Annotated 10

Vogler, Christopher. “Epilogue: Looking Back On the Journey.” The Writer’s Journey:Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd Edition. Studio City, California: Michael Wiese Productions,2007. 231-291.

Summary

In Vogler's chapter "Looking Back on the Journey", he explains methods of how to analyze stories. First, Vogler states that a story does not necessarily have to follow the Hero's Journey model completely. The journey is more of a guideline. Just the same, the needs of a story dictate its structure. Other methods include choosing a metaphor for you to compare to the story, and designing a template to put the pieces of where the Journey may appear in the story.
Vogler then analyzes the movie the Titanic. He explains how it was expected to be a bust, and ended up making a huge profit and winning many awards. He went through the story pointing out all the times where the Hero's Journey was used. He then went through The Lion King, Pulp Fiction, and The Full Monty doing the same with each story. He also hit upon Star Wars.

Reaction

Vogler shows how stories can differ compared to one another as well as differ from the Hero's Journey. Great stories do not necessarily follow the guidelines completely, which keeps the audience on their toes. Each of the four stories use aspects of the Hero's Journey to make for an exciting story. The Titanic was difficult and not expected to do well, but the writers used Quantum Movie Events and people all over the world watched the movie over and over.

Questions

1) Like Titanic, what other movies were thought to bust but made a great profit?

2) Are there more ways Vogler could have explained to analyze a film?

3) What movies follow the Hero's Journey directly?