MOVIE TALK: “Once Upon A Time” PT. 1 🎬

Alright, guys so I am visiting “Once Upon A Time” today for my Movie Talk discussion. I will not discuss the entire series because it is still going on and I have just started Season 5 on Netflix because this show is absolutely amazing. So if you have not seen the show yet there will be spoilers in today’s post.

I decided to make this a cooler movie assessment by applying The 17 Stages of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth. This is story structure that I learned in my creative writing class.

For those of you who do not know of the 17 Stages, it is a sort of outline of a plot in a story. Most movies or television shows follow a similar structure when creating an outline of the story for their characters and the audience.

As I said before, there are 17 Stages, which are:

✍️Call To Adventure

The hero starts off in a mundane situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.

Emma is the main character or hero of the story. She was living a normal life and when Henry appears, her life is turned upside down. Henry tells Emma that he is her son.

She takes Henry back to Storybrooke and after a while, she realizes that she can’t just leave Henry behind and return back to her normal life. Henry tells her that she is the “savior” that will bring back the happy endings.

✍️ Refusal of Call

Often when the call is given, the future hero refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, etc.

Emma annoyingly but within reason refuses to believe that she is the savior because it involves believing in magic and fairytales. She lived in a practical world learning that the stories were not real and despite the many test and trials that she experiences, she refuses to believe.

✍️ Supernatural Aid

Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears or becomes known

The Once Upon A Time Story Book acts as a magic helper because she had to believe the stories are true.

It was also Henry’s sacrifice that shows her the truth.

Emma also had friends and family along the way that acted as aid to show her who she really is.

✍️ Refusal of Return

Finding bliss and enlightenment in another world and not wanting to return.

This happens the first time when Emma and Henry are transported to New York and they don’t have their memories. Eventually, Emma remembers everything but not Henry and she tries to return to New York with him and continue living their normal life (Season 3).

As you can see the show doesn’t always follow this exact order but it’s interesting to see which parts the writers drew from.

If you guys learned something new from my story arc analysis, be sure to let me know in the comment section and contact me on social media with your opinion on the show and what you think will happen next.

All Gifs were originated from Google Images and Tumblr.com

The 17 Stages of Joseph Cambell’s Monomyth. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2017.

Xo,

Nina.