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How do!

Fantasy Adventure, as a genre, only has a relative handful of Genuinely Good Films.

Even within a franchise, results vary wildly. Whilst I’ve enjoyed all the Indiana Jones film, I get why others don’t hold the last two in especially high regard.

Outside of Indy? We’ve The Goonies, Conan the Barbarian, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns - specifically as objectively great films.

Beyond those? OK, there’s a lot of merely middling, and an awful, awful lot of Bloody Terrible films.

Though now I think about it a bit more, I’ll add Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal along with its prequel series. And Willow. And the two National Treasure films.

Yet, whilst I’m sure other Dakkanauts will offer up other worthy offerings? They’re still the merest drop in the ocean of utter tripe. So….why does Cinema struggle with this genre? What it is the good ones have in spades that all others just aren’t providing? And why can’t movie makers see what that is?

Well first, Surgeon's Law: all genres are full of bad movies, making good movies isn't easy.

Second. Adventure films are more expensive and thus are less common than other cheaper to produce genres. That means there are less adventure films than other genres and thus its rare gems are, well, rarer gems.

And my arguable third. A lot of what makes a good adventure film is mostly vibes of how well executed the concept is, and vibes are subjective and impossible to genuinely replicate on demand.

EDIT: also The Mummy Returns is considered an objectively great film!?!? since when?

Since I saw The Mummy Returns.

Granted the Scorpion King CGI is bloody awful, even for its era. But the rest is bloody good fun,

Vibes I’m split on. I absolutely get what you mean, but as a critique it does feel like a cop out. Albeit a cop out I don’t necessarily disagree with.

Didn’t we have a few adventure movies that bombed this year?

Do the Bond films not fall into the genre as well? Yes there are a few stinkers, but even they are entertainingly charming (or charmingly entertaining).

Also, speaking of vibes, Vibes starring Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper is a good time.

 Flinty wrote:
Do the Bond films not fall into the genre as well? Yes there are a few stinkers, but even they are entertainingly charming (or charmingly entertaining).

Perhaps? Kinda? I see where you’re coming from. But as they never feature any supernatural thing, I’m gonna say no. Nor do they feature any historical treasure hunting.

I’d say the Bond films, and their imitators, are cousins in this instance.

A larger budget doesn't guarantee a successful picture.

Anyone remember The Seventh Son, with Jeff Bridges?

Anyone?

I didn't know that it had been released until I saw it for sale on DVD.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Didn’t we have a few adventure movies that bombed this year?

I think everything bombed this year. It was just a terrible year at the box office all around.

Edit: Bond films are Spy-fi flicks.

The D&D movie was pretty fun!

 JNAProductions wrote:
The D&D movie was pretty fun!

And under performed, sadly.

I'd add the two Jumanji-movies featuring the Rock to the list of enjoyable adventures.
The original Jumanji as well.
How about Jurassic Park?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
A larger budget doesn't guarantee a successful picture.

Anyone remember The Seventh Son, with Jeff Bridges?

Anyone?

I didn't know that it had been released until I saw it for sale on DVD.

I remember the ads for it. It looked worse than that Vin Diesel fantasy movie or the grimdark Grimm. Brothers movie.

The two Epic Fantasy Snow White movies were pretty decent, though. Not great, but on the level of Willow or Beastmaster.

John Carter of Mars was a lot of fun. And if Edgar Rice Burroughs isn’t adventure, I don’t know what is! I never understood why it got panned and bombed so hard, it’s no masterpiece, but I’ve paid to see way, way, worse films.

Yeah I thought it was fine, especially compared to the general films at the time. I'm glad I saw it in the cinema.

If you look at the best selling films of all time though it's absolutely packed with science fiction and fantasy, so I don't think the genre does poorly at all.

If there needs to be a macguffin, then Nimona has a couple of those and is also really good.

I can’t quite remember why, but John Carter fell flat for me. Maybe it was down to poor man character casting?

I'm having trouble accepting that a genre can include Goonies and Conan?

I thought fantasy adventure was things like LotR, Narnia, Stardust, The Princess Bride?

