[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by CupcakeDolly

I vaguely remember learning about this very concept in freshman English. Basically, all stories draw from the same template, and most - if not all - elements of that template appear in every single story you'll read. The call to action, the mentor/guide, the mascot/sidekick helper, the love interest, the development of abilites/powers, journeying to another world, and a final battle are all the most common themes.

It's something like that, though Campbell's book is more psychology than literary theory (of which psychology is a subset, but still, I think he crosses a line). The book isn't the easiest to follow if you haven't read Freud and Jung (which I hadn't at the time), and some of the elements of the monomyth can be a bit abstract and difficult to grasp, though it may just be the way he presents them. It's not an easy book, at all, I did a project with it for Mythology class and almost ended up changing to something else.

Anyway, I don't like virtually any movies, much for the originality reason. It's all in the way the elements are combined, and it seems to me that most movies are just... lazy, at combining them. And it doesn't hurt to spin a time-honored trope on its head from time to time.

Still, my standards are pretty high, and a movie has to bring pretty much every aspect together seamlessly for me to enjoy it (plot, characters, dialogue, setting, exposition, theme, let alone the technical stuff like acting, filming, editing, music score, CGI, accents, and costumes). Also, if it's an adaptation from another medium, that burden is increased substantially. Don't talk to me about the Lord of the Rings films. I'll get very grumpy

Also, Transformers... eew.