Adventure - Revisiting Personal Cinematic Landscape

The adventure genre mixes easily with any other genre. There may be tightly choreographed sword fights, terrifying monsters, a heartbreaking romance, far-away worlds, or just about anything else you can think of. It’s one of the most versatile genres out there. The one thing every single piece of media utilizing adventure has in common is that the setting takes on its very own characterization.
 
It’s less about what’s happening and more about the setting or the destination – the protagonist’s goal.
 
I originally included The Goonies (1985), Jumanji (1995), and An American Tail (1986) in my cinematic landscape. I also discussed the Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) original trilogy, but that was more of an influence on me from a fantasy stance. I wouldn’t keep that as part of my adventure landscape.
 
I kept every genre to 4 movies (or less), in the original series of personal cinematic landscape articles, and I didn’t repeat any. Lord of the Rings accidentally slipped by into two genres. It is an adventure, but it’s just more important to me as a fantasy.
 
There’s really only one film I’d add to the adventure landscape list.
 

I, for the life of me, have no idea how I failed to put Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) in my original adventure landscape. It was one of the very first adventure films that I took to.
 
Just before writing this article, I decided to throw on just the ending of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey. Even without watching the entire film over again, the tears still welled up in my eyes as Chance came over the hill and ran to his little boy. Then the cat, Sassy. And, as the anticipation drew out and Shadow didn’t immediately show himself – I still ugly cried. I knew what was going to happen. I’ve seen the movie hundreds of times. Yet, Shadow’s delayed return still gets me. It might even get to me more now than it did when I was a kid. At this point in my life, I’ve loved and lost an old dog that would have done anything to get home.
 
Even as a young girl, though, that ending was something that stuck with me and affected me to my core.
 
The animals had voiceovers, which was not a very prevalent thing in the 90s. It’s common now, but there were only a couple of films that did it previously and they were critical flops. Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey is the first flick that did it successfully. I watched it within a year or two of its release, and it was completely new to me. I’d never seen a live-action animal with a voice over. The idea blew my mind at the time.
 
It’s still better than the majority of films using that kind of voice over.
 
Between the ending being one of the first that inspired an ugly cry from me, and it being among the first that offered voiceovers of live-action animals, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey left a huge influence on me.