Teaching Hero’s Journey with Big Hero 6

I select movies*, like any text, very purposefully. When it comes to something like the Hero’s Journey, I don’t want to endlessly lecture on it. Likewise, I want the students to find the tasks and trials from their novel, and not just give them the answers. So I need a quick example that all students can quickly use to see the stages in one text and apply them over to the written text of their novel. Enter Big Hero 6. No matter the nomenclature of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, Big Hero 6 has every stage! Plus there are a few way to bump up the rigor of discussion!

1. All my students get a little handout that looks like a chart. One column has each stage and the definition, another column is for Big Hero 6 examples, and the third will be for the novel
2. Introduce the concept of archetypes by breaking down the word into parts and getting students to infer what it means. Arche means “mold” and type means “a type of, a kind of”
3. Start off watching the TED-Ed talk “What Makes a Hero?”
4. Break down Monomyth as a term. I like to also make a little timeline, starting with Gilgamesh, to Hercules, to Beowulf, to present day Big Hero 6. The idea that once you have these patterns in your head to can apply them to everything from Narnia to Harry Potter to Jesus.
5. We watch Big Hero 6 until the point where Hiro and Baymax are sitting on the techno dirigibles right before he scans and finds the island. I let them work in groups to fill out what has happened thus far. I check for understanding and then we watch to the end and the groups finish. (There is a part right before the big boss part where Hiro says, “Is this what Abigail would have wanted?” and Callahan responds that she is dead. This perfectly mirrors an earlier conversation between Baymax and Hiro in terms of Tadashi. This is when I introduce the literary term foil and we analyze what the real difference is between Hiro and Callahan: Baymax and friends. We then have a conversation about what that creators may be trying to convey about friendship and loneliness and what Baymax may therefore symbolize. (Seriously, you can analyze this movie so deeply! Even kids who have watched it a million times will start to uncover layers of understanding. This is so good for them!*)
   
6. When we have finished and the students confirm that Baymax is the elixir and Abigail is the resurrection, inevitably a kid asks why isn’t Baymax the resurrection. That’s when I like to have a challenge questions: What if this isn’t just Hiro’s Hero’s Journey? What is this is ALSO Baymax’s? The kids will discuss how that makes Hiro the mentor and the other variations. This is a higher-level, nerdy question that blows their minds!
7. I also take this opportunity to explore Christ Figure. Baymax is such perfect one and the kids see Christ imagery all the time – Katniss is obvious in the movies with her arms stretched out at the end of the second! I go through a list of potential Christ Figure Traits and students record which apply to Baymax.
8. Then my students apply the Hero’s Journey to the whole class novel.

Big Hero 6 is also great for reinforcing Notice and NoteSignposts.

* I know sometimes we can face push-back from admin and parents about movies. However, I think there is a very big difference between pressing play and having the kids do an assignment in silence versus having a rich discussion about the movie. I feel strongly that when we have these sort of conversations analyzing a movie instead of just reacting to a movie, we are modeling a better way to view movies. Many of our students go to the movies with their families and have very little discussion. I know I enjoy rich post-viewing discussion with friends or my hubby. I had an extensive conversation about Utilitarianism vs. Kantianism ideals in Resident Evil after a friend and I watched it in college! I truly believe in explicitly teaching students to view movies as another text. I also know brain research supports that analyzing helps build analysis skills and that analyzing one thing (like playing chess) and improve analysis elsewhere (reading). This, of course, doesn’t mean we don’t have to have the kids read, but many students watch movies and television shows. What if, instead of just being a passive audience, they were analyzing? What if they had no idea looking for plot holes, thinking about symbols, and examining character motivation is not supposed to be limited to the written word?  I’m married to an English teacher. Post-movie, we are usually having an hour long discussion breaking down plot, character, style, and choices the director made. Imagine if our students did the same after watching a movie? How much deeper would their analysis skills grow?