths, and dreams as well. Christopher
Vogler explains the twelve stages that a hero goes through in the journey at hand (2007). The
Writer’s Journey takes the traditional hero’s journey and breaks it down in twelve stages. The
thorough breakdown and evaluation follows and draws points on the Hero’s journey which is
evident and seen in the majority of stories created, in mostly all forms of art. In order to get a
better perspective on the Hero’s journey this essay will focus only on its most prominent stages
and explain them through references to popular films.
The twelve stages follow a progression that goes from the Ordinary World to a Special World,
where the adventure takes place and the protagonist is going to face the antagonist in order to
solve the universal conflicts of his quest. These conflicts have to be universal in the sense that
everyone in the spectators has to be able to identify with them, while particular because they
have to be coherent and specific to the story. They also have to be inner conflicts which have to
do with the Hero’s soul and internal weaknesses, but also conflicts related to the world that
surround him, usually characterized into the rival to be faced and defeated.
The Hero is the Protagonist who goes through the journey that is set before hand. The main and
central character whose main purpose is to be set apart from the ordinary world by sacrificing
him or herself for a service which is challenging, but with the completion of the quest or task at
hand, balance will be brought back to the Ordinary world. In terms of a movie that strictly
follows or conveys a hero’s journey, the trilogy of batman. The Batman Trilogy which started
with 2005’s Batman Begins tells the story of a young Bruce Wayne who has witnessed the
murder of both of his parents by the hand of a robber. The ordinary world is the world in which
the audience understands Bruce Wayne’s life before his calling to the special world. The world
that allows us to know and be able to identify with the hero before the journey takes off, which
is Bruce’s childhood. In the stage of the ordinary world opportunity to know and identify what
the hero’s problems, urges and drives are conveyed while also showing other characteristics that
help in shaping the hero’s identity. However, depending on the unforeseen journey, the
characteristics and other aspects that helped identify the hero to the audience may change. The
problems the hero faced in the ordinary world and what he understood may drastically change
later on, and thus . In the film Fugitive (1993), Dr. Richard Kimble who is played by Harrison
Ford demonstrated the unreliability of solely depending on the knowledge constructed from the
ordinary world. The problems he faced in the ordinary world drastically changed when his
journey begun in the special world as a fugitive from justice. The model he thus constructed at
the beginning is turned upside down by the adventure he undergoes, and by reacting to it in a
way that puts the story forward, his personality changes for the better.
The hero’s journey is also a way a character is challenged for personal growth. To be victorious
in a competition, to be able to find love and heal wounds are all part of the journey. As
previously stated, to enter the special world the hero has to be undergo a sacrifice, willingly
most times, always related to an important choice triggered by a Call to Adventure. In order to
find the force to cross the threshold however, the Hero needs a sort of inner push which is
usually provided by a mentor, whether as an object or a character. The Hero must then confront
an event that forces him to commit to entering the special world form which there is no turning
back. The Event will determine again the Central Dramatic Question that propels the story
forward. An example can be found in The Italian Job (2003) when the villain Edward Norton
steals the money and kills the fatherlike figure of Mark Walberg, played by Donald Sutherland.
This leads the character to decide to seek vengeance upon the antagonist. What the crossing of
the threshold always implies is the fact that it always requires the Hero to undertake a task of
personal growth.
In the new world, or during what Vogler defines as the Second Act, or initiation/departure. The
Hero here is brought to explore the rules of the game that populate the new field. But to do so,
he has to go through a progressive process of discovery, by encountering allies and enemies,
traitors and advisors who will constantly test his assertiveness and strength. As Vogler says,
bars and saloons are perfect neutral areas where these encounters occur, but action doesn’t.
What happens is transactions of information or perspective on things that let the Hero
understand who is on which side in the town, in the world, or simply on the path that leads the
hero to his goal. Two examples of this can be found in the movie Shrek (2001), where the
protagonist finds the Donkey in the forest and becomes his ally, while in Shrek 2 (2004) Puss In
Boots is met in a bar as mentioned before. Another recent film that features a meeting in a bar is
Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), where the protagonist meets a mystery man which is the
embodiment of the unknown and pure fear.
By Approaching the Inmost Cave, the hero gets closer to the climax, the dangerous place. In this
phase it often required to stop at the gates to prepare one self, plan and overcome the guardians
of the shadow. The hero is forming a new perception of himself and others, hence he has time to
wear a suit, an archetype mask or to gather the weapons to defeat the antagonist in the fatal
encounter. It is usually the moment where to balance back the team out of disputes that
happened during the course of their path. This can happen by giving a little help to a friend,
apologizing, and encouraging others. Making sure everyone is set towards the same goals is
vital in order to reach the inmost cave ready for the battle. To reach this balance there could
even be a battle amongst the team to certify the positions and who’s the leader. Example of this
fight can be found in Anderson’s film The Master (2012), where the two protagonists in order to
carry on their ultimate struggle against the scientific institution and common beliefs –the enemy
in that situation are lead to fight against each other and also sacrifice part of their pride in order
to work as a team.
