How Star Wars perfectly constructs a compelling Call to Adventure

 The Hero's journey is a very flexible template and outline for a fictional narrative. While the complete version as written by Joseph Campbell is capable of being used 1-for-1 to tell a complete story, certain parts can be swapped with each other and even discarded to better fit a specific story.  However, one part of the hero's journey is essential to any story starting from the beginning. And that element is the Call to Adventure. Without the call to adventure, there would be no adventure. Starting off with a compelling motivation for the hero is important both so that the hero feels some sense of urgency as well as hooking the audience in to keep them engaged. And Star Wars succeeds on both fronts to perfectly craft a call to adventure.

We begin in a scene of action. Princess Leia's ship is under attack and about to be fully taken over. Most of her guards have been captured or killed and she herself is nearly surrounded. A dark figure has emerged on Leia's ship, clearly more important than the white clad masked soldiers that seem to be the enemy.  At the last moment Leia is able to send out two droids on escape pods. Afterwards she is quickly captured. After the two droids crash and have a minor adventure of their own, they eventually end up in the ownership of Luke Skywalker.  Here is when the literal call to adventure is introduced. Luke hears the message "help me Obi Wan Kenobi you're my only hope." Here we are introduced to the goal of the story. Luke will somehow aid in helping princess Leia in some way. This brief message both intrigues Luke as well as the audience. On Luke's end, he is curious as to how this Obi Wan Kenobi relates to Ben Kenobi, the local old mysterious hermit. On our end, we are curious to the nature of this Obi Wan Kenobi. Who is he? Is he the true protagonist of this story? How could he possibly help against what seems to be the overwhelming force of the Empire? All of these questions are answered immediately when Luke meets Obi Wan. Obi Wan is Ben, he knew Luke's late father, he was a former Jedi skilled in the force. But while some questions are answered, man more are created. How can Obi Wan and Luke help save Leia? The Call to Adventure in Star Wars asks small questions that can be quickly to satisfy initial viewer interest and curiosity, while also establishing larger questions that will engage the viewer for the rest of the film. What's more, the Call To Adventure also leads directly into other elements of the Hero's Journey like Meeting the Mentor and Refusal of the Call. Luke's initial mission is to find Obi Wan. This results in a logical flow of actions that produce a several smooth feelings of tension and release as smaller questions are replace with much larger more important ones.

Another way in which Star Wars has the perfect Hero's Journey is through an escalation of stakes. The initial stake of Star Wars is that Leia must be rescued somehow or something bad will happen to her and potentially other people as well. Leia tried to somehow disrupt the plans of the Empire and for that she was captured. The overarching threat of the empire that will last up until the mid point of the story. But as this goal hangs in the viewers mind, another smaller threat is established. The threat of the Tusken Raiders is one that is relatively small, yet it is important to progress the plot and it does pose a very real and immediate threat to Luke. This threat is overshadowed later on by the storm troopers that are after Luke. Once they escape the storm troopers, they are captured by the empire, and must use their wits to evade the storm troopers and help rescue Leia. Once they rescue Leia, Luke is educated on the planet destroying capabilities of the Death Star, and the rest of the movie revolves around destroying it. The Call to Adventure manages both to establish real and impactful small scale threats and stakes, and also to establish a larger threat that seamlessly connects the plot from a small scale damsel in distress narrative to a large scale fate of the galaxy narrative.