Iron Man Hero's Journey

The definition of a hero can vary from one person to another, depending on the qualities they believe a hero should possess, but to be a hero you must to go through a hero’s journey. A hero’s journey is described as a monomyth cycle of stages a hero completes to have a successful return. According to Joseph Campbell, the leading mythologist and author of the famous book, The Hero with A Thousand Faces, a hero’s journey is simply a cycle of a coming and a returning. Campbell’s theory has been used in a large variety of movies, portraying a hero’s journey, sometimes even with a twist. The movie Iron Man conveys a hero’s journey with a partial twist since he’s an unconventional modern hero. Although Iron Man displays a different perspective on the hero’s journey, it follows the steps called, “Status quo”, “Tests and Trials”, and “The Ordeal” of Campbell’s theory. In doing so, the movie expressed the message that great things can be achieved through risk-taking and hard work. Iron Man …show more content…

Iron Man’s enemy just so happens to be his early on friend or mentor; Obadiah, who betrays him by working with the Afghanistan people to destroy homes of innocent people with weapons he didn’t want distributed anymore. Obadiah even creates a suit to defeat Iron Man. A scene that demonstrates the ordeal and climax of this hero’s journey movie is 1:45:22-1:53:26. During this scene, the fascinating action over takes us, from the fires to disastrous fighting in the city street. In this scene, we see various film elements, like continuity editing (1:47:03), and the most important element; figure behavior. “The Ordeal” is shown through this scene because, Iron Man is confronted by an enemy and fights his final battle of the movie to win. This further proves the big idea because through his risk-taking and hard work Iron Man conquered the final battle against his enemy