Shadowing Practice: The Problem With Adventure Movies Today - Learn English Speaking with Video

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There is a scene in Disney's Jungle Cruise where Emily Blunt's character picks up an old camera and,

in one sentence, pretty much explains the beautiful potential of adventure movies.

They're so much fun, and you can experience being anywhere in the world.

And I thought this was just so ironic, given how the movie itself didn't really let me do this at all.

From beginning to end, it felt fabricated, sterile, and simply unadventurous.

This is not to say it was a bad movie, it was okay, but it is to say that I didn't really get that experience of being anywhere in the world.

It didn't feel like a true adventure.

You coming or what?

And I'd say the same is true for other recent adventure movies, many of which seem to have been trying to recapture the classic tales

and story elements that the genre has been known and loved for, sometimes even blatantly copying them.

but in doing so they only seem to have revealed more clearly how they are not quite the same.

If you're a fan of adventure movies, I'm sure you've had that experience too, where you feel like you should be enjoying a movie that,

on paper, has all the right ingredients, and yet, something is missing.

Somehow, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

And it's not just the over-reliance on, or bad quality of, special effects and CGI, That's not what this video is about.

Well, kind of.

But as we've seen with the recently released Jurassic World Dominion for example, which prided itself for using twice the amount of animatronics than the previous two movies,

but which still didn't even come close to the original Jurassic Park, the issue is more complicated than that.

It's about that more intangible spirit of adventure.

Because to me, true adventure movies are not necessarily about certain tropes, They are not defined by dinosaurs or mummies or hidden treasures,

but by the way they capture a mode of experience.

You know, that sense of discovery, of going into the unknown, and making it feel tangible and stimulating to the audience.

And this, it seems, is becoming a bit of a lost art.

To elaborate on this in more detail, let's zoom in on a more specific example to explore what really makes a great adventure movie.

The Last World Jurassic Park Actually, let's make this a bit more interesting.

The Last World Jurassic Park Yup, I rewatched The Last World Jurassic Park not too long ago,

and was surprised at how well it actually holds up.

Is it as perfect as the first one?

No. This is not a, the favorite movie from my childhood is actually a masterpiece kind of thing, although I do genuinely believe that The Last World,

which tends to be lumped into the same category as the other sequels, deserves some degree of re-appreciation.

Because as an adventure movie, I think it is still leagues ahead of the Jurassic World movies, and yes, that includes Dominion,

which was so frustrating that I made another full-length video to serve as a companion piece to this one.

In that video, I cover the entire Jurassic World saga, and explore in detail where and how it all went wrong.

The video is available exclusively on our creator-owned streaming service Nebula, but I'll get back to that at the end.

Furthermore, The Last World is a good example of how CGI, animatronics, and other cinematic trickery can be used, while still maintaining a sense of reality.

And most importantly, it highlights precisely, and in some ways even more clearly than the original, what is missing from so many adventure movies today.

Yeah, ooh, ah, that's how it always starts, but then later there's running and then screaming.

Let's begin with the fundamentals, the more thematic foundation at the heart of the adventure movie, which of course is the adventure itself.

Because this, I think, is already a point of misunderstanding in a lot of adventure movies.

In his video essay, Patrick Willems argued

that the reason the Jurassic Park sequels generally did not work is because we could no longer empathize with the main characters.

In the first film, the characters had no idea what they were getting into, and we empathized with them because neither did we.

But in the later films, we know what happened in the park, we know how everything went terribly wrong, And so, from this moment on,

as Patrick explained, there was going to be a disconnect between us

and any character who would want to return to the island.

And while I agree that this is true for Jurassic Park 3, which used convoluted writing to get people back to the dinosaurs, and for the Jurassic World sequels,

which used even more convoluted writing to get dinosaurs back to the people, when it comes to the Lost World, I respectfully disagree.

