What are the codes and conventions of Action Adventure Film?
Narrative
- 12/15 certificate, maximising youth audiences
- Often hybridised with Sci Fi/Adventure/Romance
- Major Hollywood studio produced and distributed
- High production values including CGI FX. Fast paced editing
- Classic Hollywood 3 act narrative structure
- Predictable chain of events – cause and effect
- Single stranded, linear, closed narrative
- Dramatic non-diegetic sound
- Clear binary oppositions
- Star Marketing: Audience identification/expectations (Cruise/Pitt/Willis/Thurman/Jolie/Stallone/Craig/SchwarzeneggeDi Caprio…).
- Generic Typecasting and Secondary Persona apply (stock characters)
- Romantic sub-plot, Humorous dialogue
- Relationships with new technology (youth audiences)
- Use of close up/Insert shots/High Key Lighting
- Dominant representation of gender: male/female action hero.
Narrative led films with tightly woven story arcs, where the dialogue drives the plot rather than builds character.
An action adventure film is essentially one long quest with a succession of different chase sequences, each one more death defying and seemingly impossible than the one before. The trick for the producers is to ramp up the tension as the film progresses to a storming end sequence. Will our intrepid explorers make it, or will the evil antagonist get there first.
A strong story ark of a quest for treasure, or an incredibly valuable object, or an item which has occult power.
Love interest that both hinders and supports the main quest.
A fast moving narrative with constant set backs that are overcome one by one, leading to fairly complex plots.
In many respects this genre of films derive their energy from being more exciting, more adult and much more dangerous versions of children’s stories of adventure such as Enid Blighton’s Famous Five or Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.
Thrilling action where the protagonist saves his fellow travellers through a variety of non realistic but apparently logical escapades.
Characters and locations
These are not realistic films, although the characters must be believable. They are set in a stereotypical world of the not too distant past e.g the 1930s, or the fictional world of storybook adventures e.g. The high seas of the 19th century.
A main protagonist who is a seen as a 'normal' person and who just happens to have amazing powers of endurance in the face of extreme danger, and is also very clever. Indiana Jones is an archaeology lecturer in an US university. Captain Jack Sparrow is at first an ordinary good for nothing pirate with incredible agility and luck, although he later takes on supernatural powers.
There are always helpers who are a team of innocent characters who happen to get caught up in the action.
Humorous dialogue often diffuses taught and sometimes frightening situations.
The characters take the twist and turns of the plot very seriously as they are often in mortal danger from an assortment of unusual animals, machines and monsters orchestrated by an evil antagonist.
Exotic locations where the characters have to contend with extremes of climate, as well as evil forces.
The aim is to please the audience by keeping them on the edge of their seats through a series of mind boggling chases, exotic locations and hair raising adventures in historically inaccurate but somehow elementally possible settings.
Action Adventure films are designed to create an action-filled, energetic experience for the audience who can live vicariously through the exotic locations, conquests, explorations, struggles and situations that confront the main characters
Task: Having read through this description of the action adventure genre, can you think about how this applies to the two films we have watched in class?
- The Maze Runner
- Kingsman
Explain your points, using the films as evidence to support your ideas.
