Entertainment
10 Greatest Voyage and Return Movie Masterpieces, Ranked
Back in 2004, English journalist and author Christopher Booker took inspiration from Carl Jung‘s work to write The Seven Basic Plots, an analysis of the psychological meaning of stories. In it, he identified seven basic kinds of plots, and he argued that every story ever told fell into at least one of those categories. One of the most common plots to see in cinema is the Voyage and Return plot, where the protagonist goes to a strange land and, after overcoming the threats it poses and learning important lessons, returns home with newfound skills, experiences, or treasures.
Not at all dissimilar from Joseph Campbell‘s Hero’s Journey archetype, the Voyage and Return plot has offered audiences several of the greatest films of all time. In order to qualify for this list, a movie must contain both the voyage and the return, leaving films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a topic for another day. That still leaves us with ten movies that people would gladly count among the best of their time.
10
‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018)
Back in 2018, Sony Animation took the world by storm with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. What looked like a fun enough Spidey project instead turned out to be the greatest adventure the Wall-Crawler had had on the big screen up to that point, and even up to this day, it wouldn’t take you too long to find a few people who would call this their favorite superhero movie ever.
Into the Spider-Verse, one of the best superhero movie masterpieces of the last 100 years, puts a delightfully modern twist on the traditional Voyage and Return structure. Here, it isn’t Miles Morales who travels to the strange land, it’s the strange land itself that invades Miles’ world. This provides the groundwork for an interesting coming-of-age transformation, making Miles’ eventual return to normalcy carry particularly strong emotional resonance.
9
‘Orpheus’ (1950)
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was one of the specific examples that Christopher Booker referenced in The Seven Basic Plots when talking about the Voyage and Return archetype, and there has never been a better film based on the classic Greek myth than Jean Cocteau‘s French classic Orpheus. Partly based on Cocteau’s own 1926 stage play of the same name, it sets this legendary tale in contemporary Paris.
Slow-burning, beautifully poetic, and masterfully surreal, Cocteau’s Orpheus is one of the best movie classics of the 1950s. Labyrinthine in its mind-bending approach to the story, yet never confusing, Orpheus is one of the most profound and thought-provoking studies of the life of the artist that the Seventh Art has ever had to offer. Its leveraging of the Voyage and Return plot as a template to pull audiences in right off the beat is nothing short of brilliant.
8
‘The Lion King’ (1994)
Praised by many as the greatest animated film that Disney has ever produced, The Lion King is the peak of the period now known as the Disney Renaissance. With its colorful and vibrant visuals, its engrossing story based on both Shakespeare‘s Hamlet and Western African folklore, and one of Hans Zimmer‘s best movie scores, it’s no wonder why it’s one of the most highly acclaimed animated movies of all time.
The story of Simba’s exile from his kingdom after his father’s death, his coming-of-age by the side of his friends, and his return to take his rightful position as king away from the scheming Scar falls as neatly into the Voyage and Return archetype as any film possibly could. This shows that sticking by a tried-and-true story template can be the perfect way to tell a story that’s universally compelling and remains timeless pretty much forever.
7
‘The Third Man’ (1949)
Film historians and scholars have never been able to agree on whether film noir was a genre, a film movement, or simply a style of filmmaking; but regardless of what’s true, The Third Man will always be one of the best noir movies ever made. Made shortly after the end of WWII and responding directly to the mood that reigned across Europe at the time, it’s one of the best British movies of the era.
The strange world that American writer Holly Martins enters in The Third Man is actually just regular ol’ post-war Vienna, but director Carol Reed truly makes the space feel “other” while delivering one of the best-looking noir movies ever. This is another story that was directly referenced by Booker as a Voyage and Return plot, and it’s a perfect example of how the return can result not in growth and catharsis, but rather in disillusionment and emotional failure.
6
‘Interstellar’ (2014)
Christopher Nolan is a master of making movies that stick close to basic story archetypes, which makes his adaptation of The Odyssey, perhaps the most quintessential Voyage and Return story ever, all the more thrilling. Nolan has already made a Voyage and Return movie, however: 2014’s Interstellar, which still remains many fans’ favorite Nolan outing ever.
It is, at the very least, one of the best space movies of the last 20 years. The “Voyage” part here results in one of the most engrossing space adventures in the history of modern science fiction, and the “Return” part twists the boundaries of Booker’s theories on their head. By the time Cooper’s adventure is over, he doesn’t have an Earth to return to; instead, his return is to what turns out to have been “home” for him the whole time: his daughter, Murph. It’s a deeply moving rendition of the Voyage and Return plot whose emotional power simply can’t be resisted.
