The Old Guard is a 2020 film that I believe follows the Heroine’s Journey. The movie follows a group of self-healing, immortal warriors that are being hunted by a pharmaceutical company for their genes. The movie is full of action and history and it was one of the most popular movies of 2020. In this post, I’ll discuss how the main character, Nile, goes through some kind of heroic journey.
The movie follows the Heroine’s Journey most closely and centers around Nile, the group’s newcomer. Her separation from the “feminine” is really a separation from the mortal world. Nile is killed at the beginning of the movie when she is serving as a Marine in Afghanistan. When her wounds heal and she quickly comes back to life, she realizes that she’s different than other people and thus leaves the ordinary world. She is found by Andy, the leader of the group of immortals, and starts her new life with them. At first, Nile is happy to have allies who are going through the same thing as her, but she soon realizes that being immortal in the modern world comes with lots of dangers and hardships. Nile has to leave her family and go into hiding because she and the rest of the group are being hunted by a large corporation for their DNA. The major difference between Nile’s story and the Heroine’s journey model is that Nile never truly finds a balance between the mortal and immortal world. She instead finds a new sense of family in those around her and by the end of the movie happily leaves her original life.
Nile’s story can also fit somewhat into the model of a Hero’s Journey. She at first refuses to join the immortal world, she faces some trials as she and the group avoid capture, and she eventually triumphs and becomes her full self. However, there is no meeting of a goddess, woman temptress, or apotheosis during the film. She doesn’t master two worlds, but she does find herself. I think Nile’s journey is definitely a heroic one, but it doesn’t perfectly fit into either the Hero’s or Heroine’s Journey. It most closely follows the Heroine’s journey, though, because of her separation from a part of her identity at the beginning, her gathering of allies, support from an older woman, and finally being at peace with both of her identities at the end.
In modern storytelling, protagonists rarely follow the model of one kind of story. Characters now are less likely to be a hero or a heroine than they were in the stories Joseph Campbell or Maureen Murdock wrote about. Stories like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter feature heroes but do not follow the Hero’s Journey like Beowolf or The Iliad. I believe that having characters like Nile from The Old Guard who do not exactly follow any storyline makes the media we consume more interesting. It’s refreshing to have variation among heroes and not to hear about the same story again and again. Overall, I think The Old Guard is a fun, adventurous film with a set of likable characters. It’s a fairly predictable blockbuster movie that I enjoyed watching during quarantine, and I would recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
I’ve been trying to write my last blog post on the Hero’s Journey in As I Lay Dying and I think it’s interesting to look at books/movies that vaguely follow the template, but are more creative in their storytelling. Your blog raises an interesting question of what counts are a Hero’s Journey, if so many steps are missing. I think The Old Guard could still be counted as a Heroine’s Journey movie since Nile somewhat follows the template. Great post!
ReplyDeleteAs I was finding movies that follow the Heroine's Journey, I had a hard time finding one that follows the template completely. A lot of movies seem to start off following either template, but then leave out a couple of steps or never even finish the cycle. I like how your blog post acknowledges that The Old Guard could fit either journey, but still leaves out several steps, which asks us to consider if the movie is still a Hero/Heroine's Journey.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Although I've never seen The Old Guard, this seems like a really clear breakdown of how certain aspects of the story do and do not fit into the Heroine's Journey. I agree that it seems like modern stories follow the Hero's Journey template much less than older stories, but I think that that might also be selection bias on Campbell's part. He tends to focus a lot on stories that match the Hero's Journey and kind of ignores the ones that don't fit.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the film but you did a great job of explaining the story while comparing it to a Heroine's journey. You mentioned that she never really finds a balance in the end of the story. This reminded me of when we read Quicksand, although we considered it a Heroine's journey I would argue she never finds the balance of both worlds either.
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