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S02E25: Hurriedly Hyping the Hero's Journey with John Bucher
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Last week we talked about the Hero's Journey... but what is that anyway? And how does it apply to Star Wars? Join us as we continue our conversation with John Bucher, the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, as we explore the connections between classic mythology and our favorite stories.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
We're honing in on the hero's journey and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
Overview of Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to Short for a Stormtrooper. Today we're diving in with part two of our conversation with John Booker, the Executive Director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Now, you may remember from last time, Joseph Campbell was a mythologist. ah More specifically, he was a professor and a writer in the field of comparative mythology.
00:00:37
Speaker
He looked at myths from like all over the globe and how they shared kind of the same structure. like Wherever you go around the world, you see the same story emerging. He called it the monomyth or the hero's journey. And he wrote about it in a book called The Hero with a Thousand
Meeting John Booker and Hero's Journey in Star Wars
00:00:55
Speaker
Faces. So we talked about that with John last time. John was a wonderful new friend who I met at Star Wars Celebration in Japan.
00:01:06
Speaker
And so we're diving in with part two of our talk. And right now we are going to talk about the hero's journey itself. So if you're wondering what is this hero's journey thing?
00:01:17
Speaker
How does it break down? That's what we're gonna talk about. So here is me and John. Okay, so I'm going to ask you to be a little bit of a professor here, if you're willing. um Would you kind of run us through the beats of the
Stages of Hero's Journey: Departure Stage
00:01:30
Speaker
hero's journey and how they play out in in Star Wars?
00:01:33
Speaker
Absolutely. Happy to do it. And i for the sake of time, I'm going to ah to to condense some of these things. and ah Fair enough. Yeah. yeah So Joseph Campbell said that these beats or these stages of the hero's journey really could be bucketed in three big buckets.
00:01:52
Speaker
And so he he he said that the first bucket was what he called the initiation. I'm sorry, you that the departure stage, getting them out of order.
00:02:04
Speaker
ah The first ah bucket or stage was called the departure stage. And this is where the hero must leave home. home They must leave behind all that they have known before. He said this could either happen when the hero ah saw something out there that was so enticing and appealing to them that they wanted to to go and seek it out, or sometimes the hero is forced to leave all that they've known.
00:02:37
Speaker
So we see this in Luke Skywalker's character, When R2-D2 displays this message from Princess Leia, suddenly there is a whole new world that's opening up.
00:02:54
Speaker
Joseph Campbell referred to this as a call to adventure. when there's a whole new possibility that comes into our world. And Obi-Wan Kenobi then tells Luke about the um the Clone Wars and about knowing his father and about you know the the the galaxy that's out there and the fight that's still being fought. And you know Luke is is curious. He hears this call to adventure.
00:03:21
Speaker
But immediately Luke refuses the call. And Joseph Campbell talks about this as being on stage. Yeah. right
Hero's Journey: Initiation and Return Phases
00:03:29
Speaker
i can't I can't go to Alderaan. I've got to stay here. I've got duties on the farm. I've got these droids to deal with.
00:03:37
Speaker
I can't go do that. And then something happens that forces the hero to make a decision. And in the case of Luke, when he returns home and finds his aunt and his uncle have been killed, and the everything he knew has been destroyed, and there's there's really no reason to stay anymore.
00:04:01
Speaker
He decides, all right, I'm going to accept this call to adventure. And he departs home. He leaves and goes out. The next stage Joseph Campbell referred to the larger bucket of stages ah within it, he referred to it as the initiation phase.
00:04:19
Speaker
And in the initiation phase, the hero is trained in a certain way to be able to face down that which they fear most.
00:04:30
Speaker
And in the initiation phase, ah the the hero encounters the road of trials. But they also have a meeting with the goddess. In this case, the goddess being Princess Leia.
00:04:43
Speaker
They also encounter mentors and figures who are going to help them along the way. And Obi-Wan Kenobi begins to mentor Luke and teach him how to use a lightsaber.
00:04:55
Speaker
He begins to show him the ways of the Force. And then once the hero has reached a certain point of mastery,
00:05:06
Speaker
It is up to that hero to return and bring the boon back of what they've learned in the return phase where they can bring their gift to the world and hopefully face down that which has so easily beset them in the past.
00:05:24
Speaker
And of course, in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is is going to face down the Death Star, this symbol, this massive symbol, of course, of ah of evil and of power.
00:05:38
Speaker
And when he descends into the Death Star to make that final shot, He can no longer rely on what he's relied on before and what he sees, but he decides to turn his vision away and to use the force to take what he's learned to heal the community and bring victory to the rebel forces.
00:06:04
Speaker
And that, in essence,
Comparing Hero's Journey in Prequels and Myths
00:06:06
Speaker
is the hero's journey as we see it through Star Wars. Right. And you did a great job illustrating it in episode four, but then we see it again in episode five, right? And Yoda's the mentor, and he literally is going into the cave like we were just talking about, right? so yeah ah So that's amazing.
00:06:24
Speaker
Do you feel like ah like the hero's journey kept going in the prequels. And then, and then i'm going ask you about the sequels too. I do. I, I, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, the hero's journey has these three big stages that I mentioned. And there's lots of little phases, you know, that, ah that happened within each stage, but we have this departure, initiation and return that happens.
00:06:51
Speaker
So I think in the first you know ah ah trilogy, we we have the story of Luke Skywalker. And in some ways, we could look at episode four as being a departure in Luke's journey.
00:07:03
Speaker
And in episode five, Empire Strikes Back is a bit of an initiation there where he he goes to Yoda and receives you know this training. And then Return of the Jedi Is that return? It's right there in the title. Return is in the name, right? So we see that there. But I think in the prequels, we see a similar but different but similar type journey with Anakin Skywalker, right?
