Hero Film Analysis

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What components make a movie successful in cinema? Filmmakers have crafted a formula to successfully deliver the hero narrative. This formula consists of the hero’s journey and archetypes. Hero films typically follow a ten-step sequence to properly set up and execute the hero’s journey. These movies range from stories of transformations, searches, or a journey back home. Archetypes are used to employ character profile as well as add variety and depth to these stories. Ridley Scott directed Alien, in which Ellen Ripley embarks on a journey where she must survive an alien who is out on a murderous rampage and return back to Earth. Alien adds originality to its storyline by choosing a female lead instead of a male, but the film still incorporates the same heroic attributes that make a story successful. In this “going home journey” film, Scott is able to incorporate the hero’s journey and the official hero archetype towards the heroine Ellen Ripley. In “The Thematic Paradigm”, Robert Ray explains the principles and significance of the official hero. An official hero “embodies the best attributes of adulthood: sound reasoning and judgment, wisdom and sympathy based on experience” (452). Official heroes …show more content…

In “Creating the Myth” Linda Seger explains the ordinary world scene is where, “the hero is introduced in an ordinary surrounding, in a mundane world, doing mundane things” (336). The opening scene of the film takes the viewer on a five-minute tour of the Nostromo spacecraft. We see the nooks and crannies of the ship including the operating system, kitchen, and rooms. Even after the crew awakens, they are still shown following a normal routine. The astronauts are average people partaking in daily activities such as eating, joking, and engaging in casual conversations. In this ordinary world sequence, Ellen Ripley is unaware of the journey she is about to embark

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