I originally wrote a section here about how The Lost World demonstrates,

like Jurassic Park, that it's not the factual but rather the subjective feeling of safety that motivates and progresses the story,

and that this is established well enough in both movies.

That's why we're taking extreme precautions.

The carnivals are isolated in the interior of the island, so the team can stay on the outer rim.

I also wrote about how The Lost World presents enough characters like Sarah and Owen,

characters who are not easily deterred by danger and who have their own reasons for wanting to go on this expedition.

I've worked around Predator since I was 20 years old.

I was in Rwanda, Chechnya, all over Bosnia.

But I realized I was just dancing around the real point,

the one simple and relatable reason for why people would willingly go to an island full of dinosaurs.

And that is… because it is an island full of dinosaurs.

In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World, which was first adapted to cinema in 1925,

and which was one of the most prominent inspirations for the Jurassic Park sequel, we follow a group of characters on an expedition to a plateau in South America where it is rumored

that dinosaurs still exist.

One of the characters is very excited to go, which prompts another to remark, you seem very anxious to lose your life, to which he simply responds,

to justify my life sir.

The point is that the appeal of any great adventure lies in the adventure itself, and the promise of danger does not necessarily detract from that.

In fact, for some this is precisely what makes it so alluring.

At one point in The Lost World, a character named Roland recounts the story of a man who climbed Mount Everest without oxygen,

and when that man was asked why he went up there to die, he answered, I didn't, I went up there to live.

Roland himself came to the island to hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and is at one point referred to as Ahab, the main character from Herman Melville's Moby Dick,

who was famously obsessed with chasing after a giant white whale, and who also captured that fiery drive towards adventure.

A longing that was so beautifully articulated by Ishmael, a member of Ayub's crew and the narrator of the book,

when he said, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

The Last World, like the first Jurassic Park, and any great adventure story really, understood that this fascination with the unknown,

this call to adventure, even when it seems to go against all reason and rational judgment, is completely human and empathetic.

Actually, as Carl Sagan once argued, might not be as irrational and grandiose as we often assume, and could in fact be an essential element in our survival.

Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game, none of them last forever, he said.

Your own life, or your bands, or even your species might be owed to a restless view, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand,

to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

And so, to summarize the essence of adventures, are they dangerous?

Yes.

Does that stop us from passionately chasing after them and enjoying them?

Absolutely not.

Adventures are a part of who we are, there is an innate meaningfulness and excitement to them, and therefore, when we tell stories about them,

we do not need dozens of excuses or justifications that work around

that simple fact and which only tend to lead to overly convoluted plots.

What we need are storytellers that embrace our natural curiosity towards the undiscovered and the awe-inspiring,

that are able to capture that spirit of adventure, and then translate it to cinema.

But now for the hard part.

How to actually go about doing this?

How to ignite that passion within the audience and make them feel like they are on an actual adventure?

Because obviously all this is much easier said than done.

Wait, wait, shh, shh, shh.

Stay there, be quiet.

Be right back.

Sarah, no, no!

A good starting point is to have adventurous characters for the audience to connect with,

and who can serve as a gateway for us to channel our own enthusiasm for exploring a new world.

I already talked about Roland, and briefly mentioned Sarah, the young enthusiastic scientist

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and studier of animal behavior whose passion for her work greatly energizes the feeling of adventure.

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But do you also remember this guy?

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Pachycephalosaurus!

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although he only seems to be present to give quick exposition on some of the dinosaurs, You see that distinctive dome skull?

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Nine inches of solid bone which, in any other type of story, could be considered as a breaking of the show don't tell rule.

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I think his dinosaur nerdiness actually works quite infectious, and gets the audience excited to learn more about these creatures too,

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thereby drawing them deeper into the adventure.

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You cannot land on this island!

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For contrast, compare this to Jurassic Park 3, which has some of these elements, but which, for me at least,

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invokes an overwhelming vibe that no one wants to be there

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and that the only goal from the very beginning is to go home as fast as possible.

