Adventure Movies
96 videos • 19,652 views • by Donald P. Borchers Adventure Movies is a form of adventure fiction, and is a genre of film. Subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler films, pirate films, and survival films. Adventure films may also be combined with other film genres such as action, animation, comedy, drama, fantasy, science fiction, family, horror, or war. Setting plays an important role in Adventure Movies, sometimes itself acting as a character in the narrative. They are typically set in far away lands, such as lost continents or other exotic locations. They may also be set in a period background and may include adapted stories of historical or fictional adventure heroes within the historical context. Such struggles and situations that confront the main characters include things like battles, piracy, rebellion, and the creation of empires and kingdoms. A common theme of Adventure Movies is of characters leaving their home or place of comfort and going to fulfill a goal, embarking on travels, quests, treasure hunts, heroic journeys; and explorations or searches for the unknown. Subgenres of Adventure Movies include swashbuckler films, pirate films, and survival films. Adventure films may also be combined with other film genres such as action, animation, comedy, drama, fantasy, science fiction, family, horror, or war. In the early days of Adventure Movies, the protagonists were typically male. These characters were courageous, often seen as heroes fighting suppression and facing tyrants. More recent adventure films have featured heroines, such as Lara Croft, as protagonists. Adventure Movies first became popular with weekly Saturday serials, running in installments that often had 'cliff-hanging' endings to entice viewers to return for the next show. Heroine Pearl White in the 20-episode "The Perils of Pauline" (1914) was the first major super-star of the silent serials. Other action-adventure heros of B-picture adventure films included Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers. 'Buster' Crabbe was the most famous of all the serial action heroes in the 1930s and 1940s, starring as both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Adventure Movies popularity peaked in the 1930s and 1940s, when films such as "Captain Blood" (1935), "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938), and "The Mark of Zorro" (1940) were regularly made with major stars, notably Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, who were closely associated with the genre. Early influential adventure film creators were Douglas Fairbanks in "The Three Musketeers" (1921), "Robin Hood" (1922), and "The Black Pirate" (1926), Zoltan Korda in "The Four Feathers" (1939), "Jungle Book" (1942), "Sahara"(1943) and John Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), and "The African Queen"(1951). The 26 Tarzan books of Edgar Rice Burroughs became the subject matter for a long series of vine-swinging, ape-man adventures set in the jungle. Burroughs' first story (in 1912) appeared in the October issue of All-Story Magazine, and was later novelized in 1914. The threats of Western encroachment by white treasure-hunters, ferocious wild animals, and hostile native tribal life were typical elements of most jungle adventures. The first "Lord of the Jungle" was actor Elmo Lincoln - he started the trend in 1918 during the silent era with "Tarzan of the Apes" (1918), and also appeared in the sequel "The Romance of Tarzan" (1918). Tales of pirates are numerous in the Adventure Movies genre, including Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" (1934, 1950), and "Long John Silver" (1954), "Captain Blood" (1935), and Cecil B. DeMille's "The Buccaneer" (1938). Water-related or sea-faring adventure films include "Mutiny on the Bounty"(1935) (mentioned above), Walt Disney's production of Jules Verne's adventure "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) and John Huston's re-telling of Herman Melville's 1851 novel "Moby Dick"(1956). Much later, Steven Spielberg's blockbuster "Jaws" (1975) was based on Peter Benchley's book, James Cameron's "The Abyss" (1989), a fantasy-adventure, close-encounter thriller told about an underwater team of divers retrieving nuclear warheads, and the film adaptation of Tom Clancy's novel "The Hunt for Red October" (1990). Many adventure epics have been based on the legend of King Arthur, fulfilling the needs of Hollywood for films with heroes (and heroines), a quest, and light vs. darkness. In some senses, the King Arthur films were swashbucklers in disguise. Films about historical explorers have incorporated adventure film characteristics. Aviation-related adventure films include: director Howard Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939). Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) was an affectionate return and tribute to the early days of Saturday morning matinees and cinema, the first in a very successful trilogy of films. So were the adventure-action-romance-comedies "Romancing the Stone" (1984) and its sequel "The Jewel of the Nile" (1985).