The Adventure of the Hero: Chapter I

Departure
The first steps in practically any hero's journey are receiving the call, refusing it and then accepting that call. If I think back on my favorite heroes there is almost always a moment where the hero is reluctant. In Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, Bruce Wayne always takes out his revenge through assassinating Joe Chill, before accepting that he needs to become a greater hero and get revenge for his parents in a greater way. His call was when Chill kills his parents, he refuses it for years until he finally goes on his journey and trains across the globe. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers' refusal is clearly states in the pilot when she tells Giles how she just wants to be a normal teenage girl. We don't see Buffy's initial call in the series until very briefly in a flashback, but it is clearly established in series canon and dialogue that she was called by her first Watcher, Merrick , when she lived in LA. In Eric Kripke's Supernatural there are many calls to adventure. John Winchester is called to adventure when his wife and mother of his two son's Sam and Dean is killed over Sam's crib. Sam and Dean follow in his footsteps until Sam goes off to go to college and attempt a "normal life." Sam is brought back in in the series pilot when his father is missing, and then permanently locked in after wanting to refuse the call when he returns to college to find his girlfriend dead in the same manner as his mother, and thus his journey begins. Eric Kripke had stated in interviews that Campbell was an influence on him when creating the series, and it is interesting not note this. Nearly anything you look at involving heroes will follow the basic structure laid out by Campbell, whether conscious of it or not.