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And that just takes the fun out of it.

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It's a bad idea!

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What's a bad idea?

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In Jurassic World Dominion 2, which throws more dinosaurs at you than ever before, No one seems to be all that interested in them,

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and we as the audience also don't get to learn much about them,

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thereby turning these creatures that should capture our imagination into mere obstacles for a mostly unrelated plot.

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In short, an adventure story needs some guiding characters.

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We need those archetypal magicians not only to enlighten us about what exactly it is that we are witnessing,

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but also to invoke within us that passion that is needed to care about it.

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You can still have skeptical characters like Malcolm,

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in fact, they absolutely have their place as the voices of reason and prudence that define the line between adventure and hubris,

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but that's not the same as erasing our enthusiasm altogether.

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Look, she has to touch it.

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She can't not touch.

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The next step then is to present us with the undiscovered land, to give shape to the new world,

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And the major challenge here is offering one that feels real and tangible, that makes us feel like we really are somewhere.

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The easy answer here would be to do everything for real.

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The filmmaker Werner Herzog for example was so convinced that an audience can immediately tell when something is real or not, that when he made his movie Fitzgerald,

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the story about a man obsessed with transporting a giant riverboat through the jungle,

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he ventured deep into the Amazon to haul an actual riverboat over an actual mountain.

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And you can tell the difference, that this is not a plastic boat and that this, that this slope here is no joke at all.

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But of course, not all movies can do everything completely for real, and nor should they.

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This is, in part, why I wanted to zoom in on Jurassic Park, because it is a story that inherently demands fabrication

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and cinematic trickery to make us believe in its reality to make us feel like these dinosaurs are actually there.

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And that, in the end, is the only thing that matters.

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It doesn't have to be real, it just has to feel real.

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So, how do we do this?

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Well, for me the key word here is texture.

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Because sure, grand landscapes and beautiful vistas are absolutely part of a fun adventure.

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But personally, and this might just be me, but when I'm on an adventure, I don't just want to look at things, I want to touch them,

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I want to feel the surfaces of rocks, I want to put my hand in the water to feel how cold it is, I want that tactile experience.

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And though you cannot directly experience that through a screen,

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a movie can communicate what it would be like and utilize our capacity to imagine certain sensations to enhance its own reality.

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The Last World Just take a look at how The Last World presents most of its dinosaurs.

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Besides alternating between CGI and real animatronics, which in itself already helps to suspend disbelief,

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the dinosaurs are always grounded within the environment.

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Sometimes this simply means that they are contrasted with human characters to give them a sense of scale and presence,

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but in most cases this means that they are in some way or another interacting with something real, be it humans or environmental elements.

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The next time you watch The Last World, just focus on how often the dinosaurs are in direct contact with humans, how they are bumping into vehicles,

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jumping around, destroying stuff, pushing things over, or just generally making some impact in the world around them.

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To be fair, the newer movies do this too to some extent, but they've also clearly grown much more self-confident about the quality of their CGI,

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and let it stand on its own far more often.

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Back in the 90s the CGI was good, but contrary to popular opinion, it wasn't so good, definitely not better than what we can do today,

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that they didn't have to make the effort to hide it somewhat, which possibly makes that grounded feeling of its dinosaurs a mere side effect from a lack of resources.

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But whether intentional or not, the effectiveness is undeniable, And this also demonstrates why the dinosaurs in the newer movies,

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despite looking more real, still don't always feel as real.

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It's because they lack that tactile quality, they don't feel as grounded in their environment.

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There are some other issues at play here though, the first being a lack of attention to detail.

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Now, this might be for the dinosaur nerds only, but seeing the stegosauruses again in the Lost World,

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I realized another thing that bothered me about the dinosaurs in the later films.

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They are not moving correctly.

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When I was a kid I was a huge fan of the show Walking with Dinosaurs, and in the making of, they showed how much care and effort went into bringing the dinosaurs to life.

