The Dark Knight and the Monomyth

I think overall, Joseph Campbell’s “Monomyth” applies to every story in a different way. Of course not every story is going to be able to fit one element into each one of the categories of the monomyth chart. I think Joseph Campbell created it as a sort of general outline for all stories involving a hero. Originally when choosing “Batman: The Dark Knight”, our group thought it would be fairly easy to fill out the chart. Batman, being the typical “superhero” story, we thought it would fit the monomyth perfectly. However, it was actually a pretty hard task to fill out each section of the chart. 

I think one of the most difficult parts of the project for our group was that the film is part of a trilogy and we chose the second movie, thinking it would be the easiest to fill the monomyth. However looking back, I think we should have chosen an entirely different movie that wasn’t part of a series. Looking at the movies other groups chose, I realize that choosing a movie that’s part of a series was not the best idea. 

This is probably because there are elements of the monomyth that can be filled out with information from the other movies in the series. At that point it becomes confusing as to which movie you’re talking about. 

Overall, I think everyone did a pretty good job applying their movies to the monomyth. I also noticed that there are some sections in the chart that people didn’t fill out or didn’t think applied to their movie. I thought this was interesting since not every movie has aspects that fit perfectly into these exact categories. I think I learned from this project that Joseph Campbell’s monomyth probably applies to individual stories, not based in a series.