00:07:30
Speaker
So we we see in episode one a bit of a departure ah of of a leaving ah what what you've known before. Yeah. In episode two, there is a bit of an initiation here and, you know, the the training with Qui-Gon Jinn.
00:07:47
Speaker
um And then what's interesting about episode three to me is there is a return, but the choice is...
00:07:59
Speaker
It's not what we expect of the hero. It is a choice ah to to honor oneself rather than the community that you bring the boon back to.
00:08:11
Speaker
So it is an alternate version of the hero's journey where the hero chooses himself to be their own hero rather than the hero of the community or the people that they're bringing these things back to. So I think it still follows that hero's journey model, but it, it, um it, it ah um, um,
00:08:33
Speaker
it it It moves away from our expectations and it disrupts what we expect in the hero's journey. And there's other classic myths, I'm thinking, that have a similar a similar flow. That's right. Like Icarus just popped in my mind, right? That's right. Where it winds up becoming a cautionary tale because he he kind of didn't fulfill the mission, as it You bring up a good point here, Bob, in that oftentimes we expect myths to be fairy tales.
00:09:02
Speaker
Fairy tales often have a happy ending, right? They live happily ever after. At least the Disney versions, right? At the Disney versions, right? But myths are not structured in a way to necessarily
Hero's Journey in Sequels with Modern Directors
00:09:13
Speaker
always have a happy ending.
00:09:14
Speaker
Many times ah in a myth, you even look at you know the Odyssey and the Iliad, some of these classic myths. Even when Odysseus returns home, he returns home to find that home is not the same place he left.
00:09:29
Speaker
It's not all roses when he gets back home. So there's there's something I think about myth that adheres more closely to reality than fairy tales do. So I like that the prequels end, you know, in in such a way that um we we we see...
00:09:46
Speaker
ah that everyone doesn't live happily ever after. And in some ways, you know, we could say Anakin's journey, you know, really concludes in Return of the Jedi more than it concludes in um episode three. But, um you know, that this is the the way that myth works. It's messy sometimes.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah. How about in the sequels? Yeah. And you know I'm realizing i'm I'm asking this question. I might be leading the witness a little bit, but it's it's not that I, I'm trying to figure this out for myself is yeah here's my hypothesis is what I'm noticing is The stuff that Dave Filoni seems to be behind is way more rooted in the mythology. And I keep thinking about all these stories I hear about him, you know, basically being George Lucas's apprentice and soaking up all the George goodness that, you know, I don't think J.J. Abrams or Rian Johnson quite got that level of engagement. So are you seeing the same things? Yeah, I mean, da Dave Filoni and ah ah Jon Favreau are both big Joseph Campbell guys.
00:10:51
Speaker
So they, you know, really um embrace that Campbellian approach to to mythology and to mythic storytelling. And, you know, I'll i'll say up front, I'll give a hot take here.
00:11:05
Speaker
I'm a fan of the sequels. I like all three of the films. Yeah. i I do, however, feel like um there there were some lost opportunities in the storytelling to more closely adhere to what would have been a mythologically satisfying ah way to tell that story.
00:11:31
Speaker
I believe they start off ah pretty strong. Actually, in in episode seven, we we see Rey having this this grand departure, right? And the the the stages of the hero's journey and in the mythic um way that that story is told is um is pretty powerful.
00:11:52
Speaker
We even see ah some real... explorations of what it means to have wisdom figures and mentors go beyond what we've seen previously with Obi-Wan Kenobi and ah Yoda.
00:12:06
Speaker
I love the character of ah Maz Kanata. I think Maz is just an incredible character, a wisdom figure that... um I think could have been utilized even more throughout the rest of that trilogy.
00:12:23
Speaker
um But we see, you know, that especially in this, this scene, you know, when ah they, when Ray goes to Maz's castle and descends down into the underworld and finds the Skywalker lightsaber, we set up an incredibly mythic tale there.
00:12:42
Speaker
And, yeah you know, I think part of the, the The difficulty there with the the the sequels is you've got different visionary filmmakers taking different films and, you know, where the the this the the prequels as well as the original trilogy is really from the vision of a single mythic storyteller.
00:13:06
Speaker
And, you know, who knows if J.J. Abrams or Rian Johnson or or any of these folks had... told all three of the sequel stories, it might have been a very different result. Who knows?
00:13:20
Speaker
All right. We're going to go
Teaser for Future Discussions on Star Wars
00:13:21
Speaker
ahead and hit pause for this week. We will be back with the end, the finale of our discussion with John Booker next week. You can look forward to diving into Ahsoka and the mythology there. You know, if you watched Ahsoka,
00:13:36
Speaker
and you were wondering what is this weird black space with the crazy light bridges and white circles that Anakin shows up in. And you know maybe you didn't see it in in Star Wars Rebels and you're a little bit confused. We'll talk about that. And yeah, this is where Star Wars gets pretty mythical and magical and I'm all here for it. It's going to be very exciting. So We'll talk about that and a few other final topics with John.
00:14:06
Speaker
In the meantime, hope that you are doing well, that you're digging all of the Star Wars goodness. I'm still coming off of the high of Andor. I can't stop thinking about it. I've been listening a little bit to the soundtrack. By the way, the soundtrack is available wherever you stream your music. So on Spotify, on Apple Music, on whatever, you can listen to it there.
00:14:28
Speaker
And whenever I hear that Gorman anthem, it still hits me in the gut every time. So hope you're enjoying that. We'll see you next week. In the meantime, please hit like, please hit subscribe. Would love for you to write me a review.
00:14:42
Speaker
We'll get more people into this ever-growing community. We'll see you next Tuesday. Until then, may the Force be with you. Bye-bye. Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper? Aren't you a little short for a sporn trooper?