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Action/Adventure FilmsBy Will Wade

+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.

+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.

+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.

+Early Action FilmsIn 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.

+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.

+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.

+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

+Dolph LundgrenDolph 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.

+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.