Adventure movies are just inherently satisfying, sometimes even the ones that aren’t particularly great. They unsurprisingly tell stories about adventures, so the simpler ones are about going from point A to point B for whatever reason, or maybe setting off to find something, the location of which isn’t necessarily known, and then along the way, in either case, lots of unexpected stuff can happen.
If lots of unexpected stuff happens, and some of it’s really quite downbeat, then it likely prevents the adventure movie in question from being crowd-pleasing in the traditional sense. See, for example, the likes of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or The Revenant; great movies that could be slotted into the adventure genre, but not exactly happy ones. The adventure movies below, on the other hand, do generally go down a little easier, are (for the most part) suitable for most ages, and are overall difficult-to-dislike. It’s not the same as saying they’re the very best adventure films of all time, but for what it’s worth, they are all pretty great.
10
‘Shrek’ (2001)
There are probably better animated movies that technically belong to the adventure genre, but Shrek is going here because it’s endured to such a remarkable extent, as something that people love sincerely but also like to parody in increasingly twisted ways, notably via memes. Indeed, Shrek is love, and Shrek is life. And the way people have responded to Shrek over the years has been in line with the movie’s overall attitude and style.
See, Shrek is pretty bitter and boundary-pushing for a family movie, but it’s ultimately got a ton of heart as well, and the cynicism and touching stuff exist side by side in harmony, somehow. So, people loved – and continue to love – Shrek sincerely, but then they also keep celebrating it in genuinely unsettling and further subversive ways. However you’re loving and living(?) Shrek, all the adoration suggests that it was monumentally successful as a crowd-pleaser.
9
‘Barbie’ (2023)
Not that money is everything, but it does count for something if you’re talking about blockbusters and how successful they were, since it’s great if a movie is great and all, but it’s got to resonate with lots of people to be seen as a success by some (eh, “producers;” the “some” are “producers”). Thankfully, with Barbie, it’s a genuinely good movie, and it was also hugely successful in 2023, being one of those “maybe the movies aren’t entirely dead yet” releases, alongside 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.
The plot of this matters a bit less than the comedy and what gets unpacked thematically, yet Barbie is still about the title character going on an adventure, though unlike most movies about journeying through a fantastical world, she comes out of a fantastical world and has to navigate the real one. It’s fun. It probably gets a bit too much by way of backlash from some, too, but that tends to happen quite a bit when movies get very popular, so oh well.
8
‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (2014)
If not the best superhero movie ever made, then maybe Guardians of the Galaxy could well be considered the most endearing, just because it does the whole unlikely/underdog heroes thing so well. It’s the characters that matter the most, to the point where it’s honestly a bit hard to remember exactly what happens in Guardians of the Galaxy narratively, beyond the weirdos forming an odd team and an eventually heartwarming dynamic.
It’s technically an adventure movie, though, complete with a MacGuffin and some other stuff that ends up being surprisingly important to the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe… eventually. Yet also, it’s a journey over the destination sort of film, and that it also has a great soundtrack playing in the background of so much of that journey helps a great deal, too.
7
‘The Princess Bride’ (1987)
It’s been said before by this very writer, but The Princess Bride really does feel like live-action Shrek… or, more accurately, Shrek kind of feels like an animated The Princess Bride. It’s not necessarily that they both line up completely narratively, but they both do a similar thing tonally, since The Princess Bride, like Shrek, subverts certain fairy tale conventions while also being an effectively charming and sometimes even romantic modernized fairy tale.
The Princess Bride has a bit of something for everyone, in other words. That’s why it’s here. It’s just a hard movie to imagine many people – or even any people – disliking. If you don’t like fairy tales, you’ll like The Princess Bride (don’t be turned off by it being “based” on a “kissing book”), if you like fairy tales, you’ll like The Princess Bride, and if you’re somewhere in between on the whole liking or disliking fairy tales thing, then you’ll also like The Princess Bride.
6
‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ (2003)
Just like there’s no contest when it comes to a soon-to-be-mentioned shark movie being the best of all the shark movies, there’s not much competition regarding the best pirate-related movie of all time: it has to be Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It was the first in what’s become a pretty massive film series, all the while proving surprisingly compelling for something that was technically based on a Disney theme park attraction.
