They don't really make good adventure stories anymore, do they? (I blame internet)

Cafe Society
1

I was thinking the other day, you don’t see a lot of the classic “hero’s journey” “coming of age” style adventure stories these days like you did when I was growing up.

I’m thinking stories like the original Star Wars, The Goonies, The Last Starfighter, Tron, Never Ending Story, Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Stand by Me, Wargames, the Dark Crystal, Narnia books, The Matrix, tons of war movies, so on and so forth.

The typical pattern is you start with some young would-be hero living in their sleepy little part of the world where maybe they’re content, maybe not. Some event or visitation sets things in motion. Next thing you know they set off into the big unknown world in pursuit of some McGuffin. As they progress in their story, they get into adventures, make new friends, conquer adversity, and generally grow as a person. One thing that I think characterizes these sort of stories is that the characters world gets revealed to the character about the same time it’s revealed to the audience.

Maybe I’m wrong (and by all means give me examples), but I don’t see a lot of these sort of stories these days (past 20 years with some exceptions). If you do, they often aren’t very good or are derivative of prior work.

I blame the internet to a certain extent. I think maybe young people these days have less of a sense of “going out and exploring the world” since they’re always supervised and can just look up whatever they need on the internet.

Some exceptions, with caveats:
Dune, but the story of Paul Atraides’ journey was written like 60 years ago
Stranger Things, except that it’s an intentional homage to the very 80s Stephen King band of misfit kids go on an adventure to save their town sort of tale I’m talking about
Ready Player One, also very self-referential of the sort of films Spielberg himself used to make.

Anyhow, that’s my theory.

2

The Spider-Verse trilogy would seem to fit your definition.

3

As would more than a few Disney films from the past two decades. Off the top of my head: Tangled, Frozen, Coco, Wreck-It Ralph, and even Up (which plays with the formula by making the hero an old man).

4

It could be that you just aren’t noticing these stories as much. Probably two things at work here: the heroes are more diverse and include women now and those plots are fairly childish and as we get older, we don’t consume as much material aimed at children.

5

Onward and Luca probably broadly count, too.

6

I’ve been trying to remember the name of a pleasant little French animated movie I saw a few years back that fits the mold well. I finally tracked it down as Mune.

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The single biggest kidlit story of the past half-century at least is peak hero’s journey: Harry Potter, with the last book published 17 years ago. Akata Witch is a more interesting take, published more recently. For adult books, Spinning Silver and Uprooted, by Naomi Novik, both qualify (I’m leaving out Deadly Education because the protagonist starts with superpowers in that one).

But in looking over recent Hugo and Nebula awards, I’m noticing an emphasis on adult protagonists. You’ve got your mother in the Broken Earth trilogy, your astronomer in The Calculating Stars, your naturalist in Annihilation, and so on.

Both kinds of books are out there, but I appreciate having alternatives to Hero’s Journey. (As an aside, the Hero’s Journey isn’t nearly as universal as Joseph Campbell proclaimed it to be–talk to folklorists sometime if you want an earful).

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I think it’s because it’s been done too often and they deliberately try to now do something a bit different than all that.

I’m sure they have given it a go, but they get released on a streaming service, and have diverse casts, so a lot of annoying idiots complain or refuse to see it, and it fails, so the Execs decide “movies with [insert a reason that is definitely not the actual reason] never work” and refuse to make one like it ever again.

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You’ve had several decades to pick examples from there. How big a time frame does “anymore” cover? If it’s a lot smaller time frame, then it’s no surprise there are fewer examples of any kind of thing to be found within it.

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The Disney films are a good example.

We just finished the Harry Potter series of films with my daughter. Although that came out 13 years ago. The actors are almost actually as old as they would be in teh “19 years later” epilogue.

Also The Lego Movies

No. but I do have a couple of small children, so I’m often looking to find stuff for them to watch.

Broadly speaking, I think they do have these sort of movies, but somehow a lot of them feel “off”. Like they put together the basic ingredients and mixed in a bunch of random shit and one-liners and better effects to make it seem new.

Compare Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn to the remake Star Trek: Edge of Darkness.

STIIL TWoK is a great movie because it is about a middle-aged Kirk coming to terms with career and mortality and facing one of the greatest foes from his past after decades of cheating death.

ST:EoD is Kirk still on the early upward trajectory of his career encountering some “big bad” named Kahn as if anyone in universe should know or care who this guy is.

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One factor is that so much of today’s content is about characters and worlds (franchises) that were already created and established decades ago. The journey story has already been told and the new stories are just conflict.

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Nitpick: It’s “Khan.” The Wrath of Kahn is a completely different film:

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I’d say that Jon Snow’s story in Game of Thrones fits the hero’s journey, too. A lowly bastard who rises up through the world on his own merits only to then find out he is the heir to the throne and has to save the world from a monster.

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Yeah. Ricardo Montalban’s cleavage was much more impressive than Madeline Kahn’s.

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Without getting very deep about it I wonder how much is down to the days of classic adventure stories coming from a time when there was a lot of mysticism of the other parts of the world. I love reading old stories of adventure and listening to old radio dramas of adventure stories too but you can tell that the way things are described and certain musings of the narration voice that they were talking to an audience for whom the noble savage trope was popular about some parts of the world and in others that there were lands of magicians and sorcerers.

I feel that the fact the world is very much connected to each other just meant there wasn’t much room for imagination to create a good adventure on Earth anymore so things moved out onto other planets but then that becomes science fiction and not everyone likes that as it becomes a bit bogged down in technical information. The classic literature of being shipwrecked near an unexplored land and going on an adventure that is an allegory for human nature as Gulliver’s Travels or Robinson Crusoe has a cultural influence across the ages that I guess Kim Stanley Robinson as good as he is cannot match.

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Didn’t watch it, but Rebel Moon sounds like something you’re looking for. That was released over the past year in two parts.
I did see The Creator however and thought that was a really good adventure style film.

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Nathan Lowell’s Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series: Quarter Share, Half Share, Full Share, etc. etc. Derivative? Well, sure - start with Horatio Hornblower, add starships and teach him to make decent coffee. It’s WONDERFUL.

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A lot of the POV characters really. The best part of GoT IMHO was all these road trips with these oddball pairings walking around around Westeros. Jon and Tyrion, Tyrion and Bronn, Arya and The Hound, Jaime and Brienne, Sansa and Littlefinger, etc etc.

Which is also why the final season fell flat and felt “rushed” for a lot of people. It just sort of became set piece battle here, fast travel to set piece battle there. Ok now Daenerys looses her mind.

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Rebel Moon wasn’t very good IMHO. But it’s also basically a remake Battle Beyond the Stars / Magnificent Seven / Seven Samurai.

Similarly Shogun was very good and fits. But that’s also a remake / adaption of an older story.

Creator I didn’t like as much as I wanted to. But I did like John David Washington in Tenet.

I would say Christopher Nolan does a great job at the sort of “adventure stories” I’m thinking of. And I think it’s fine to be confused and clueless watching files like Inception, Tenet, Interstellar, even Dunkirk because they characters travelling through these worlds are going to be at least as clueless about the craziness around them.

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Woof.