 Jadenim wrote:
John Carter of Mars was a lot of fun. And if Edgar Rice Burroughs isn’t adventure, I don’t know what is! I never understood why it got panned and bombed so hard, it’s no masterpiece, but I’ve paid to see way, way, worse films.

Agreed - I really enjoyed that film - great fun.

In reply to the OP - there are plenty of fantasy adventure films - "good" is always highly subjective

Honestly the more I try to think of this and point out issues the more I think the fundamental problem is quite simple.

There's no individual nor even collective challenge that stops fantasy adventure and which is unique to fantasy adventure.

I think the core issue is people in suits who look at polls and statistics don't see enough return on investment compared to other film types.
This in turn results in reduced investment in fantasy adventure stories which results in fewer and often poorer quality films which creates a feedback loop.

Even when you get a film that does decently well, there's just not enough momentum behind it. A single DnD film isn't enough; you need several to start snowballing success just like the Marvel films needed it; or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.


Fantasy needs that "something" which takes it from a dabbled in film genre to a mega blockbuster investment like Westerns, WW2 and Superheroes.







I will say that I think Hollywood currently struggles on making stand alone adventure type films. I think the issues are oftne that they just cram too much in. They want to do the origin story; the love interest; the great big world ending big boss; saving the kingdom and everything else. The result is a mess. It's like trying to squish Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter into a single film. You lose all the investment in characters when you don't have time to grow and develop them on-screen because you're trying to tell too much story. Pacing is a huge huge issue. You can see a lot of films where its clear big chunks were left on the cuttingroom floor; where major emotional and decisive events just fall flat because you've no investment.

This is not in any way unique to fantasy, but it is a problem with single film adventures. Hollywood keeps trying to go too BIG all at once. The result is you lose investment. It's like how every Batman film has to be about his final battle with Joker.

Adventure films function best when they're low stakes, and fun. Those are a tough sell if they aren't related to an existing property. It's very easy for it to end up meaningless, or go too far the other way and end up silly- like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
You need a director who's committed to their bit, and can keep the tone consistent. They also need to be restrained enough to limit themselves to what the film requires. That is not remotely easy to do.

Most of the time they're beloved by a very particular audience, but not commercially sucessful. And unlike horror movies, to do it well, it can't be done cheaply enough for that to be profitable. I've personally always enjoyed time traveler adventure films- Martin Lawrence's Black Knight, or Army of Darkness.

I’m wondering if you need to keep the heroes abilities fairly straight forward.

Indy, The Goonies and National Treasure all see them rely more on their wits and knowledge than special toys or invented equipment. And as someone said above? Their adventures aren’t overly complex.

1. Establish the MacGuffin
2. Establish the desire for the MacGuffin
3. Off to the races to find the MacGuffin

The sidekick characters should bring something to the table, and ideally provide a missing piece of the puzzle. So they’re not just there to tell the lead how awfully clever and/or dishy they are.

 Da Boss wrote:

If you look at the best selling films of all time though it's absolutely packed with science fiction and fantasy, so I don't think the genre does poorly at all.

They are also extremely expensive movies to make, costing hundreds of millions of dollars per movie.

The problem is that you either go very big (and risk losing a hundreds of millions of dollars) or you don't even try. And in practice that means only movies tied to existing IPs are allowed to exist within those genres.

Unless you are James Cameron, then feth the rules and print a billion dollars on demand.

To be honest I considered the Mummy (Fraser one) to be pretty bad. A failing Indy wannabe + crappy CGI - I remember nothing more and I only saw it once, because I never felt there's a reason to try again.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly the more I try to think of this and point out issues the more I think the fundamental problem is quite simple.

There's no individual nor even collective challenge that stops fantasy adventure and which is unique to fantasy adventure.

I think the core issue is people in suits who look at polls and statistics don't see enough return on investment compared to other film types.
This in turn results in reduced investment in fantasy adventure stories which results in fewer and often poorer quality films which creates a feedback loop.