There’s not much competition regarding the best pirate-related movie of all time: it has to be Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
There are a bunch of memorable characters all thrown into a partly fantastical/supernatural story that involves a kidnapped woman and a stolen ship, so maybe it’s all a bit like The General, except not a silent movie, nor about a train, nor a Western. So, not much like The General. But there, in 1926, there was an excellent film made about the quest to rescue a girl and save a prized possession at the same time, and in the 21st century, if done right, that premise remains incredibly entertaining.
5
‘Avatar’ (2009)
Since it’s a James Cameron movie, Avatar is keen to tackle a bunch of different genres at once, probably fitting most snugly into the sci-fi genre, but also being an adventure film, owing to how it involves traveling to another planet – no, wait, a moon! But it’s got more than an ordinary planet’s worth of interesting things on it, which the first movie spends some time beginning to explore.
The sequels naturally explore more of Pandora, but Avatar (2009) is the introduction to it, and probably the most eye-opening and overwhelming (the latter in a good way) of the bunch, no matter how much better the special effects get in the subsequent films. Say what you want about the broadness and even obviousness of the storytelling, but it’s done that way to be as mass-appeal as possible, and on that front, Avatar was an undeniable success. Crowds were pleased, in other words, and in turn, a ridiculous amount of money was made.
4
‘Jaws’ (1975)
That previously alluded to shark movie was, of course, Jaws. This one took a pretty solid book and spun it into something excellent on the big screen, even if it’s got a story that’s about as simple as they come. There’s a clear threat, and an eventually clear/straightforward plan to stop it, which here involves going out to sea and killing a very big shark.
The adventure side of Jaws comes in because of this whole final 45 minutes or so, which is when the journey with the clear mission is undertaken. There’s lots of preparation before that, of course, and then more than enough by way of tense and scary sequences to make Jaws also hold up as an excellent horror/thriller film on top of being an easily approachable and undeniably exciting adventure movie.
3
‘Star Wars’ (1977)
If you think of the Star Wars series before anything else when you hear the term “space opera,” you’re probably not alone. This series tends to focus on adventure-related stories, often of a very simple variety, and that’s exemplified best – and probably done the strongest – in the original film, from 1977. The Empire Strikes Back is also amazing, and is at least partly an adventure movie, for what that’s worth.
Yet Star Wars (1977) does have all the typical character archetypes and plot beats you’d find in many classic adventure stories, doing it all dependably on a narrative front while having a varied and unique world that helps keep the whole thing feeling fresh. What else needs to be said, other than “it’s Star Wars”? Nothing else, so nothing will. It’s Star Wars.
2
‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1981)
Perhaps even more directly an adventure movie than Jaws (another Steven Spielberg flick) and Star Wars (which also starred Harrison Ford), here’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is famously indebted to old-school adventure serials. Everything’s beefier and more cinematic, though, even if it’s still got a very clear and even somewhat predictable story, what with the hero, the heroine, the clearly evil villains, and an object that needs to be found.
You take all that and do enough special by way of execution, and you can end up with one of the best action/adventure movies of all time; Raiders of the Lost Ark really does prove that’s doable. Honorable mention to the first two sequels, and a particularly honorable mention to The Last Crusade, but still, it’s the original here that stands as the best – and most satisfying – as far as adventure movies go.
1
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ (2001)
It’s wild that The Lord of the Rings not only exists, but is so remarkable at the same time. It’s pretty much one massive movie divided into three parts, just because most people aren’t going to sit in one location for nine hours (or more like 11, if you’re watching the extended versions) straight, but some will regardless. It’s kind of that good, and the way this trilogy was helmed and then released reflects how the source material was one giant novel split into three parts, too.
Of all the movies, The Fellowship of the Ring most heavily retains the feel of a classic adventure, in terms of structure and the whole journeying aspect, but the other two are also excellent adventure movies (both have a little more of a focus on battles, though). The third film was the biggest one in terms of scale and Oscar wins, but The Fellowship of the Ring is being singled out here, for this particular ranking. Again, they’re all great, though.
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