“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
— The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
by Joseph Campbell
“Nolan’s Batman trilogy is a masterclass in storytelling and character development. He redefined what a superhero movie could be.”
— Steven Spielberg
“Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy transcends the superhero genre. It’s a profound exploration of morality and heroism in our modern world.”
— Martin Scorsese
“Nolan’s Batman movies are more than just superhero flicks; they’re epic crime dramas with an emotional and psychological depth that is rare in this genre.”
— Quentin Tarantino
The masked avenger is a dark hero; a symbol of justice in a complex reality where the perception of right and wrong is diffuse and hidden in the mist. Christopher Nolan’s version of Batman’s origin gives us deeper insight into humanity’s universal hero’s journey—a journey that awaits us all when we begin to be more true to ourselves.
The story of Batman shows how an ordinary person transforms into a superhuman by confronting his darkness and interpreting it in a new way. This process is depicted in a psychotherapeutic tale about our deepest inner forces; where they come from, what they do to us when we are not honest with them, how we can harness them, or how they can completely take over our lives and give our existence new meaning.
At the center of it all is Bruce Wayne, a disillusioned billionaire who has inherited a life he does not want in a world he does not understand. This analysis follows our hero through a traumatized childhood with murdered parents, into an escape from reality that eventually leads him to confront the depths of his fears—and then out of them.
When he takes on the mask, he actually takes it of, he becomes himself.
The classic examples of the monomyth relied upon by Campbell and other scholars include the stories of Osiris, Prometheus, the Buddha, Moses, and Christ, although Campbell cites many other classic myths from various cultures that rely upon this basic structure. While Campbell offers a discussion of the hero’s journey using the Freudian concepts popular in the 1940s and 1950s, the monomythic structure is not tied to these concepts. Similarly, Campbell uses a mixture of Jungian archetypes, unconscious forces, and Arnold van Gennep’s structuring of rites of passage rituals to provide some illumination. However, this pattern of the hero’s journey influences artists and intellectuals worldwide, suggesting a basic usefulness for Campbell’s insights not tied to academic categories and mid-20th-century forms of analysis.
I will go through this process in the film, pointing out the different stages in the creation of a hero.
THE DARK KNIGHT
A Modern Hero’s Tale
It is said that all hero journeys go through a number of archetypal stages; an unconscious problem, an adventure calling, a difficult decision, training by a mentor, leaving an old world, starting anew, and so on. The first 43 minutes of Batman Begins are a textbook example of the steps that create a hero. I will analyze the psychology behind the key scenes and share what I observe in this postmodern Batman.
A Limited Reality & Being Trapped Within Oneself
Thousands of screeching bats—frantically fluttering against a blood-red sky with music thundering in the background. Two small children chase each other around an estate. Suddenly, the little boy falls into a deep dark well, injuring his leg and becoming overwhelmed by hundreds of terrified night creatures.
In the next scene, Mr. Wayne wakes up many years later in a remote Vietnamese prison. An old man asks him:
“Did you have a dream?”
“A nightmare,” Bruce replies.
“Worse than this place?” the man wonders again, as the camera zooms out to reveal the desolate place where our hero is imprisoned.
Most people have, at some point during childhood, been put in a situation where it seemed there was no escape; a distressing experience that threatened our entire existence. Sooner or later, one needs to confront what happened, to see what one wanted to forget and start unraveling the deepest defining moments of one’s life.
Here, it is suggested that the nightmare Bruce fell into as a child has imprisoned him throughout his life, possibly bringing him to a place where he is in constant war with his inner self, as shown by how he fights against the world. It is as if he has recreated all his fears into an external experience that he cannot escape from, without even realizing it.
The Call to Adventure; A New Path to Walk
The next stage in the story begins when the prison cell door opens, and a gentleman steps out of the shadows. He asks our hero:
“Are you so desperate to fight criminals that you lock yourself in to take them on one at a time?”
The gentleman represents the fresh wind that comes to us when we hit rock bottom when we can no longer fall. From the bottom, it is easier to see the situation clearly, and it is often only when a person is completely deflated that they become willing to try new perspectives.
“The world is too small for someone like Bruce Wayne to disappear… no matter how deep he chooses to sink,” says the man who seems to know more about our hero than our hero knows about himself.
“Someone like you is only here by choice. You have been exploring the criminal fraternity, but whatever your original intentions were, you have become truly lost.”
