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 (soundtrack music)
- Clear binary oppositions (good v evil)
- Star Marketing: Audience identification/expectations
(Cruise/Pitt/Johnson/Thurman/Jolie/Tatum/Craig/Di Caprio)
- Generic Typecasting and Secondary Persona apply (stock
characters)
- Romantic sub-plot, humorous dialogue
- Relationships with new technology (youth audiences)
- Use of close ups
- Dominant representation of gender: male/female action hero.
- Narrative led films contain 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 Blyton’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. A high tech, futuristic maze.
- 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. James Bond is a Secret Service agent. 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 Maze Runner?
Explain your points, using the films as evidence to support
your ideas.
