Adventure Movies

Adventure movies are one of the most popular genres when it comes to box office ratings with movies in the genre scoring third place in the most popular genre lists for 2008, taking up around 20 per cent of total US movie market.

Adventure movies are quite a broad title for a genre that blends with many other genres of film, with action and science fiction often playing a major part in most films. Adventure movies will often aim for a family audience, making them one of the more profitable genres for the movie industry.

Adventure films will categorically contain several elements to define it as such, namely a foreign or exciting setting or some sort of quest for the principle characters. Essentially they are exciting stories in foreign and extreme situation, usually without the violence associated with actions films. The central characters of such films usually have some sort of quest or task ahead of them which can typically range from anything from global or space travel, exploring ancient mysteries, the supernatural or great battles.

Such famous recent examples of adventure films include Indiana Jones series, Pirates of the Caribbean series and the Harry Potter series, with all three of these films some of the most successful in movie history due to their wide demographic audience. Of course, the history of adventure movies started back in the era of early film with the 1920’s through to the 1950’s seeing many adventure films produced, with stars such as Errol Flynn dominating the screens.

Examples of Adventure Movies, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull and National Treasure 2:

History

The adventure film reached its peak of popularity in 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, when films such as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro were regularly made with major stars, notably Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, who were closely associated with the genre. At the same time, Saturday morning serials were often using many of the same thematic elements as high-budget adventure films.

Modernizing the genre

The genre has undergone periodic revivals since the 1950s, with figures like Robin Hood being re-cast for a new generation. Some of the revivals have been successful, as with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and some less so, as with Swashbuckler (1976). In the 1980s the success of Steven Spielberg's Saturday morning serial-style adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade spawned a host of imitators. Their influences can be seen on films like The Mummy, its sequel The Mummy Returns, National Treasure and its sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

There is often a degree of overlap between the adventure film and other genres. For example, Star Wars (1977) contains elements of science fiction, while The Mummy (1999) combines the horror genre.

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