The Hollywood Script and the Hero's Journey (IX) The Encounter with the Master
The fourth step or milestone for the construction of a Hollywood model script with the Hero Journey plan is the meeting with the teacher or mentor.
It should not be hard for you to think about the great mentors that have had the heroes of the movies you've enjoyed since childhood in film and television: Master Yoda in Star Wars, Master Shifu in Kung Fu Panda, or Morpheus in The Matrix, although the latter is a shared role with The Oracle, which is presented to Neo as a female avatar, which was first a role for Gloria Foster and then for Mary Alice.
Remember that this scheme is not made of iron, it can have its variations, and that is one of the most attractive characteristics that it possesses: you can adapt it to your idea, to your history, and create one or several teachers or mentors.
Who is the mentor and what does he do in your movie
The very name of the character already tells us who he is, what he does and what his role is. We don’t have to invent anything, everything has been said for thousands of years.
In the Odyssey, when Odysseus leaves for the war of Troy, he entrusts to the wise and loyal Mentor the interests of Ithaca, as well as the education of his son Telemachus. The teacher or mentor, then, is the figure of the wise man who transmits the hidden knowledge to the hero, and who gives him the tools to be no more an ordinary human being but to reach the special powers required to defeat evil, to save the village or to save the world.
This is what Morpheus does when he offers the pills to Neo, this is what master Shifu does when he declares, to the amazement of the whole village, that Panda is nothing more and less than the Dragon Warrior, this is what makes the unforgettable Master Yoda with the young Lou Skywalker.
This statement that Neo, Lou or Panda are the heroes or warriors who are going to save the village, the nation, the world or the galaxy, should appear in the first act of your script by the 10th minute, because at this point, if the conflict is not presented, if we do not know who the hero is, what he is facing and what his mission is, both the film studio executive and the spectator will begin to yawn, and your script will end up in the "rejected" basket or they will click on the "delete" key.
What happens in the cinema, if the movie has been filmed and released bravely, only with voluntarism, it is, in the Latin American and Venezuelan way, will be worse. People will regret having paid to see the movie, and that will be lethal, because very soon the rumor will be spread in the relentless social networks, and the film will a failure: "Do not see it because it is very boring . "
The teacher accompanies the hero
In the Odyssey, the Goddess Athena accompanies Telemachus adopting the figure of Mentor when the young man leaves in search of his father and goes to the court of the noble Nestor in Pylos. The goddess returns to take the appearance of Mentor when Odysseus returns to Ithaca.
This classic scheme is repeated in the adventure films with which we have grown. Morpheus accompanies Neo, and they fight terrible battles together against the black agents and the Matrix. Master Shifu fights alongside Panda and the clan, and Gandalf accompanies Frodo throughout his adventures.
The relationship of the teacher with the disciple is a very particular feature of this type of script. It can be a father-son, father-daughter or older brother-younger brother relationship.
Many times he is the lost father, and that is why superheroes are usually orphans like Harry Potter. The mentor will come to fill an existential void of the protagonist, who will accept him more easily in his substitute status, precisely because what he most desires in life is to know his father.
The master slaps you
One of the possibilities of this model that has been exploited until the delirium in the cinema is the learning process of the hero and the teacher's pedagogy.
The teacher can float in the air and say incomprehensible things, like Yoda, can give you buzzwords, like Master Shifu to Panda, because the teacher is always in contact with ancestral energies that the hero must awake within himself.
The journey of the hero is, in short, the process of awakening within himself those energies, that knowledge that the hero has inherited because he is a chosen one.
It is a process of growth, it is to go from adolescence to adulthood, to maturity, and depending on the story, to the quiet old age surrounded by their beloved ones, at the same point from where he left, or retired in a distant refuge, lonely as a monk.
The master leaves you so you can grow
In order for the hero's personality to fully develop, at some point he has to achieve his feats for himself, he must not and cannot count on the eternal support of the mentor, because he would be a child who does not finish growing.
In the Hero's Journey scheme, the master usually disappears before the crucial battle, which must be faced by the hero to reach its peak and fullness. These usually occur from the middle of the movie on, in the middle of the second act. Remember that we are working on a script outline in three acts.
Gandalf falls through an abyss and disappears, Yoda disappears, the masters of Harry Potter disappear, and Neo has the dilemma that at a given moment he will have to choose between saving his life or his master Morpheus life.
Of course, teachers can return, transfigured as Athena did with Telemachus and Odysseus, disguised as Mentor. In the sagas of these films, we will see many teachers appear and disappear, die and resurrect. If the character of the master has penetrated the public's imagination, the producers will repeat it to guarantee success at the cinemas in part 2, 3, 4 ... etc.
I just saw the trailer for The Godfather IV, and it is clear that it is something like what I am telling you. Andy Garcia is going to be the heir of the Corleone empire, something that was already been said in part 3. But what was never seen is how Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) educated his nephew in the ways of evil and power, of crime and the darkness, so that he reached its condition of Godfather.
That, from the trailer, is what the film promises: A pedagogy of horror and impiety.
Of course, here is not a hero but an antihero, a tragic character as we have commented in other posts. And the tragic characters, from Euripides and Sophocles, are condemned, always will be destroyed by the fate, the Moira, the Ananke. Michael will write his own tragedy, and he will lose his daughter in front of the theater where his son sings.
We shall see what tragedies the new Godfather will face, but we don’t predict a happy ending for him.
What does all this have to do with your script?
It has a lot. Do not believe that this scheme works only with superhero movies. The encounter with the master or mentor is present in all kinds of stories, in all kinds of films, from romantic comedies to sitcoms.
When the protagonist is lost, and does not know how to achieve the love of the girl who obsesses him, he can turn to a wiser friend, a psychiatrist or even a computer program, a guru, his mother or an elderly aunt.
Teachers can be interlocutors, who inject ethical values into the immature character: this is good, this is bad, you cannot do this or that.
Always think which character can influence your protagonist in this way, and you will have the teacher or mentor.
If the teacher master and the student start the trip together, for a time, before the teacher disappears so that the hero can grow, they can live many adventures and have a lot of fun to entertain the spectator.
Although it looks like a rigid scheme, it actually has infinite possibilities. It all depends on your creativity and your daring.
Good luck with your script.
See you in the next post!
Óscar Reyes-Matute
(Samuel Ibn Motot / שמואל אבן מתת)
Video recommended:
The Godfather IV, Trailer
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