How the greatest films fuel the desire to travel

After my recent post about the 3 biggest influences that made me want to travel, one of my friends was surprised that I mentioned Sonic the Hedgehog as an influence, since then I've given further thought as to what would influence a person to travel.

My instinct is always to analyze the things I love the most and as we all know, there's probably nothing more influential these days than movies. Due to the emotive power they possess, you grow up with them, you have a film you watch in every mood and you grow old with them too.

After some thought I realised that some of the greatest movies of all time share a very common theme: Things start on an equilibrium, then comes the dis-equilibrium where someone leaves home, and when they do that's when the story really begins and eventually ends in some sort of re-equilibrium. Take a look at this list below, it contains arguably some of the greatest films of all time, in fact I defy you to have not seen at least one of them:

Peter Pan
Alice in Wonderland
Batman (Christian Bale trilogy)
Star Wars
Star Trek 
Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke
Wizard of Oz
Lord of the rings
Forrest Gump
Any James Bond film
Any Indiana Jones film
Harry Potter
The Beach
Almost Famous

The theme occurs throughout these films, whether someone returns back to their original setting or not. Either way, someone leaves home, goes to new places and the whole story comes about from that life change.  

The same can be said for many books as well including any of my favourites about Robert Langdon (The Da Vinci code, Angels and Demons, Inferno), The Alchemist, and The Hobbit to name but a few.

Why's Batman on the list of films you say? Well although he lives in and defends Gotham, he left Gotham as a young man, travelled, learnt new skills and returned as the man we know him to be. He wouldn't be Batman had he not left Gotham in the first place, so it's a worthy inclusion on the list.

I suppose that's what I like to think will happen with myself; I'm nowhere near the finished article yet and I won't be until I step outside that comfort zone. Obviously I plan on coming back (most of the time!), but when I do return I want to have had such an experience that it makes me the man I'll be for the rest of my life.

So there you have it, if you can think of any others that belong on this list let me know as I'd love to hear them, otherwise what are you waiting for? No one knows how your story will go, but if these stories tell us anything it's that it won't fully begin until you make that journey into the unknown...

Luke Skywalker looking to the stars in Star Wars: A New Hope - he seeks a life beyond his native Tatooine.
I've been doing this same thing out of my window at work for the past year!