What Defines an Adventure Film?

In a word: Optimism. There’s something inherently positive about an adventure film’s heart, even one so dark and scary as, say, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This optimistic humor balances an adventure film’s events. In “The Rocketeer”, a highly underrated movie, some rather intense/frightening events take place at critical points in the film, such as a man being threatened by being pushed onto a hot stove. Ouch. Yet, despite a scene such as this, which could easily take place in a common gangster yarn, the film maintains its positivity, its humor. One of the things that separated the Star Wars Prequels from the Original Trilogy is that same sense of optimism. The Originals were a classic, good vs. evil yarn, while the Prequels struck me as trying to be “The Lord of the Rings in Space”. Going hand in hand with the positive core is the moral concreteness of the stories. Very typically, though not always, morality will be portrayed as distinct, black-and-white, which is epitomized in the cliched Black-hatted Villain (Such as Toht, Lothar, or Darth Vader). The next principle that defines an adventure film is their approach to a dangerous situation, which is what adventure films are all about. Contrast your modern, gritty, action thriller to the scenes in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the typical action movie, gun violence, hand-to-hand combat, and other such conventions are shown in a negative, hostile, anger-drenched manner. This is not wrong, per se, its just the way that genre works. But in an adventure film, even in danger and gunplay, even at the height of intensity and frustration, its about spectacle and watching the hero beat the bad guy while the triumphant theme song plays. In Sky Captain, Joe “Sky Captain” Sullivan is locked inside an explosives filled room with his love interest, Polly. The whole room is about to explode (in a classic cliffhanger), and a typical action film would have already had them swearing and screaming in frustration. Instead, after trying to get out, but discovering they are seemingly doomed, they find themselves comically bickering in a way that lowers the tension for the audience, but not lowering it too much. When they get out at last, and run as the giant fireball threatens to consume them, despite a thrilling and intense sequence, you still get a sense of lightness. This all comes back to the optimism inherent in the film. So, in a word, optimism…

Advertisement