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Like Jurassic Park they used a combination of animatronics and CGI, but more importantly, they also paid a lot of attention to how these creatures would have moved.

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They took into account their weight and joint structures,

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and came to the conclusion that the bigger herbivores must have moved similarly to how larger mammals like rhinos and elephants do.

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And this we see in the Lost World 2, where the stegosauruses move like they have actual weight.

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Now, compare this with the later films.

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Here, all these giant herbivores seem to be galloping like horses.

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There's a weightlessness to them that to me just makes them feel more divorced from the world around them.

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Secondly, there are some other more general technical issues that make it harder to suspend your disbelief.

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Admittedly, I'm not an expert on this and so I won't linger on it for too long, but sometimes with more modern movies there's this general lack of realness.

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You may have experienced this too, it's that feeling that, even when a movie was shot on real locations or some stunt was actually done for real,

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it still feels kind of fake.

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I think it has to do with the color grading, or some other form of digital alteration.

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You can see it when you compare the early Pirates of the Caribbean movies with the newer ones for example.

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In all of them, the actual CGI is really good, it's great even.

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But the newer ones have this general digital feeling to them that makes the whole environment around it feel less real,

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which to me also detracts from the realness of the CGI.

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Lastly, there is the issue of narrative framing, and the way dinosaurs are contextualized within the larger story.

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I initially liked Jurassic World's premise of a predator raised in

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isolation without any regard for what this would do to it psychologically, but as the story unfolded, they never reflected back on this,

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never again commented on the circumstances under which this creature was raised,

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instead it just became this seemingly bulletproof monster that made up abilities on the spot.

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Make your camera fly!

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and this apparently became the guiding principle moving forward.

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Dinosaurs weren't tangible realities they were not really to be understood or engaged with, they were just whatever the plot needed them to be at any given moment,

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which, especially in Dominion, was mostly a momentary obstacle for our main characters.

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In contrast, when revisiting The Lost World, I was surprised at how consistently the dinosaurs are treated like real animals, We get to know their habitats,

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their behaviors and motivations, which not only adds to their believability as a real presence, but also contributes to the tension and the logic of the plot.

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Because when you know, let's say, where the hunting grounds of the raptors are, you know what this is going to lead to.

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Or when you know what the instincts are that drive the Tyrannosaurus, you know that this means there's going to be trouble.

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Mommy's very angry.

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And this brings us to another important element that draws us deeper into an adventure movie, that makes their worlds feel more tangible and more touchable,

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and that is by having great action scenes.

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Action, especially in adventure movies, is almost inherently defined by some kind of interaction with the environment,

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and as such, it can serve really well to emphasize its more visceral qualities.

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But, as you already know, not all action scenes are equal, there are good ways and bad ways to go about them,

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and again, I think the key word here is texture, which to me is what makes me feel like I'm experiencing an actual sensation,

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instead of just looking at visual noise.

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Besides the issue of CGI versus practical effects, which also applies to action, but which I think we've covered enough for now.

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One significant difference I've noticed with the later Jurassic World movies is

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that even though they have a much greater quantity of action scenes, they also come and go much faster, and have far less individual beats within each one of them.

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As a consequence, they lack the time and breathing room for us to get truly invested in them, and to really experience these moments viscerally.

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What really happens in this scene for example?

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What choices are being made?

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Our characters encounter a dinosaur, they see an exit, grab the chair, climb up, fall down for a little bit, and then escape after a minor struggle.

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Aside from a brief moment of slight tension, what do you really feel during a scene like this?

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Now compare this to the T-Rex attack on the Cliffside trailer in The Last World, which is arguably one of the series' most iconic sequences.

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But why is that?

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Besides the fact that, as previously discussed, the scene is well set up by giving us information on the T-Rexes,

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based on which we were already anticipating the coming danger and building tension for it, what makes this so much more visceral and memorable?

