Film poster for Robin Hood (1922)

Film poster for The Lost World (1925)

Both film feature prominent trends established in the early Hollywood adventure films, with the effects-driven films such as The Lost World (1925) and the historical adventure films such as Robin Hood (1922).

An adventure film is a genre of film. The genre is broad. Some early genre studies found it no different than the Western or that adventure could encompass all Hollywood genres, while commonality was found among historians Brian Taves and Ian Cameron that it required a setting that was both remote in time and space to the film audience and that it contained a positive hero who tries to make right in their world. Some critics such as Taves limit the genre to naturalistic settings, while Yvonne Tasker found that would limit films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) from the genre. Tasker found that most films in the genre featured narratives located within a fantasy of exoticized setting, which are often driven by quests for characters seeking mythical objects or fabulous treasure. The genre is closely associated with the action film, and is sometimes used interchangeably or in tandem with that genre.

Adventure films boast their setting and visuals and key elements. This ranged from early technical showcases such as The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933). These films set up exotic locations as both beautiful and dangerous that would be a continuing trend for Hollywood adventure films. The other major Hollywood style was the historical adventure film, typified by early films of The Black Pirate (1926) and The Mark of Zorro (1920) which feature less intense violence and was popular Hollywood staple until the mid 1950s. While the historical adventure film would be parodied or presented as highly camp, special effects driven adventure films began to dominate with towards the late 1970s with films like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). This trend would continue into the 21st century.

Adventure is a broad film genre. ^[1] Early writing on the genre had wide categorizations. Critic André Bazin went as far to say in the 1950s that "there is not difference between Hopalong Cassidy and Tarzan except for their costumes and the arena in which they demonstrate their prowess." ^[2] Ian Cameron in Adventure in the Movies (1973) stated that adventure "is not confined to a particular genre [...] it is a quality which turns up in almost every sort of story film; indeed the most obvious adventures movies, the sword-and-bosom epics, are usually among the least interesting." ^[3] American historian Brian Taves wrote in 1993 that having such wide-ranging application of the genre would render it meaningless. ^[4]

Despite their different definitions, both Taves and Cameron stated that genre required a setting that was both remote in time and space to its audience. ^{[5] [6]} While Cameron refuted the idea of a clearly defined adventure genre, he said films described the "positive feeling for adventure" evoked from the scenes of action in the film and the identification with the main character. ^[4] Taves echoed this, exemplifying the character of Robin Hood who deals with a valiant fight for just government in an exotic past. ^[7]

Taves wrote in The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies (1993) that defining the genre in context with the historical adventure, and explicitly excluding films with fantasy settings such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) as they involved the supernatural over human agency. ^[4] Taves wrote that "unlike adventure, fantasy presents a netherworld where events violate physical reality and the bounds of human possibility." ^[8] British author and academic Yvonne Tasker wrote that adventure films imply a story that is located within a fantasy of exoticized setting. She found that these films often apply a quest narrative, where characters seek mythical objects or fabulous treasure as seen in films like King Solomon's Mines (1950) or Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). ^[9] Tasker opted for a broader sense of genre in her book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015), and commented on Taves limits, stating it was an understandable impulse to place generic limits on potentially diverse bodies of texts, while finding Raiders of the Lost Ark "feels like an adventure in the broadest sense of the term." ^[7] Tasker noted this specifically, that even when disregarding its historical setting, the film concerned a quest, with travel and developing moral sense of the hero's place in the world. ^[7]

Tasker wrote that these films films have no consistent iconography, their set design and special effects , ranging from stop-motion, to digital imagery and 3D are given a privileged place in these genres. ^[9] Writing about the adventure genre in the 1970s, Jeffrey Richards said that "since the way a swashbuckler moves and looks is just as important as what it says, we must look at the art director, costume designer, fencing master, stunt arranger, cinematographer and actor just much as the writer and director. For the swashbuckler is truly the sum of all their work." ^[10]

Both action and adventure are often used together as film genres, and are even used interchangeably. ^[11] For American historian Brian Taves, adventure films were "something beyond action" and were elevated "beyond the physical challenge" by "its moral and intellectual flavour." ^[12]

Adventure films
By decade
Before 1920 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s
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Tasker described both action and adventure cinema are resistant to any historical evolutionary chronology. Both genres are self-reflexive and draw from conventions of other genres ranging from horror to historical imperial adventure. ^[13] Taves found that that films that were swashbucklers or pirate-themed adventures were often humorous, and that they retained viability even when parodied. ^[14]