Even when you get a film that does decently well, there's just not enough momentum behind it. A single DnD film isn't enough; you need several to start snowballing success just like the Marvel films needed it; or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

I will say that I think Hollywood currently struggles on making stand alone adventure type films. I think the issues are oftne that they just cram too much in. They want to do the origin story; the love interest; the great big world ending big boss; saving the kingdom and everything else. The result is a mess. It's like trying to squish Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter into a single film. You lose all the investment in characters when you don't have time to grow and develop them on-screen because you're trying to tell too much story. Pacing is a huge huge issue. You can see a lot of films where its clear big chunks were left on the cuttingroom floor; where major emotional and decisive events just fall flat because you've no investment.

This is not in any way unique to fantasy, but it is a problem with single film adventures. Hollywood keeps trying to go too BIG all at once. The result is you lose investment. It's like how every Batman film has to be about his final battle with Joker.

Fantasy needs that "something" which takes it from a dabbled in film genre to a mega blockbuster investment like Westerns, WW2 and Superheroes.

Your right - allot of the problem is the suits do not have a range of success to build on and they refuse to invest. If you have a Producer/Director with a name who wants to do a Fantasy enough it can be done - Conan for example (story is closer to Kull but what can you do?)
And all it takes for faliure is one person - who ever set prices for distribution and marketing ususally as they never release those numbers and say sorry didnt make enough to cover despite makeing more money than many countries in that time.

The fact most paperbacks are too long for a film (6-8hr tv special seems to fit) so they cut the background that makes the book work harms the films immensly. Novellas are rarer, but can work oddly enough pulp authors (like REH,) work well because they have to get background depth and atmosphere in minimal space even if it does lead to some purple prose. But they are rare now and the older ones people wont touch because of cancel culture (REH is a positive about black rights as he could be given whem he lived, and everyone gets evil examples but his language is 20's/30's Texas so there are limits). If not for Peter Jackson being sooo much a JRRT fan and pushing so hard we neverwould have got the movies at all and I still catch myself being supprised it got made at all for alll the above reasons!

Fox is another example - It turns out all those shows that had their episode order switched up, got shoved time slot to time slot, then dumped in dead time and stopped? (Space above and beyond, Firefly, ?Dark skies? you can name the rest). It was one guy on the board who had it in his head that all scifi is childish, nerdy nonsense that the company should avoid because he didnt like reading Asminov or Clark and his father wouldent let him watch startrek or anything eles because its nerdy childish stuff.

Some of it looks like the stockmarket - it doesent work on evidence or actual values, but 'confidence', 'gut feeling' 'This person was in a film a decade ago that did poorly because no one advertised it and the costar sucked so we can possibly employ them!'
Sorry have a real problem with the last - what do you mean cant get work because someone else you had no lines with messed up and his exwife knew the distributer? Its psycotic.

For some audiences, it's the fantasy elements that often cause the problem. Some people just cannot handle things of a fantasy nature, even if they're perfectly capable of handling scifi. For them, futuristic tech is fine, because that can potentially be real, but magic is not real and is therefore unacceptable. Or magic can be ok if it comes from their religion (the Ark, the Holy Grail). Yes, I've met people like this.

But I'll always remember something from a review I read for Fellowship of the Ring back in the day. Basically, the reviewer complained that the movie used fantasy conventions for names (Aragorn son of Arathorn, Gimli son of Gloin, etc.) rather then more "normal" naming conventions.

Fantasy is far more acceptable and mainstream today than it was 30 years ago, but how many of those people are the ones in charge of the money in Hollywood?

 Jadenim wrote:
John Carter of Mars was a lot of fun. And if Edgar Rice Burroughs isn’t adventure, I don’t know what is! I never understood why it got panned and bombed so hard, it’s no masterpiece, but I’ve paid to see way, way, worse films.

It got panned because it was too silly for the critics, and it bombed because it was based on a book few people still alive have read and poorly marketed, so the bulk of the potential audience had no idea what it was.

Personally, it wasn't terrible but as a fan of the original books I think it missed the mark on tone... needed to lean a little harder into the pulp silliness to make up for the absurdity of the setting and story. Also the Red People should have actually been red, instead of just being white folk with a few tattoos.

