Call to Adventure in Different Films and How Characters Refuse to Hear It

MZed Education

by Mascha DeikovaJanuary 16^th, 2026

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When we talk about storytelling, we often refer to the famous Hero’s Journey. It’s a structure that tends to appear not only in old myths, contemporary literature, and diverse films, but also in our lives. Everyone hears a call to adventure from time to time, small or huge, exciting or frightening, don’t we? And that is what makes such stories appealing. There is, however, a phase in the Hero’s Journey that some writers may mistake for insufficient, yet it is extremely valuable. Namely, the moment when a character refuses to follow the call. Why is it important, and what can it bring to your film? Let’s take a look at different examples and discover the answers together.

Imagine you’re sitting in a dim living room, in a huge leather armchair. In front of you – a guy in dark sunglasses, who gives you a choice. Two pills. Red, and you’ll know the truth about the world, but there is no going back. Blue, and the story ends: You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. Now, this is a hell of a call to adventure! The question is: What pill are you going to choose?

The Hero’s Journey: bits of theory

If you work with stories, then you for sure have heard the names of Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler. If not, you should check out their books: “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers”. They explain and break down the industry storytelling classics – The Hero’s Journey, also called the monomyth.

The Hero’s Journey is a skeleton framework that should be fleshed out with the details of and surprises of the individual story. The structure should not call attention to itself, nor should it be followed too precisely. The order of the stages is only one of many possible variations. The stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically shuffled without losing any of their power.

Christopher Vogler, a quote from his book

So yeah, it’s a basic dramatic structure that can become a foundation of your protagonist’s arc and inform your plot. It doesn’t have to – there are other approaches as well – but in most fictional books and films, it will be there in some form or to some extent. In the example from “The Matrix,” Neo does take the red pill straightaway, embarking on an adventure. Yet it’s neither the first call nor his first refusal. In one of the previous scenes, he still doesn’t trust Morpheus full-heartedly and decides not to jump off the high building. (It’s so high, isn’t it?) Thus, the Agents manage to catch him:

There are more of Neo’s refusals to come, even when he already takes the pill, falls down the rabbit hole, and experiences the real world. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

Call to adventure

In the story, the call to adventure can come to our hero (or heroine, for that matter) in various forms. Sometimes it is straightforward, like a letter, inviting a young Harry Potter to join Hogwarts, the school of magic:

Other times, it can be completely weird and unexpected, like the peculiar dialogue in the elevator from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

All the examples we’ve taken a look at so far show the call for adventure, which comes from the outer world. At the same time, it can equally emerge from the inner depths of the character. In the script of “Into the Wild,” Chris McCandless decides to embark on a journey because he obviously feels the need to change something. It’s he who, in his heart, doesn’t want to follow in his parents’ steps. It’s he who is not happy about getting into Harvard Law. It’s he who acts on the urge to live, to explore, to see the world, to witness beautiful things instead of taking a traditional route laid out in front of him.

In the course “Writing 201” on MZed, writer and director Seth Worley explains Campbell’s concept of the Herald – the inciting incident, marking the call to adventure. A Herald can be a person, a prop, or an event. Anything that brings about a solution to the hero. Most likely, this solution is unfamiliar and unpreferred.

Often, the most interesting solutions presented by the most interesting heralds are things that you and I never say ‘yes’ to. Kill a guy, put on a suit that turns you into an ant, leave your family and your entire planet, and fight the galactic empire in space. So the hero does what you and I would do. They say: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Seth Worley, a quote from the course

Ways to refuse the call

Of course, sometimes characters cannot directly follow the call to adventure because something or someone holds them back. Like in Harry Potter’s example above. His aunt and uncle do not want to hear about this utter nonsense, and do not let their nephew read any of the letters he gets. Outside reasons may also be poor health, financial problems, or duties and responsibilities that the protagonist believes he or she cannot give up. Remember Luke Skywalker? Well, he is not that eager to follow Princess Leah’s plea to help at first:

It’s not like young Luke is afraid of adventure. No, but he refuses because he feels responsible for his aunt and uncle and is trapped by their simple life on Tatooine.

More often, though, the refusal comes from the character’s own fear, and that’s quite understandable. Christopher Vogler has a strong point in his book:

Put yourself in the hero’s shoes, and you can see that it’s a difficult passage. You’re being asked to say yes to a great unknown, to an adventure that will be exciting but also dangerous and even life-threatening. It wouldn’t be a real adventure otherwise. You stand at a threshold of fear, and an understandable reaction would be to hesitate or even refuse the Call, at least temporarily.

It’s this voice of self-doubt coming from inside that seems to say to Frodo: You cannot do it. You’re just a small and weak hobbit…

What does this moment help us, the viewers, realize about the protagonist in that moment? We’ll return to this question in a second.

Why refusal is an important stage

Aspiring writers in fiction and screenwriting often make this mistake. They are too eager to keep going further and hop onto the exciting parts of the story, and so they skip the Refusal stage. However, this can be a secret sauce in the Hero’s Journey. Why?

First off, it allows us to raise the stakes. The protagonist’s reaction shows straightaway that it’s not going to be an easy journey. Also, they feel they are not ready for it yet. They lack something important.

As soon as we see their fear and know what they lack, it makes them human to us. Real, authentic, believable. We feel for them. We relate to them. How often have we experienced something similar in our lives, when we had to make an important decision that would change a lot?

This lack is often what we call a character’s “need.” In the story, he might want to find a missing photo negative to not get fired from a magazine, like in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and that’s his call. But the actual need is to become brave, to experience real life, to go on a journey and find beauty around, rather than just looking at the pictures in the dark cellar. That’s why Walter Mitty hesitates to jump on a helicopter in Greenland and to truly start his trip into the unknown. It’s fear that stops him for a moment from going for a huge inner change.

But then, as Seth Worley describes, the character has no other solution left but the one they’re trying to avoid. It just so happens to be the one that we paid money to see.

Refusing the call to adventure raises suspense

Finally, the moment when the hero refuses the call is also a possibility to raise suspense and intensity. It builds up our anticipation of the journey a little longer, before we alondside hero, are allowed to embark on it.

Playing with intensity is what helps to catch your audience’s attention and glue it to the story. However, it is also something we should be careful with. After an intensive period, we need to place a release. Letting your audience always sit on an electric wire is mean, not to mention that at some point, they will feel “That’s enough! I can’t have it anymore.”

In “The Green Knight,” the protagonist Gawain impulsively accepts a challenge and decapitates the Green Knight. According to the rule, he has a year to travel to the Green Chapel and receive an equal blow. How long do you think he spends in refusal? Nearly a full year. A year of postponing the adventure, indulging in comfort, not crossing the threshold. The suspense grows and grows. When will he finally go and fulfill the challenge? Will he even do it? Is he brave enough for it? What happens if he doesn’t go? All these questions grow in our heads, accelerating with the rising intensity of the film.

Conclusion

So, yes, just as the call to adventure, refusal of the call can have many forms. It might be a subtle moment, a second or two of hesitation. Or it might take the whole year of doubts before the protagonist goes for a change. Refusal may be a single step at the beginning. Or it can happen lots of times along the journey, encountering the character at every new step. In any case, it’s an important stage, and the one that can bring a lot to the story.

What about you and your scripts? Do you use the Hero’s journey structure in some form? If so, why else do you think it’s important to include a character’s refusal to the call? Let’s continue in the comments below!

Feature image: film stills from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by Chris Columbus, 2001, and “The Green Knight” by David Lowery, 2021.

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD.