Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or her swag? Yeah, scholar Joseph Campbell noticed first—in 1949. He wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he outlined the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey.

About half a century later, Christopher Vogler condensed those stages down to 12 in an attempt to show Hollywood how every story ever written should—and, uh, does—follow Campbell's pattern. We're working with those 12 stages, so take a look. (P.S. Want more? We have an entire Online Course devoted to the hero's journey.)

Ordinary World

Joe's "ordinary world" is lousy: He's hiding his car from repo men, he can't get a break as a screenwriter, and no one (neither his producer friend nor his agent) wants to loan him money to cover his short-term expenses.

Something's gotta give.

Of course, by the time we see this ordinary world, we've already seen what will happen to Joe at the end of the movie—he gets murdered. So there's no "It gets better" for Joe, unfortunately. When we first see Joe, we immediately get a sense of his desperation and his jaded attitude toward that desperation: He knows that he's a failure, and there's nothing special about that. He reaches a point where he's considering leaving Hollywood and heading back to the newspaper he used to work at in Dayton, Ohio. But then, the car finance men spot him in his car and chase him—forcing him to speed away, into the hero's journey (or, anti-hero's journey).

Call to Adventure

Joe hides from the car finance investigators by pulling into the driveway of an old but formerly luxurious mansion—a "grim sunset castle." He thinks it's uninhabited, but it turns out it isn't. There are two people living in the castle—the former silent-screen star Norma Desmond and her trusty butler, Max von Mayerling. They mistake Joe for the undertaker who should be arriving to help perform the funeral for Norma's pet monkey.

When Joe explains who he really is, Norma wants him to leave—but reconsiders when she learns he's a screenwriter. She has a screenplay she's been writing for years—to help her make a triumphant return to the big screen—and she wants him to help her with it. And so it begins: the weirdest relationship in cinematic history.

Refusal of the Call

Initially, as mentioned, Norma wants to get Joe out of the house—which would, of course, force him to refuse the call. Joe's initially pretty willing to leave, but stops when he hears about her screenplay. He agrees to take a look at it, discovering that it's very long and very bad.

But this gives him an idea—he can talk Norma into paying him to help edit her script and write new parts and just generally organize it. She agrees, but then Joe tries to leave her house and go back to his apartment for the night. Norma convinces him to stay the night… Joe has no idea that he's at the Hotel California: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Meeting the Mentor

Joe doesn't have much of a mentor, at least not one with his best interests at heart, but Norma's servant, Max, helps show him the ropes of Norma's world. For instance, he explains why the doors in the mansion don't have locks—to prevent Norma from locking herself in a room and committing suicide—and admits that he fakes Norma's fan letters himself in order to please her and maintain her illusions, preventing her from being destroyed. Max also helps manipulate Joe into staying by moving all of his belongings into the mansion without Joe's permission (which, admittedly, was not very mentorly, on Max's behalf).

Crossing the Threshold

It's gettin' serious, Shmoopers. Joe becomes more and more dependent on Norma, as she gives him gifts as payment for working on the script and grows more and more attached to him. Finally, she claims that she's fallen in love with Joe at a New Year's Eve party she's organized just for the two of them.

Yikes. Joe claims that he's not right for her and wanders out of the house to go to a party with other younger people—like his soon-to-be love interest, Betty Schaefer. But he gets called away from the party when he phones Norma's house and discovers from Max that she's attempted suicide. When he goes back to make sure she's recovering, he ends up agreeing to become Norma's lover. What else has he got to do?

Tests, Allies, Enemies

After Max essentially becomes Norma's kept-man, he gets drawn more deeply into her world. She buys him fancy stuff, which leaves him feeling weird and embarrassed when he runs into his old friends, who don't understand what he's doing for a living or where he's been spending so much time.

As Norma mistakenly believes she's getting her screenplay made into a movie with Cecil B. DeMille, Joe secretly sneaks out at night to work on a screenplay with Betty, a script reader at Paramount and the girlfriend of Joe's friend Artie. Their collaboration on the script is a way for Joe to escape Norma's crazy world, and he and Betty soon start to fall in love. This does not bode well.

Approach to the Inmost Cave

As Betty and Joe eventually admit that they're in love—made complicated by the fact that Artie wants Betty to marry him—Norma continues to prepare for the role in the DeMille movie that she doesn't really have.

Finally, Crazy Norma discovers the script Betty and Joe have been working on together. Enraged, she calls Betty up and hints at the sexual arrangement she's made with Joe—but Joe intercepts the phone call and invites Betty to come over to see the truth, anyway.

Ordeal

When Betty arrives, Joe explains what's going on—indicating that Norma's paying him to be her lover, showering him with gifts in the process. At first, she says she doesn't want to hear about it and just wants to run away with him, but Joe forces her to confront the truth about how he's been living. He acts like he's got a good thing going, but it's clear that he's talking a big game about the state he's in. Betty leaves and Joe tells her to live happily with Artie and get married. Consequently, Norma thinks that Joe's planning on staying with her, and she's glad that he convinced Betty to leave. 

Reward (Seizing the Sword)

But Norma's wrong.

Joe is leaving. He plans to return to the newspaper he worked for in Dayton, Ohio—just like he said he was going to do before he ended up pulling into Norma's driveway by happenstance, like he did at the beginning of the movie. He's finally going to live with integrity and do the honest thing.

But, nah. We know what's going to happen because we saw the first scene of the movie. Norma takes a gun she bought and shoots Joe three times. He dies, falling into her swimming pool. So much for his reward.

The Road Back

Joe almost gets away—he almost leaves for Dayton. But Norma murders him, and there is no road back for our protagonist. He doesn't complete the hero's journey (or anti-hero's journey) and, instead, dies tragically. Meanwhile, Norma's finally broken with reality completely and thinks that she's actually in the process of making her movie as the news crews arrive to cover the murder.

Resurrection

Joe's dead, so there won't be any actual mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or anything. The dude's toast, and hence won't undergo a real resurrection. However, you could argue that he still fits the hero's journey pattern.

After all, even after he's dead, his voice lingers on to narrate and explain the whole story—like he's achieved a greater degree of perception from beyond the grave.

Return With the Elixir

Since Joe's dead, he can't really return with some sort of symbolic life-giving elixir (meaning, he can't physically improve life in the world or turn things around). But he does bring back something important—his story. By telling the story of the whole movie, Joe warns his audience away from illusions, showing the suffering caused by an obsession with fame and the glory of celebrity.