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Well, for one, from the moment the T-Rexes arrive and our main characters are rescued by the hunting party.

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It takes almost 15 minutes.

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This is a sequence that doesn't just bombard us with quick action, but that takes its time to set up the stakes,

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and that actually incorporates a lot of moments of silence and inaction.

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This may sound a bit paradoxical, but I think it's precisely in these moments

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that we really get to inhabit the characters and empathize with them as they try to figure out the best way forward.

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Who's hurt?

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What do you need?

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I particularly loved the part with Eddie, who up until this moment was kind of present in the background as a rather unremarkable supporting character.

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He certainly wasn't an overly emphasized heroic badass,

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he was just a regular guy who suddenly emerges as the great unsung hero of the franchise.

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Come in!

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And really look at his part in the action here, look at how many elements it has going on.

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There's the rope that is slipping, the trailer that's edging towards the cliff.

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He grabs a second cable but it's too short, then he fixes the rope but now the car starts to move, and he tries to get a grip but it's muddy

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and then the two T-Rexes return and his gun is stuck and it's just… And it's such a tactile scene too, you know, the rain, the water, the dirt.

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I've seen this scene countless times

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and it remains as effective as ever at invoking the discomfort of being utterly drenched

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and making me feel that sting of what must have been called wet hands handling those rough steel cables.

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This is what I would call a sequence with real texture, that absorbs me completely, and that makes me feel like I'm truly part of the adventure.

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And despite some of its shortcomings, The Last World is full of these.

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And so, to summarize, these are what I believe to be the necessary elements of any great adventure movie.

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They are stories that capture the spirit of adventure, that inspire our curiosity and passion for the unknown and the undiscovered,

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that understand that we want to be immersed in new worlds, that we actually want to learn about them, and that give us enthusiastic characters to help us do so,

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to make us care, make us feel giddy about the journey ahead, and then channel our excitement by offering tangible worlds that feel real and lived in.

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Worlds that, even if they are completely fantastical, convince us that we could reach out and touch them,

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that make us feel like we are going on a true adventure.

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Now, of course, there are plenty of other more general storytelling and filmmaking qualities that make a great adventure movie.

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One such quality for example, which is also another reason for why I believe The Lost World deserves some re-appreciation,

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is having three-dimensional characters that actually feel like human beings.

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This is something that is sorely missing from the Jurassic World movies.

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It's the kind of stuff

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that turns the trophy hunter antagonist from a villainous caricature into a compelling character with an actual personality

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and a solid transformation arc.

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On top of that, there's the obvious importance of having a sensible storyline, thematic coherence, good editing, music,

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that sort of stuff, basically all the things that I didn't get when I watched Jurassic World Dominion.

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But because I wanted this video to maintain its focus on the more specific qualities of the adventure movie, I made a second full-length video called Fallen Franchise,

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The Many Failures of Jurassic World Dominion, that offers a full breakdown of the concluding chapter of the Jurassic World saga,

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and also traces its problems back to its earlier entries.

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Among other things, I discuss how Jurassic World fundamentally misunderstands our fascination with dinosaurs, why this moment works and this one does not,

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how Dominion's weird moralizing undermines the most important themes of the original Jurassic Park, how it absolutely wastes its legacy characters,

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and how, despite finally arriving at its bold new premise of a dinosaur-infested world, It not only ends up in the exact same place,

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but somehow also manages to make the dinosaurs completely unnecessary to their own story.

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Fallen Franchise, the many failures of Jurassic World Dominion, is exclusively available on our creator-owned streaming platform Nebula.

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Besides watching ad-free and exclusive videos from your favorite creators, and supporting an amazing community,

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on Nebula you can also listen to monthly bonus episodes of my podcast Cinema of Meaning, which I host together with my fellow video essayist Thomas Flight.

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The best way to get access to Nebula is by signing up for CuriosityStream, who kindly agreed to sponsor this video.

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CuriosityStream is a streaming service with thousands of documentaries and nonfiction titles.

