Movies You Love: Shared Themes [Graphic Representation]

In the realm of storytelling, the hero's journey has proven to be a powerful tool for structuring narratives in film and literature. This journey, popularized by Christopher Vogler, is a streamlined adaptation of Joseph Campbell's original monomyth. Let's delve into the twelve stages of Vogler's hero's journey and learn how to create captivating timeline infographics using this framework.

The Stages of the Hero's Journey

The Ordinary World: The hero is depicted in their normal life before the adventure begins.
The Call to Adventure: The hero is presented with a challenge or quest that starts the journey.
Refusal of the Call: The hero initially hesitates or refuses the challenge.
Meeting with the Mentor: The hero encounters a mentor who provides guidance, knowledge, and confidence.
Crossing the First Threshold: The hero commits fully to the adventure and enters the special world.
Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The hero faces challenges, forms friendships, and confronts adversaries.
Approach to the Innermost Cave: The hero approaches the central ordeal or crisis.
The Ordeal: The hero faces their greatest challenge, often symbolized as a form of death and rebirth.
Reward: The hero gains a prize or insight after surviving the ordeal.
The Road Back: The hero begins the journey back to the ordinary world, sometimes chased by consequences.
The Resurrection: The final and most dangerous test where the hero is transformed by a final moment of death and rebirth.
Return with the Elixir: The hero returns home with new wisdom or a boon to improve the ordinary world.

Crafting a Timeline Infographic

To create a timeline infographic, follow these steps:

Begin with an infographic template.
Create an outline detailing the stages of the hero's journey in your chosen narrative.
Pick a layout for your infographic, such as a tree timeline layout.
Create the framework, placing the stages in the correct order.
Add dates, text, and images to each stage, ensuring they are clear and concise.
Embellish your infographic with colors, fonts, and icons to make it visually appealing.
Download and share your completed infographic.

The Hero's Journey in Pop Culture

The hero's journey has been adopted by content marketers as a framework for effective storytelling. Many popular movies, such as Peter Parker's journey in Spider-Man, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, Neo in The Matrix, Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Simba in The Lion King, and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all follow this journey.

The lesson from the hero's journey is that while formulas that work are recycled again and again in narrative, significant variations are needed to make the story new and exciting.

The Monomyth: A Brief History

The monomyth was first conceptualized by Joseph Campbell in his book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" (1949). Campbell's monomyth comprises seventeen stages, but Vogler's adaptation focuses specifically on movie narratives, condensing the stages into twelve.

Examples of Timeline Infographics

This article was created by Joanna Lu, who has provided examples of pop culture infographics, including infographics on Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Netflix's top shows, Disney villains, and company culture. One such example is the Google I/O timeline infographic, created using an infographic template, with a tree timeline layout, and embellished with colors and icons.

The hero's journey, a key element in storytelling and pop-culture, has been a powerful tool in structuring narratives not only in films like the Spider-Man series, Star Wars, The Matrix, Harry Potter, The Lion King, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but also in TV shows and other forms of entertainment.
In creating captivating timeline infographics, content marketers often follow the stages of the hero's journey as a framework to make narratives engaging and easy to understand, drawing inspiration from works in movies-and-tv and further cementing the hero's journey's position in pop-culture.