5
‘Spirited Away’ (2001)
There are few fantasy films that stick more neatly to the Voyage and Return archetype than Spirited Away, so it’s probably no coincidence that it’s widely considered not only Hayao Miyazaki‘s best movie of all time, but perhaps even the greatest animated film ever made. Part slow-burning fantasy adventure, part coming-of-age drama, it’s one of the most beautiful animated movies of the 21st century thus far.
The world-building here is flawless, which is a big part of why this is one of the most perfect fantasy movies of the 21st century.
The audience’s experience of the bathhouse and the spirit world is much akin to Chihiro’s: One of wonder, excitement, and constant awe. The world-building here is flawless, which is a big part of why this is one of the most perfect fantasy movies of the 21st century. And once Chihiro finally returns home to her parents, it’s not only her that feels like an entirely different character—It’s the audience that has been profoundly changed, too.
4
‘Back to the Future’ (1985)
Back to the Future is another example cited by Booker as a classic Voyage and Return film, and it’s not at all difficult to see where he’s coming from. The Back to the Future series as a whole is one of the most perfect movie trilogies for a weekend binge, but thankfully for those looking for a single Voyage and Return movie that contains both elements within its runtime, Back to the Future works as a standalone project every bit as well as it does as a trilogy opener.
The strange world that Marty McFly travels to here is 1955 Hill Valley, and what ensues there is one of the most entertaining stories of any ’80s movie. There are no grand, artsy themes here, nor do there need to be. Instead, Back to the Future is perfect, classic old-school storytelling that works exceptionally in virtually every sense, including as a flawless example of the Voyage and Return template.
3
‘Stalker’ (1979)
The great Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky was one of the greatest and most influential arthouse filmmakers in history, a poet with a camera who left behind some of the best movies of the 20th century. This includes Stalker, one of the best sci-fi movies of the last 75 years, where man guides a Writer and a Professor through The Zone to a place called The Room, said to grant visitors’ innermost wish.
The voyage here is one of the most visually stunning, beautifully slow-paced, and profoundly meditative sci-fi adventures in the history of cinema. As for the Stalker’s return home after the Writer and Professor refused to enter The Room, it’s the most thought-provoking ending in all of Tarkovsky’s filmography. This is no traditional Voyage and Return story, and those who prefer faster-paced science fiction will probably struggle with Stalker as a whole, but those who love arthouse sci-fi ought to check it out at least once in their lives.
2
‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946)
Frank Capra was a filmmaker who was constantly ahead of his time throughout the entirety of Hollywood’s Golden Age, making timeless classics of the stature of It’s a Wonderful Life. Though best-remembered as one of the best Christmas movies of all time, Christmas actually plays only a small role in the story of George Bailey. Instead, this is a surprisingly mature and complex study of men’s mental health and one of the most powerful anti-suicide movies in Hollywood history.
The interesting part about this particular Voyage and Return film is that while the first two acts of the story are all set-up, both the Voyage and the Return are contained within the third act of the narrative. It’s during this latter part of It’s a Wonderful Life that an angel takes George on a tour of an alternate reality where he never existed. Upon his return, George has a newfound appreciation for life, his family, and everything that they’ve been through together. The ending alone would be enough to make this one of the best crowd-pleasing fantasy movies of all time.
1
‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939)
Cinema has never given us a Voyage and Return story as iconic and influential as The Wizard of Oz. It’s one of the most revolutionary and genre-defining movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age, a masterpiece that counts as both a huge cult classic and an even bigger mainstream classic. It works on virtually every level: as a musical, as a family adventure, as a colorful fantasy movie, and—of course—as a Voyage and Return tale.
It’s through the simplicity of the Voyage and Return archetype that Wizard of Oz finds room to become one of the fantasy movies that define the genre the most. Dorothy’s voyage to one of the most fun, endearing, and visually striking fictional worlds in movie history is packed with vibrant colors, catchy tunes, and memorable characters; and her return home is one of the few “it was all a dream” endings in movie history that actually work wonderfully well.
The Wizard of Oz
- Release Date
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August 25, 1939
- Runtime
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102 minutes
- Director
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Victor Fleming
- Writers
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Edgar Allan Woolf, Florence Ryerson, Noel Langley, L. Frank Baum
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Judy Garland
Dorothy Gale
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Ray Bolger
“Hunk” / Scarecrow
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