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If you want to learn more about dinosaurs for example, they have some excellent series like Dino Hunt and Ancient Earth, which are definitely worth checking out.

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Whereas CuriosityStream is all about big budget, nonfiction productions like these, They also love independent creators,

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which is why they are helping us to grow our platform Nebula,

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and which is why we can offer this great bundle to get both services for less than $15 for a whole year.

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So if you'd rather be watching my exclusive video essay on Jurassic World Dominion instead of this ad,

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enjoy some fantastic documentaries, and listen to exclusive episodes of Cinema of Meaning,

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be sure to head on over to curiositystream.com slash likestoriesofold, to get the best deal in streaming today.

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154 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Problem With Adventure Movies Today”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: adventure, movie, Jurassic, dinosaur, character. This video has 266 sentences and 4377 words to shadow. The speech runs for 26:55. The speaker talks at a natural 163 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
dinosaur noun	/ˈdaɪnəsoɹ/	Those animals of the clade Dinosauria that existed during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and are now extinct.
tangible adjective	/ˈtæn.d͡ʒə.bəl/	Touchable; able to be touched or felt; perceptible by the sense of touch.
animatronics noun	/ˌænɪməˈtɹɒnɪks/	A form of robotics used to create robots that produce preset moves and prerecorded sounds.
undiscovered adjective		That has not been discovered; unknown, unexplored.
cinema noun	/ˈsɪn.ə.mə/	A movie theatre, a movie house.
convoluted adjective	/ˌkɑnvəˈlutəd/	Having numerous overlapping coils or folds; convolute.
tactile adjective	/ˈtæktaɪl/	Tangible; perceptible to the sense of touch.
texture noun	/ˈtɛkst͡ʃə(ɹ)/	The feel or shape of a surface or substance; the smoothness, roughness, softness, etc. of something.
sequel noun	/ˈsiːkwəl/	A narrative that is written after another narrative set in the same universe, especially a narrative that is chronologically set after its predecessors, or…
precisely adverb	/pɹɪˈsaɪs.li/	In a precise manner; exactly.
disbelief noun	/dɪsbɪˈliːf/	An unpreparedness, unwillingness, or an inability to believe that something is the case.
empathize verb	/ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/	to feel empathy for another person
fascination noun	/fæsɪˈneɪʃən/	The state or condition of being fascinated.
herbivore noun	/ˈ(h)ɜːɹbɪvɔːɹ/	An organism that feeds chiefly on plants; an animal that feeds on herbage or vegetation as the main part of its diet.
kinematic adjective	/kɪn.əˈmæt.ɪk/	Of or relating to motion or to kinematics.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go up verb		To move upwards.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
work around verb		To bypass or circumvent (a problem or obstacle).
zoom in on verb		To quickly focus on a particular subject or object.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get back to verb		Return to (an activity)
hold up verb		To wait or delay.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

You coming or what?
That's why we're taking extreme precautions.
Does that stop us from passionately chasing after them and enjoying them?
What do you need?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	has been known · are not defined · be lumped
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has been known · you've had · we've seen
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	World, which was · man who climbed · World, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 37 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: empathize /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/, thematic /θɪˈmætɪk/, enthusiastic /ɪnˌθjuːzɪˈæstɪk/, enthusiasm /ɪnˈθuziæzəm/, thereby /ðɛɹˈbaɪ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: fascination /fæsɪˈneɪʃən/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, appreciation /əˌpɹiː.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/
Long words — get the stress right: animatronics /ˌænɪməˈtɹɒnɪks/, convoluted /ˌkɑnvəˈlutəd/, fascination /fæsɪˈneɪʃən/, kinematic /kɪn.əˈmæt.ɪk/, stegosaurus /ˌstɛɡəˈsɔːɹəs/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like dinosaur, tangible, animatronics.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: The Problem With Adventure Movies Today - Learn English Speaking with Video

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