Jungian Reflections within the Cinema: A Psychological Analysis of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Archetypes

One of the Jungian hero's greatest adversaries is the shadow devourer (or destroyer), a monstrous abomination that lives underground or underwater. It is such a powerful entity that it consumes the hero entirely in its massive jaws. The major deed which the hero must undertake is to kill the beast from within and then escape unscathed. This sometimes involves severing one of the destroyer's vital organs or, more likely, starting a blazing fire in the creature's belly. The end result is that the hero frees himself from the "maternal womb" of death and experiences a rebirth of life as he ascends into the light of a new day to resume his battles, refreshed and invigorated.¹

Shadow destroyers need not be restricted to types of mutated animals. They can be powerful humans (see Wotan in chapter 3) or even collective organizations that rob the individual members of their humanness in the quest to achieve the "ultimate good for the many." Two science-fiction movies have presented fairly interesting depictions of the latter kind of shadow destroyer. Both Logan's Run ( 1976) and Battlestar: Galactica ( 1978) show the viewer what technology can unleash when it is supported by the very constituents it is designated to enslave in the long run. Some of the more notable moments from each television series that the movies spawned will be investigated in an attempt to further understand the struggles of the lone hero against seemingly impossible odds (i.e., a society or species mobilized in full force to crush any and all signs of resistance).

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