This document provides an overview of action and adventure films. It defines action films as focusing on physical challenges faced by heroes against villains, while adventure films emphasize exotic locations and exploring genres like swashbuckler films. Many successful films blend the two genres. Notable directors of action films include Michael Bay, known for big-budget spectacles with practical effects. Famous actors in the genres include Dolph Lundgren, Angelina Jolie, and Bruce Willis. The best action film, according to some, is Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1.

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Action/Adventure Films
By Will Wade

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Action Films
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust
into a series of challenges that require physical feats,
extended fights and frenetic chases. They occasionally have a
resourceful character struggling against incredible odds such
as, life-threatening situations, an evil villain, and/or being
chased in several ways of transportation (car, bus, truck, etc.),
with victory achieved at the end after difficult physical efforts
and violence. Story and character development are generally
secondary to explosions, fist fights, gunplay and car chases.

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Adventure Films
Adventure films are a genre of film. Unlike pure, low-budget action
films they often use their action scenes preferably to display and
explore exotic locations in an energetic way.
The subgenres of adventure films include, swashbuckler film,
disaster films, and historical dramas - which is similar to the epic
film genre. Adventure films are mostly set in a period background
and may include adapted stories of historical or fictional adventure
heroes within the historical context. Kings, battles, rebellion or
piracy are commonly seen in adventure films.
Adventure films may also be combined with other movie genres
such as Action.

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Combining The Two
 Because Action and Adventure genres are so similar and work
extremely well with each other, many action movies incorporate
adventure and vise versa.
 Films Such As; Saving Private Ryan, Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
and The Terminator incorporate both action and adventure into
the main plots of the film.

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Early Action Films
In the West, during the 1920s and
1930s, adventure films were
popularized by actors such as
Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn,
but the settings were often period
ones. The phenomenal success of
the James Bond series in the 1960s
and 1970s, helped to popularize the
concept of the modern day action
film in more recent years. The early
Bond films were characterized by
quick cutting, car chases, fist fights
and ever more elaborate action
sequences. The series also
established the concept of the
resourceful hero, who is able to
dispatch the villains with a ready
one-liner.

6. Early American action films usually
+ focused on maverick police officers, as
in Bullitt (1968), The French Connection
(1971) and Dirty Harry (1971). These
were among the earliest films to present
a car chase as an action set-piece.
However, the action film did not become
a dominant form in Hollywood until the
1980s and 1990s, when it was
popularized by actors such as Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and
Sylvester Stallone. The 1988 film Die
Hard was particularly influential on the
development of the genre in the
following decade. In the film, Bruce Willis
plays a New York police detective who
inadvertently becomes embroiled in a
terrorist take-over of a Los Angeles office
block. The film set a pattern for a host of
imitators, like Under Siege (1992) or Air
Force One (1997), which used the same
formula in a different setting.

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Early Adventure Films
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. In
the early days of adventure films, the
protagonists were mainly male. These heroes
were courageous, often fighting suppression
and facing tyrants. Recently these male heroic
protagonists have occasionally been replaced
by heroines, Lara Croft being an example.

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Popular Concepts Used In
Adventure movies
An outlaw fighting for justice or battling a tyrant (e.g., Robin Hood,
Zorro or Star Wars)
Suspense and dangerous situations the characters must escape
from.
Pirates (e.g., Captain Blood or Pirates of the Caribbean)
A journey or quest of some kind, such as searching for a lost city or
for hidden treasure (e.g., King Solomon's Mines or Indiana Jones)
The Campbellian hero-myth cycle, coming of age, discovery of
one's destiny (e.g., Star Wars, Dune, Lord of the Rings).
Allegorical themes as social commentary (e.g., Planet of the Apes
or Star Trek)
Adventure films can contain stock characters and stereotypes. In
some cases this has been accused of going as far as implicit
racism; claimed examples of this are Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom, First Blood and James Bond "kicking third-world people
around" in Dr. No.

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Notable Acton/Adventure
Actors/Actresses

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Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren (born Hans Lundgren; 3 November
1957) is a Swedish actor, director, and martial artist. He
belongs to a generation of film actors who epitomise the
movie action hero stereotype including Sylvester
Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck
Norris, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
A graduate in chemical engineering from the Royal
Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the University
of Sydney in Sydney, Australia in 1982, Lundgren holds
a rank of 3rd dan black belt in Kyokushin Karate and was
European champion in 1980 and 1981. While in Sydney,
he became a bodyguard for Grace Jones and began a
relationship with her. They moved together to New York
City, where after a short stint as a model and bouncer at
the Manhattan nightclub 'The Limelight', he got a small
debut role in the James Bond film A View to a Kill as a
KGB henchman.

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Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie (born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an
American actress and director. She has received an Academy Award,
two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards,
and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009
and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a
Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR). She has been cited as the world's "most
beautiful" woman, a title for which she has received substantial media
attention.
Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon
Voight in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), but her film career began in
earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2
(1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in the cyber-thriller
Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical
television films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in
the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999).

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Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955), better known as Bruce
Willis, is an American actor, producer, and musician. His career began
in television in the 1980s and has continued both in television and film
since, including comedic, dramatic, and action roles. He is well known
for the role of John McClane in the Die Hard series, which were
mostly critical and uniformly financial successes. He has also
appeared in over sixty films, including box office successes like Pulp
Fiction (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Fifth Element (1997),
Armageddon (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999), Sin City (2005), and
Red (2010).
Motion pictures featuring Willis have grossed US$2.64 billion to 3.05
billion at North American box offices, making him the ninth highest-
grossing actor in a leading role and twelfth highest including
supporting roles. He is a two-time Emmy Award-winning, Golden
Globe Award-winning and four-time Saturn Award-nominated actor.
Willis was married to actress Demi Moore and they had three
daughters before their divorce in 2000, following thirteen years of
marriage.

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Best Action Movie Of All Time?
The Internet Movie Data Base states that the best
action movie of all time based on user and critics
reviews is Kill Bill Volume 1. The Quentin Tarantino film
is extremely popular to action movie fans.
My personal opinion is that the best action film ever
made is sin city.
A film that explores the dark and miserable town,
Basin City, and tells the story of three different
people, all caught up in violent corruption.

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Notable Directors
Notable action film directors from the 1960s and 1970s
include Sam Peckinpah, whose 1969 Western The Wild
Bunch was controversial for its bloody violence and
nihilist tone. Some of the influential and popular
directors from the 1980s to 2000s include James
Cameron (the first two Terminator films, Aliens, True
Lies); John Woo (Hong Kong action films such as Hard
Boiled and US-made English-language films such as
Hard Target and Mission: Impossible II); John McTiernan
(Die Hard, Predator); Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down);
The Wachowski Brothers (the science fiction The Matrix
trilogy) and Michael Bay (Bad Boys 2, Transformers).
For a longer list, see the List of action film directors
article.

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Michael Bay
Michael Benjamin Bay (born February 17, 1965)
is an American film director and producer. He is
known for directing high-budget action films
characterized by their fast edits, stylistic visuals
and substantial practical special effects. His films,
which include The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl
Harbor and the Bad Boys and Transformers
series, have grossed over three billion dollars
world-wide. He is co-founder of commercial
production house The Institute, a.k.a. The
Institute for the Development of Enhanced
Perceptual Awareness. He is co-chair and part-
owner of the digital effects house Digital Domain.
He co-owns Platinum Dunes, a production house
which has remade horror movies including Friday
the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and A
Nightmare on Elm Street.