Roger Ebert once said that movies are the windows in the walls of space and time. It’s a pretty heavy thing to say, but it’s rooted in truth: Movies can takes us to other worlds, other times, and offer experiences we may not have had otherwise. Adventure movies—movies with the core purpose of going somewhere, somewhere thrilling and unknown, to both the characters and the viewers—may do it best of all. A genre where misfits reign supreme, imagination knows no bounds, and film scores make you want to set out to the high seas.
Sometimes those adventures happen here on earth, in a place that seems like it could be right down the block from your childhood home. The extraordinary aspects of these types of film are born from everyday, rather standard activities gone absolutely haywire. Normally, a local plot to tear a dear neighborhood and build luxury condos is just a sad reality of life. In an adventure movie, it’s the beginning of a treasure hunt in the caves of a small town.
On the other hand, these films could take you to times and places you’d never be able to experience. Places where magic, curses, and monsters can reside, where sea and space are not only navigable, they are conquerable. These movies provide you with costumes, hair, and makeup that transform the banality of history into the romantic and enticing escapades of a slightly neurotic hero on a seemingly impossible quest.
The best adventure movies take you someplace else, and as the credits roll, you’re left with the same disorienting sensation you get when you enter the movie theater in the afternoon and come out at night. There are hundreds of great films that fit this genre, great tales that take us, the viewers, out of our daily lives and stressful obligations and into a world where magic can happen and the unconventional is expected.