Christopher Vogler and Narrative Theories Essay with examples from “The Lion King”

Christopher Vogler and Narrative Theories Essay with examples from “The Lion King”

Based on Campbell’s ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’, Vogler identifies twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey.

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It should be noted that the stages of the Hero’s journey don’t necessarily have to happen in order, nor do all twelve stages have to occur, but is a useful template for structuring interesting stories ( This is especially true in the case of

‘The Lion King’, where the stages are mixed up from the standard order. ‘The Lion King’ starts, as most films start, showing us the main characters in their ordinary world. The images, beats and scenes shown during the first few minutes are vital to inserting the audience into the story world .

In the case of ‘The Lion King’, the story world is the vast plains of Africa, a place that few of us have visited. Being an animated film as opposed to live action, the makers of the film took the opportunity to open the film with stark, breathtaking shots, which fit in with how we imagine mid-Africa looks and feels. …

The Hyenas appear here as Threshold Guardians, which gives Timone and Pumbaa their first real test, letting them know the stakes of the confrontation. The ‘Ordeal’ stage leads on directly from Approach, and is the confrontation between Simba and Scar.

Traditionally, the Ordeal stage occurs in the middle of Act 2, and in fact, Vogler warns against confusing the Ordeal stage with the crisis

However, he also acknowledges that some stories work better with no mid-point ordeal, but using Act 2 to build up slowly to an epic confrontation towards the end of Act 2, and this is clearly the structure used in ‘The Lion King’.

The dramatic purpose of this stage is to show the Hero at their darkest hour – Simba is both forced to confront his belief that he’s responsible for Mufassa’s death,

and then immediately afterwards, is placed in a life or death situation at the hands of Scar. At this point, Vogler likens the audiences’ emotions as elastic – that is, if you force an