Joseph Campbell, one of the world’s foremost myth researchers, said that there are generally two paths we can choose during our life journey. There is “the right-hand path,” based on the local village’s or society’s idea of reality. This path is about walking the already trodden terrain that your ancestors and many others have walked before you. Believing in this mythology keeps you in the context you are already in. Grow up here, behave according to the expectations placed on you, and you will live a worthy and successful life by your ancestors’ standards.
Sometimes, however, a feeling arises that something is wrong, a crack in the system, or something that does not make sense. Despite the seemingly safe surroundings, an unconscious problem emerges that can only be ignored for a time before it can no longer be denied. Sooner or later, you will inevitably have to deal with what you fear most; who you really are. This is the story of the individual journey or “the left-hand path,” where there are neither rules nor guidelines—but full of dangers, adventures, and creativity.
These are the two choices you can make: the right-hand mythology in which your life expression belongs to and is shaped by the culture you grew up in. Or the left-hand mythology in which the individual is given a chance to bring forth something never before seen by humanity, the realization of one’s unique potential, which we know nothing about until it is fully experienced. This is the mythology shaped around your own unique journey, the unwritten tale where you are the protagonist.
There is nothing to fear, but fear itself
THE CALL TO ADVENTURE: AN ANALYSIS OF BATMAN AND THE HERO’S JOURNEY
Step 2 – Utility | Work
Title: Recipe for Creating a Hero: Start by Facing Your Fears
Hype
Utility: This blog post will provide you with:
Recognition – everything you already agree on about Batman, the entire introduction
Twist – until he puts on the mask and becomes himself, until he starts creating himself
Words (word analysis) – Campbell’s hero epic, go through the model, map out where it happens in the films
Meaning – but what is the point of this? To illustrate an important part of healing, creation, take: ex.
Simile, take several different examples
Perspective, the text about Campbell, based on Christ, Buddha, Prometheus – based on a psychological superhero who has learned to manage his fears and is very skilled in technology.
New Reality, until society updates itself
Many quotes
Step 1. The Call to Adventure
The hero begins his journey in an ordinary and familiar situation where he is suddenly exposed to something entirely new. A message, a discovery, or receiving information serves as a call to venture into the unknown, motivating us to seek.
Step 2. Hesitation & Doubt
A human side, as this call requires us to leave the bonds we have behind us, to transform into something higher. Standing at the dock, cutting ties with loved ones, and thus opening up the unknown within oneself.
Step 3. Finding a Mentor
Letting go of the known, opening up to a new future, and this symbolically appears in the form of a mentor with supernatural powers. Our future and potential are symbolized by our role models.
“You’ve traveled the world to understand the criminal mind and conquer your fears. But a criminal is not complicated. And what you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power. You fear your anger… the drive to do great or terrible things.”
Step 4. The First Threshold
This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.
Step 5. The Belly of the Whale
The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero’s known world and self. By entering this stage, the person shows a willingness to undergo a metamorphosis.
Step 6. The Road of Trials
The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes. Training in Tibet.
Step 7. The Meeting with the Goddess
This is the moment when the hero experiences a love greater than anything he has ever known before. A love reminiscent of a child’s memory of lying in his mother’s womb. This is a very important step in the process. This is the point when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all-encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely.
Step 8. Temptress
In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. The woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, as the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.
Step 9. Atonement with the Father
In this step, the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories, this is the father or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or something with incredible power.
Step 10. Apotheosis
When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion, and bliss. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace, and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.
Step 11. The Ultimate Boon
The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, as in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.
Step 12. Refusal of the Return
Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon on his fellow man.
Step 13. The Magic Flight
Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
Step 14. Rescue from Without
Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience.
Step 15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
This is about retaining the wisdom gained from the adventure, integrating it into one’s own life, and possibly figuring out how to share it with the rest of the world.
Step 16. Master of Two Worlds
This step is about finding the balance between subject and object, self-image and worldview, and what makes them sync with each other. The hero has within himself succeeded in creating a union between the inner and outer worlds, something that spreads like ripples on the water. Collective individualism.
Step 17. Freedom to Live
When one has mastered a problem, it always gives a sense of peace and freedom, along with a new way to contribute to one’s surroundings. It becomes clear who one is and how to do one’s thing. One stops searching for a new future and starts being grateful for everything one sees around them.
I’m Batman.
He becomes a statue, a symbol for the new society.