The critical moment, or The Supreme Ordeal, of the story is the confrontation between hero and
antihero, he who detains moral value and is attached to the audience as the positive side of the
story, and the element of conflict within the story, which is the shadow. Here the suspense is
unleashed and by risking everything in a lifedeathissue. As Campbell writes in his writings
(1949), this is a moment of penitence, where the hero finds himself in a situation where he has
to face his deepest fears and traumas, and only by overcoming them can the enemy be defeated.
As previously stated, this model is flexible and allows variations: an example of these variations
is Antoine Fuqua’s movie Training Day (2001) starring Denzel Washington. At the end of the
movie the hero is confronted with his neighborhood and his colleague under training; despite the
fact that in all senses he was bound to lose and had somehow already lost, since he had a gun
pointed at his face, Denzel gives probably his best performance by acting as if everything was
on his side. This attitude of refusing loss and forcedly maintaining a winning behavior can be
seen as a common attitude of antiheros, and another example of that is The Joker, whose
carelessness defeats any resemblance of defeat.
Whether the hero has completed the task as a winner or has lost the battle, the beginning of the
Third Act starts with the Road Back to the reality of the beginning. The adventure has come to a
deeper resolution but it hasn’t finished yet. The hero is not out of the ‘forest’ yet and has to face
the choice to go back to where he came from in order to bring the message he learned from the
battle. This choice is usually led by fear, fear that this acquired wisdom might vanish in such a
transient place like the special world. The need to bring it back to the stable origins is thus what
drives the hero to cross this other threshold.
This is the last big task for the hero. Even though it’s not comparable to the difficulty of the
Supreme Ordeal, the Resurrection is another lifeanddeath issue, one last dangerous meeting
with death. It can be thought as a ‘cleansing’ or purification that has to happen in order for the
hero to prove he came out of the land of the dead as healthy and pure. It is usually in this
encounter that the heroic status of the protagonist is finally brought to the ears of the people
surrounding him, even thought it might result in the hero’s death in the case he sacrificed
himself for the greater good. An example of this last stage can be found in Dragonheart (1996)
very explicitly, even though in a somehow different form of Vogler’s definition: being the
antagonist tied to the dragon by physically sharing half of its heart, when he gets defeated, the
dragon dies as well. But being the dragon an emotional and fantastical expression of the
protagonist’s emotional strength, his death can be considered an ultimate sacrifice on the side of
the hero in order to bring back peace to the village he was fighting for. In this case, the dragon’s
–and hero’s somehow resurrection is visually shown by the dragon’s body morphing into
gleaming particles and flying to the stars the film depicted as the constellation of the dragons.
Finally, as previously anticipated, the peace upon the starting place is brought by bringing back
what Vogler defines as The Elixir. The elixir is in fact the wisdom he acquired during the
adventure, it can be physically symbolized or told, or simply represented by the hero’s presence.
Even the tragic end of a Hero’s Journey can provide the best elixir of all, securing the audience
with a greater awareness of us and our world, as it is shown in the old film Citizen Kane (1941).
Concluding, to contextualize everything with my particular crew function in both productions,
as a writer/director this text made me understand how paradoxical the nature of storytelling is.
No matter how particular and unique certain stories can be, there will always be a certain degree
of universality in them, and viceversa these universal features can be shuffled in countless ways.
This can take place with the use of different art forms and techniques among which cinema,
with lighting, props, and stages, with what certain camera angles imply and how the characters
are constructed and evolve. It also made me understand that under these circumstance the best
way to generate a story is to let it originate from the depths of our inner creativity, getting
inspired but not influenced, impressed but not marked. Only then a framework can be used as a
tool to enhance the uniqueness of the story rather than suffocating it with schemes and
frameworks that have already been used for decades. From an actor perspective as well, the
importance of truly representing a character by delving into the depths of our experiences is
necessary to grasp the details of the character’s experience. Only through this process can a high
degree of authenticity be portrayed on screen and reach the hearts of the spectators before us.
Filmography:
Anderson, Paul Thomas. 2012. The Master.
Cohen, Rob. 1996. Dragonheart.
Dreamworks. 2001. Shrek.
Dreamworks. 2004. Shrek 2.
Davis, Andrew. 1993. The Fugitive.
Fuqua, Antoine. 2001. Training Day.
Gray, F. Gary. 2003. The Italian Job.
Lynch, David. 1997. Lost Highway.
Nolan, Christopher. 2005. The Dark Knight Trilogy: Batman Begins.
Welles, Orson. 1941. Citizen Kane.
References:
Cambpell, Joseph. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. USA: Pantheon Books.
Vogler, Christopher. 2007. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. USA: Michael
Wiese Editions.
