CI5472 Teaching Film, Television, and Media
Module 7: Film/Television Genres ~ Different Genre Types
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Action/adventure films typically involve high-budget portrayals of main characters engaged in a series of dramatic, dangerous events involving narrow escapes, fights, or rescues, all filmed in a face-paced style that keeps audiences wondering if the hero or heroine will make it out alive at the end of the film. In films such as Twister, Titanic, Jurassic Park, Tomorrow Never Dies, Armageddon, the Die Hard series, Lethal Weapon series, Terminator 2, there is a lot of hyperbolic, sensationalized violence that mirrors the violence found in computer games. During the 1990s, films within this genre such as Last Action Hero, Face/Off, Con Air, and Snake Eyes, reflected a more postmodern direction toward interrogating the often mindless action of the genre itself (Welsh, 2000). |
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Action/adventure films: |
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Action films tend to be geared more for adolescents and adults
and adventure films tend to be geared more for children, but there
are a lot of exceptions. There are also a number of subgenres
in this category, for example, disaster, spy thriller/espionage,
historical episodes/military, jungle/ wilderness exploration, martial
arts, treasure hunters, vigilante, and mythic adventure. |
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One of the most important subgenres is the road movie as in Bonnie & Clyde, Thieves Like Us, Easy Rider, The Wild Ones, Bad Lands, Grapes of Wrath, The Wizard of Oz, True Romance, Two-Lane Blacktop, Convoy, Wild at Heart, Two for the Road, Grapes of Wrath, Kalifornia, Pow Wow Highway, Sugarland Express, Natural Born Killers, Rain Man, Smoke Signals, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hack
Writers: Road Movies |
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| In these movies, characters attempt to escape what they believe are the constraints and limits of society to attempt to discover and experience new forms of freedom on the road. In some cases, they are attempting to escape the law or are on a crime spree. The launch out on a quest in which they encounter, as did the heroes of fantasy quests, various challenges and adventures. They also begin to discover things about themselves. The appeal of the road movie reflects the larger cultural need to explore uncharted, new territories as a way of redefining one’s identity — the idea of the “West” as a place in which one could start over as a new person. Thelma and Louise was an important film in that it challenged the male-dominated nature of the genre by portraying the road quest of two female heroines. |
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These subgenres reflect and draw on other genres, including police/detective, adventure fantasy, science fiction, video animation/games. For example, the martial arts films of Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan, as well as The Karate Kid films, Sidekicks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mortal Kombat, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, contain elements of a these different subgenres (Desser, 2000). |
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In some cases, certain actors have become associated with this
genre, creating their own action-hero role prototype: in addition
to Lee and Chan, actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Harrison
Ford, Mel Gibson, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Chuck Norris,
Steve McQueen, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Wayne,
Bruce Willis, Charles Bronson, Charlton Heston, and actresses, Sandra
Bullock, Ashley Judd, and Michelle Yeoh. |
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Action/adventure films also tend to spawn sequels such as the series that began with Raiders of the Lost Ark, leading to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or the Tarzan adventure films: Tarzan, the Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate, Tarzan Escapes, Tarzan Finds a Son, Tarzan’s Secret Treasure, and Tarzan’s New York Adventure. |
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| Disaster Online: disaster films Webquest: Titanic: An Unsinkable Disaster
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For further reading: |
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Inness, S. (2004). Action chicks: New images of tough women in popular culture. New York: Palgrave. |
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King, G. (2001). Spectacular narratives: Hollywood in the age of the blockbuster. New York: I.B. Tauris |
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Osgerby, B., & Gough-Yates, G. (Eds.). (2001). Action TV: Tough guys, smooth operators and foxy chicks. New York: Routledge. |
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Tasker, Y. (1993). Spectacular bodies: Gender,
genre and the action cinema. New York: Routledge. |
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Action/Adventure |
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Teaching activities on genre developed by students in CI5472, Spring, 2004 |
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