Myth and the Movies: Discovering the Mythic Structure of 50 Unforgettable Films

by Stuart Voytilla, Christopher Vogler (Foreword)

Designed as a companion to The Writer's Journey, Myth & the Movies analyzes 50 U.S. and foreign films in every cinematic genre.

Genres: Film, Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Theory, Animation

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Addy]

This book was enlightening to read. I feel like in school, the framework for hero’s journey was drilled into my head, but, being a rebellious student, I didn’t want to abide by that set of rules. This book shows how that framework exists in even the most unexpected genres (romances, comedies, etc.) and that it works.
I thought that Stuart Voytilla’s analyses were very thorough, and offered compelling support for the use of mythic hero’s journey in even more contemporary cinema. I especially enjoyed when he included a diagram of what he was describing. Combined with his thoughtful analysis of each film, I finally began to see why even hundreds of years after Homer’s Odyssey, writers come back to tried and true frameworks like hero’s journey.

[Karl Kronlage]

A great to read after The Writer's Journey. Takes a look at films and how they follow the basic hero's journey format.

[Bridget Baker]

I absolutely loved this book! I find the Hero's Journey and different archetypes really interesting and this book applied those archetypes to all sorts of different movies with different genres. It also came with Hero Journey charts for all the movies which were a helpful resource for me. This book explains what each step of the Journey is and all the traditional story archetypes to help better understand the stories. I think reading this book really helped me learn and apply the archetypes to other movies and books.

If you don't care about archetypes, then this book isn't for you. But I am fascinated with these archetypes so I loved it.

[Samuel Chatman]

A must read for any storyteller. It really breaks down the Hero’s Journey and gives great examples.

[iris the dead flower]

i'm not sure if i can rate this given that it's just analyses of movies...enjoyable read! interesting to try to fit my weird ass stories through this lens given that possibly any story ever could.

[Wesley F]

A good supplement to Writer's Journey by Chris Vogler. Voytilla provides a summary of the hero's journey concept, including some very accessible explanations and analysis. He then applies it to some of the most popular movies of all time from multiple genres.

I was hoping for a bit more commentary than just going through the plot of each movie, but it was still an good exercise.

[Amanda]

It's an interesting application of the Hero's Journey archetype to multiple genres of movies. Some of the analyses may seem a bit forced, but I read it to get myself in the mindframe of completing analyses just like this.

[Paul Warner]

I'm a big fan of mythical archetype studies, but have mainly looked at how they apply to sci-fi fantasy film and books, so this look at mythical archetypes in 50 films in a very wide variety of genre was very interesting. A must-read for film buffs, myth buffs, and writers.

[Brian]

The Cliff's on Campbell's journey stuff applied to movies. It's well done and the partial basis for the class Brower and I created.

[Sherry]

Invaluable to understanding the structure of not just movies, but also of all great stories.