Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or her swag? Yeah, scholar Joseph Campbell noticed first—in 1949. He wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he outlined the 17 stages of a mythological hero's journey.

About half a century later, Christopher Vogler condensed those stages down to 12 in an attempt to show Hollywood how every story ever written should—and, uh, does—follow Campbell's pattern. We're working with those 12 stages, so take a look. (P.S. Want more? We have an entire Online Course devoted to the hero's journey.)

Ordinary World

Jay starts in the ordinary world as he knows it: New York City in the late '90s. So "ordinary" is going to be relative right from the start.

As a NYPD detective, he's running down a perp who did, um, something, and Jay must arrest him because… laws? The perp turns out to be an alien, and his superhuman acrobatics and second set of eyelids are the first cracks in Jay's understanding of the world.

Call To Adventure

Jay's call to adventure comes in the form of Agent K. Kay begins to draw Jay into the world of the Men in Black when he questions him about his encounter with the alien and the threat that the "world's gonna end." And preventing the world from ending is Heroing 101.

Refusal Of The Call

Jay doesn't refuse the call so much as he's speechless when he answers the phone. Kay takes him to Jake Jeebs's pawn shop, outs Jeebs as an alien by blowing his head off, and then reveals that the gun Jay saw not only exists but is of extraterrestrial design. It's not the craziest thing we've seen in a low-rent pawn shop, but it's up there, and Jay isn't sure how to handle it. Nothing a little neuralyzer won't fix.

Don't worry: Another call to adventure quickly follows as Kay hands him a card with an address on it and tells him to be there. He does.

Meeting The Mentor

After passing the tests, Jay meets his mentor, Kay. Granted, he's already met Kay before, but now's when the gruff old agent officially becomes his mentor. What else are gruff old agents for? He tells Jay the history of the agency and shows him for a second time that aliens are real.

Crossing The Threshold

Jay crosses the literal threshold of an elevator as he crosses the metaphorical one in his hero's journey. He's whisked into a world of alien oddities and science fiction gadgetry in the MiB headquarters. Kay and Zed equip him for the tests to come by giving him the "last suit [he'll] ever wear" and erasing all evidence of his existence. Jay's now a full-fledged member of the Men in Black.

Tests, Allies, Enemies

Jay undergoes several tests after this. He has to deliver an alien squid baby and learns the ropes of being a Man in Black while questioning Beatrice. He also earns several new allies, including the Men in Black leader Zed and the deputy medical officer Dr. Laurel Weaver (who forgets they're allies from time to time thanks to Kay neuralyzing her). The enemy, in the form of a bug-alien wearing an Edgar skin suit, kills Rosenberg and his friend in search of the Galaxy.

Approach To The Inmost Cave

The inmost cave represents terrible danger the hero must face, so the approach is when the hero prepares for said danger. Jay's approach starts when he finds the alien inside the Rosenberg body and learns that unless he finds the Galaxy on Orion's belt, it's doomsville for Earth. Unfortunately, Zed and Kay don't understand the message and believe Jay must have heard him wrong.

Jay also makes a mistake when he fires the Noisy Cricket in full view of the public. While this doesn't cause him to doubt his abilities, it does show him that he'll need to change his NYPD-bred approach if wants to succeed.

Ordeal

As the title suggests, this stage has the hero facing down a difficult ordeal. First, Jay has to solve the riddle of what Rosenberg meant by the Galaxy on Orion's belt. Once he figures out that Rosenberg was referring to his cat, he returns to the morgue and confronts the Bug face-to-decomposing-face.

Reward (Seizing The Sword)

The seizing of the sword represents that the hero's gained some skill, knowledge, or insight into his new world. While Zed and Kay scramble to figure out how the Bug plans to get off the planet, Jay asks them if the flying saucers from the 1964 World's Fair still work. This shows that Jay's grown into his role as a Men in Black agent and is thinking outside the box.

The Road Back

The road back is the final push back to the ordinary world. In the Men in Black's world, "ordinary" means the Earth not being destroyed by an Arquillian battlecruiser. Jay and Kay rush to Queens and shoot down the Bug's UFO just as it's about to leave Earth. The Bug emerges and our heroes bravely fight, but they lose their weapons in the process. Kay taunts the Bug into eating him, leaving Jay without a mentor for the first time in the film.

Resurrection

During the resurrection stage, the hero has his final encounter with the enemy. Jay fights the Bug alone despite the alien's immense power. Using his wits, he figures out the Bug's weakness for, well, bugs, and coaxes the creature to stay on the planet by stomping on some cockroaches.

Ultimately, Kay finds his weapon and blows the bug in half, with Laurel finishing off the top half. While the other two may have delivered the killing blows, it was Jay who ultimately defeated the Bug.

Return With The Elixir

In a traditional hero story, the hero returns to the ordinary world, a stronger, smarter hero than when he left. Men in Black ends with a twist. The mentor Kay returns to the ordinary world, freed from his memories that aliens live among us. Jay makes his ordinary world—still populated by the ordinary collection of aliens, that is— the Men in Black, with his new partner Agent L.