Many silent films with action and adventure scenarios flourished in the silent films of the 1910s and 1920s. ^[15] These films required elaborate visual effects that were important to displaying menacing or fantastic worlds. ^[16] These films often took narratives from novels, such as films like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) and The Lost World (1925). Beyond being adaptations of famous books, Tasker said that the appeal of these films was also in their effects laden scene, finding The Lost World a "landmark of effects-led adventure cinema." ^[16] Outside technical effects, adventure films of Douglas Fairbanks such as Robin Hood (1922) with its scenes of battles and recreations of castles cost a record-setting $1.5 million to produce also provided a variant of adventure spectacle to audiences. ^[17]

Tasker stated that the The Lost World (1925) arguably initiated a jungle adventure film cycle that would be expanded on in the similarly effects driven sound film King Kong (1933). ^[18] In her study of King Kong, Cynthia Erb noted a conventions of both travel documentary and jungle adventure traditions. ^[19] Tasker wrote that the best known displays of these films were those that focused on the character of Tarzan which found more significantly commercial success with the success of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films featuring Johnny Weissmuller during the decade. ^[19] Erb found that the jungle imagery of these films of the 1930s frequently showcased the jungle world as frequently alternating between "demonic and edenic" images, while Tasker said the jungle films and other adventure films of the period would establish a travelogue allure of these settings as romantic spaces. ^{[20] [21]}

Within the Classical Hollywood cinema, one of the major other styles was the historical adventure film. ^[21] These films were typically set in the past and drew from the Fairbanks films such as The Black Pirate (1926) and The Mark of Zorro (1920). They feature violence in a less intense manner than other contemporary genres such as the Western or war film. ^[22] While not specifically associated with one Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. released a series of popular historical adventures featuring Errol Flynn such as Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The historical adventure film continued to be a popular Hollywood genre into the mid-1950s featuring various male stars such as Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Burt Lancaster, and Stewart Granger. ^[23]

Imperialism-themed adventure films continued in the 1950s with a greater emphasis on location shooting. ^[24] Examples include the box office hit King Solomon's Mines (1950) which was shot in Africa. ^[25] 1960s fantasy films such as Jason and the Argonauts (1963) combined the set-pieces and fantastic locations of historical adventures with renewed emphasis on special effects. ^[25] By the 1970s, The Three Musketeers (1973) marked a point where the historical adventure has been firmly associated with what Tasker described as "comic - even camp - tone" that would inform later films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Mummy (1999), and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). ^[25] Few other films embarked on more serious tones, such as Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven (2005). ^[26]

Since the late 1970s, both action and adventure films have become synonymous with the high-budgeted and profitable Hollywood films and franchises. ^[27] While both genres took on challenging material, towards the late 1970s of an adventure style geared towards more family-oriented audiences with films like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). ^[28] Star Wars exemplifies a resurgent adventure strand of the 1970s cinema with characters like the Jedi Knights who swing from ropes and wield light sabers recall sword-fighting and swashbuckling films. ^[29] Tasker commented that this led to a commercially lucrative and culturally conservative version of the genre that would continue into the 21st century with film series like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean. ^[30] In their analysis of the genre in 2018, Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet found that the contemporary adventure form often appears in trans-genre work where the adventure component is perceived as secondary. ^[31] They exemplified that in films such ranging from Top Gun (1986), Godzilla (2014), to Lone Survivor (2013), which range from fantasy film to science fiction film to war film genres, all adhere to traditional adventure narratives. ^[32]

Adventure films generally receive are generally perceived with a low critical status with a few exceptions. ^[33] Historically, it has not been seen as authored cinema, whose cinematic traditions were effectively absent from debates on genre cinema since the 1960s. ^[34]

When action and adventure cinema secure awards, it is often in categories such as visual effects and sound editing. Tasker found this this reflected Richards comments on the creative labor as being the primary appeal on work in the genre. ^[35]

• Adventure game
• Travel documentary

• Cameron, Ian (1973). Morley, Sheridan (ed.). Adventure in the Movies. Roxby Press Productions. ISBN  9780289704240.
• Erb, Cynthia (1998). Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture. Wayne State University Press. ISBN  0814326862.
• Höglund, Johan; Soltysik Monnet, Agnieszka (December 2018). "Revisiting Adventure: Special Issue Introduction". Journal of Popular Culture. 51 (6). ISSN  0022-3840.
• Richards, Jeffrey (Summer 1977). "The Swashbuckling Revival". Focus on Film. No. 27.
• Taves, Brian (1993). The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN  0878055975.
• Tasker, Yvonne (2015). The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN  978-0-470-65924-3.

• "Genre: Adventure". IMDb. Retrieved 2017-05-29.