Finding Nemo Hero Journey

March 24, 2014

English 1A

Essay 4

I was stumbling across Facebook when I saw a picture of an old rusty camera that captured my eyes. The picture said, “It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.” This is a very powerful quotation because it seems that a lot of movies are very similar to each other. Think about it, either the good guy wins, gets the girl or he dies and there’s a tragic ending. There is a concept that has been developed for how movies should be made. These concepts can either be genuine; lead a movie to great success, or the exact opposite. Joseph Campbell was one of these men whom had revolutionary ideas. He wrote The Hero With 1000 Faces, which explains his own hero journey. He explains his concept of how characters must follow certain paths and what not to actually be heroes. Campbell’s not only came up with the stages in the characters’ life, but also with his own character archetype list to identify each character in a story. His hero journey concept is widely adopted and used in almost every story that we know today. In today’s world, the directors Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich borrow Campbell’s idea to create Finding Nemo, a great modern hit.

The first stage of Campbell’s hero journey is the ordinary world. The ordinary world is the hero’s normal world before the story begins. Campbell has different character archetypes and the first character we meet is usually the hero. A hero is the one character whom is undergoing a journey. The hero is the one whom faces the challenges and it may be willingly or reluctantly. In the movie Finding Nemo, we start off with Marlin, the hero, and his wife Coral. They are living in the sea; in their coral reef. They have a very normal life. They are anxiously waiting for their 400 eggs to hatch. Marlin’s normal world gets altered when s shark comes and attacks him and his wife. The shark eats Coral and 399 of the eggs. Marlin is left alone and with one egg. He then vows to always protect...