Cyel wrote:
To be honest I considered the Mummy (Fraser one) to be pretty bad. A failing Indy wannabe + crappy CGI - I remember nothing more and I only saw it once, because I never felt there's a reason to try again.

The CGI was phenomenal when it was released.

The sequel... not so much.


As for why so many of these films struggle, I suspect that it's a side-effect of them largely relying on tone to get past a combination of real world and fantasy elements, which stretches peoples' suspension of disbelief in different directions. Too serious, and the absurdity of the fantasy elements is grating. Too silly, and you put off those who were expecting something more realistic.

The Mummy worked because along with having a fantastic cast, it got the level of silliness right where it made for an entertaining romp without undermining the stakes. But it only (for me) works because of the pulp aesthetic. It wouldn't have worked as well if it had been set in the modern day... see, for example, National Treasure, which largely skates by on the strength of its cast, but is just very, very silly.

I think it comes down to craft, effort and talent. The Harry Potter film series made £8bn. But they invested in basically every famous UK actor that ever was, and doubled down on doing the whole series of very popular books. That particular lightning has been chased a lot, and is now on its first reboot, but in TV form. Y contrast, Rings of Power is full of nobodies telling a story that is basically made up and that no one cares about.

I also think that the superhero focus of recent decades has filled that particular niche. Fantastic elements, macguffins aplenty, charming and talented cast. Writing they started out tight and strong, but has recently been pretty flabby. A lot of other genres also intersect with fantasy adventure. As other above, Bond shares the basic premise, it is a different genre. As with superhero and certain extraordinary crime and fantasy series (as opposed to films).

I think I agree that they are hard to get the right balance. I mean the most recent D&D effort is absolutely charming and entertaining, compared to the po faced seriousness of the Jeremy Irons debacle.

While I don’t agree with a lot of what. Critical Drinker says, I think he does have a point that if the focus is more on Telling compelling stories in a tight way, rather than trying to monetise a particular political viewpoint, audiences notice.

 Flinty wrote:
I think it comes down to craft, effort and talent. The Harry Potter film series made £8bn. But they invested in basically every famous UK actor that ever was, and doubled down on doing the whole series of very popular books. That particular lightning has been chased a lot, and is now on its first reboot, but in TV form. Y contrast, Rings of Power is full of nobodies telling a story that is basically made up and that no one cares about.

I don't think the famous faces popping up throughout were ever really the selling point of Harry Potter. The movies rode in on the wave of popularity of the books with good casting, relatively faithful adaption, and a big enough budget to make it all look good. They would have done just as well with unknown actors playing Snape or McGonagall.

Likewise, the cast is the least of the problems with the Rings of Power... I think the real problem there is that it's a story that dares to take liberties with the works of Tolkien, which is a cardinal sin to an awful lot of fantasy fans. Jackson's LotR movies did well in no small part because they stayed as faithful to the books as possible. The Hobbit did not, and was widely panned for it, and Rings of Power takes that even further into 'not Tolkien's LotR' territory. The series itself is fine... and if it had been a generic fantasy series rather than a LotR adaption, (or just, you know, actually adapted the Silmarillion instead of inventing a story around the edges of it), I suspect it would have done better.

If you're going to adapt a popular piece of fiction, you generally need to either stay as faithful to the source as possible, or do a really good job of it. An 'ok' adaption that doesn't stay true to the source will rarely do well.

The other series of varying returns? Pirates of the Caribbean.

Now, whether there are one, two or three good films in a five film series will depend upon who you ask.

But I don’t think anyone can say the first didn’t bowl them over - though given Johnny Depp has seemingly since only played Jack Sparrow but in different clothes, it’s impact has somewhat diminished for me.

The famous faces of the potter series aren’t the selling point directly, but they are famous because they are good! And they add gravitas and authenticity to the characters. I disagree that the films would have been as good without them. Having the safe hands support the enterprise allows the focus to be in the kids, who to begin with are a bit ropey, and rightly so given their ages. It’s like Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto totally sells the idea that he can fly on a tiny disk of guard blood, because he is just the pinnacle of the craft.