The Problem With Adventure Movies Today

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About this video essay:
An analysis of what makes an adventure movie feel actually adventurous.

Chapters:
0:00 The Problem With Adventure Movies Today
2:14 A Case Study, and a Reappreciation
4:00 The Real Purpose of an Adventure
9:15 The Importance of Adventurous Characters
11:50 Creating Tangible New Worlds
15:27 Making it Feel Real
19:00 The Value of Great Action Scenes
23:06 From a Great Adventure, to a Great Movie

Listen to my podcast, Cinema of Meaning:

Further Reading:

Media included:
Assassin’s Creed; Avatar; Burden of Dreams; Dune; Fitzcarraldo; Indiana Jones; Jungle Cruise; Jurassic Park; Jurassic Park 3; Jurassic World; Fallen Kingdom; Dominion; King Kong; Lawrence of Arabia; Lord of the Rings; Master and Commander; National Treasure; Pirates of the Caribbean; Red Notice; The Lost World (1925); The Lost World: Jurassic Park; The Mummy (1990); The Mummy (2017); Uncharted

Music:
Dexter Britain – Midnight Sand
Dexter Britain – Your Own World
Dexter Britain – Raising
Dexter Britain – Stay With Me
Daniel Deuschle – Wild is Life

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Camera angles, too. In every single one of those shots of older movies, only time the perspective went beyond a regular human's was very specifically chosen moments. In the newer ones, it seems like the vast majority of the shots are ones we'd never actually see from in real life, on top of the overly perfect composition and ultra-vibrant colours. No wonder it comes off as annoying.

ARGhostie
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I think this is one of the reasons why Pirates of The Caribbean was succesfull (at least the first entries in the franchise): It used CGI, but there was a quite vibrant natural world to explore, and also not to mention all the forts, villages, and ships there. It just felt more 'real' than other recent adventure movies.

m_flicks
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Also notice the difference in camera work. The cameras are always floating around in modern movies. They never take still shots long enough for us to feel the environment.
In the first Jurassic Park movies we can practically feel the cold, the rain, the dust, the wind and all the environments while the characters are walking through them.
We feel like we are on the ground with them. In the new movies we don't get that same experience. You feel more like a drone flying around in a video game.

rovhalt
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“Dinosaurs aren’t tangible, they aren’t meant to be understood, they just need to be whatever the plot wants them to be”
that is exactly what is happening to this franchise

moshikamboshi
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They've downright depressed me. I've been willing to accept that it could just be that I'm old, but I think it's because their is no personality behind the camera. They're box ticking, soulless, corporate products designed to nostalgia bait without putting in any work to make something memorable themselves. It's like being addicted to the needle rather than the drug.

TheBeird
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This sense of the sensual is really the secret to Spielberg's success; his imitators mistakenly assume it's all about special effects and action set pieces, but Spielberg never forgets the sensual impact that sitting in a dark theatre full of strangers being overwhelmed by sounds and shadows can have on his audience.

petergivenbless
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Many movies today are basically, “We have 9 crazy set pieces we need to get to! All other scenes should just be filler to get us to these set pieces, and of course we will use all 9 of these set pieces for our advertising and promotional material. We just need people to pay money to watch the filler on between all the set pieces we hooked them in with during our $100 million dollar marketing campaign!”
Movies are advertisements for companies to sell you what looks like a good time. We pay money to watch extended commercials. By the year 2030 the Oscar for best movie will go to a film about how Pepsi became a superior soda to Coca Cola.

NASkeywest
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16:47 that point about "nothing feels real" was especially bad in the Hobbit movies. It wasn't just the occasional CGI that was off.... EVERYTHING felt fake; action scenes had zero weight to them and even just still scenes of people sitting around had this ugly artificial feel. Seems like there's some image editing software that's been going around, giving all these movies the same exact feeling of fakeness.

junkfire
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The scene in the original movie when they rest their heads on top of the triceratops and hear it breath.... oh man that's what's all about, something suggestive, that can spark your imagination to go to places beyond what's possible. Not explosions or beefy guys running around, senseless violence, but the sense of absolute wonder, the idea that there is more there to feel, touch and experience. The original movie came out the year I was born, and I'll always keep it close to my heart, and forever mourn that lost sense of wonder that came with the movies after.

JustinianH
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In terms of actually feeling the environment, I must say that “Rango” really made me feel like I was parched in a desert. Also, in terms of enthusiastic adventurous characters, Evelyn from “The Mummy” and Ben from “National Treasure” came to mind straight away. 😁 All of those rank very high on my adventure film list. 😜

GenkoNoMiko
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The Lost World is underrated honestly. For all its faults there just hasn’t been that many films like it since. Hell, even JP3 had its moments, contrived as it was.

SaberRexZealot
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I've been saying for a while now that proper adventure movies need a revival. Idk what's wrong with a lot of films today. Maybe it's because of how big and mainstream the industry/ corporations are, but nearly everything is just so sterile, corporate, and lacking now.

redpandarampage
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That Jeff Goldblum line, "Look at her she has to touch. She can't not touch, " is so relatable to me. I have often joked that it's a good thing I have never had an encounter with an arguably dangerous wild animal - because I would die trying to pet it lol Animals just leave me in such awe. It's the same with music too. When I hear lyrical music, as opposed to instrumentals, I can't not sing. I am just as awestruck bearing witness to sounds as I am to sights.

BadassRaiden
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A true adventure movie that deeply moves me is "The Lost City of Z". I often get the impression that not many people have seen this film but it's a masterpiece for me personally. "Master and Commander" also captures the adventure spirit very well in my opinion.

YannickHeym
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To me it seems to be a huge disconnect with the environment itself. Characters are barely affected by the environments they are in. Which lowers the stakes and really makes even on location scenes appear kinda fake.

The other take away from your scenes is the impactful music. Lord of the rings...lost world...Jurassic park. All have this grand orchestral scores that aren't just there in the background, they enhance every scene and really makes everything impactful. I can't remember a single tune from the new JW film except where they used hints of the original theme at the end.
😑

I can recall almost every detail of a scene in Jurassic Park just by hearing the music used for it. The same thing for Lord of the rings.

That is music that is a part of the scene and not just merely there to check a box.

bryan
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Your talk of a lack of texture in modern movies had me realized a really great example.
Crait from Star Wars Episode 8.
They have a massive battle in which they're using these open cockpit zoomers.
And no-one is using eye-protection, on a salt desert.

Killicon
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Some reasons explained here is exactly why I love Castle in the Sky by Ghibli. It's my absolutely favorite animated adventure movie. You become so curious about the castle Laputa like the characters, and when you actually land there, you feel the environment like a real historical place. My most favorite moment is when the characters look into the water and find an underwater city. There are so many questions and so much to explore. Even the robots have personality. The characters have a good reason to find Laputa. It's so much fun to watch over and over again.

Neimykanani
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I think Tintin might be one of the best modern adventure films and no one ever talks about it.

CourtneyCoulson
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CGI animators seem to have no restraint now. Everything spins and jumps around with no sense of gravity or physics. No matter how real the CGI detail looks, if it doesn't move realistically it makes it look very fake.

darkwoods
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Something I also feel like part of why adventure movies today feel so fabricated is that they no longer embrace the clumsy and the ungraceful, either. Being real means making miscalculations. When you're thrown into an unfamiliar environment, you gotta improvise to survive, and these improvisations may work, but the process may meet setbacks. That van rescue scene with Eddie is a perfect example of this. But now every move, every shot, every line feels so calculated nothing comes across as organic. The characters are treated like devices, not people.

IMayOrMayHaveNot