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Seems to me almost every Hollywood movie is a "man in the hole" / "boy meets girl", as in somebody leads a normal life, something happens (could be something not bad, like a new challenge) and the main character(s) come out victorious.

Maybe I'm simplifying and applying a template to the "happy ending" cliche.




Allow me to ruin all Hollywood movies for you: "Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need". https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...

Once you read this, you'll start seeing that every popular movie today follows this guide, almost precisely to-the-minute. Book says "by page X of screenplay, Y should happen" and you'll see that it does.


I think there's a parallel here to the "Shaman's Journey", which might be the oldest story pattern out there (see e.g. [1]).

The original pattern had the Shaman travel into the world of the supernatural to complete a kind of quest to solve a problem back home. In the Western world, the "supernatural realm" stopped catching on after a while, so we got first the Hero's Journey (vice Campbell) and the modern version of that myth, the MIH/BMG story where the protagonist gets into trouble and out again, possibly while staying in the same town all along.

[1] https://sites.google.com/a/bc.edu/healing-our-world-shaman-t...


Even in modern uses of the hero’s journey model the world of the story is usually thematically supernatural, even if it isn’t literally magical. The protagonist is leading a normal life, until they answer the call and next thing you know they’re surrounded by explosions, secret agents, treasure, gangsters, etc. The hero leaves the mundane world for the magical world of the story, which plays by a different set of rules.


Yes, The Hero's Journey seems a subset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey


The Man in the Hole structure is essentially Joseph Campbell's hero cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."




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