I was just watching a youtube documentary on Jacques Cousteau and It brought back to me the thrill of watching his shows when I was a little kid.
I LOVED his ship the Calypso and all the sea adventuring the crew did.

But thinking back on that makes me realise that age of adventure has ended.

Back in the day we had David Antenborough doing the same sort of thing but on land. He'd travel to out of the way places with his little BBC crew and find fascinating things about the natural world. This was long before he became mostly known as a narrator. I've read his early books and they're a joy.

There were man others too I'm sure. Years before there was the famous Thor Hyadal and his Kontiki and other voyages. In Australia we had Albi Mangles, who sailed around Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea on a sailing yacht with his girlfriend and their dog, making documentary films of his adventures. On land there was Harry Butler, a khaki clad, bearded ranger who explored the remote wilderness of outback Australia.
Even Bob Ballard picked up the reigns from Cousteau a bit.

Most people these days are familiar with the ill-fated Steve Irwin- he was a very watered down, safe descendant of that school of adventure, but basically much more of a TV presenter than anything else. He styled himself AFTER those people for the shows.

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There are fictional versions of course like Indiana Jones, GE Kinkaid (lost city in the grand canyon hoax), Alan Quartermaine (H Rider Haggard character), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), Nathan Drake (Uncharted), Dirk Pit (Sahara), Jack T Colton (Romancing the Stone).

And many real but older versions like Lawrence of Arabia, Richard Francis Burton, Burk and Wills (Australia), Mathew Flinders (Australia), Sir Edmond Hillary and Sherpa Tensing, Lewis and Clark (America), Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart…

This is something we don't have in the world anymore because the Earth is more connected and considered fully explored, pretty much. We have you-tubers who sort of approach that kind of adventure in some ways.

I befriended a huge bear of a man on Facebook, called Radu. He's a Romanian (US citizen now who lives in Bali) and very close to being a modern adventurer. He's explored remote Islands in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, met up with remote communities of indigenous people there, hunted big game and man eating crocodiles before becoming a very noted nature photographer.
I was able to meet him a couple of times.

Sometimes you don't go looking for adventure but adventure finds you.

One time I was training a young person at my job and just mentioned some things I picked up along the way. They looked at me and said I'd really had some adventures. Don't sell yourself short. Some of the things you've done are pretty amazing adventures. Maybe we're not in some remote wilderness facing vicious animals but the most vicious creature can be a fellow human being.

But that's me. Been places, done stuff and a drawer full of tee shirts. Really gotta clean out that drawer. 🤣

I loved the sense of wonder watching Cousteau's adventures. For me, Steve Irwin was more “Here's a dangerous creature. I will fuck with it.”

Bravo makes a good point about personal adventures. Sometimes you find yourself in a living room that has a bath tub in the middle of it and shotguns leaning against the wall, being stared at by the occupants.

Unka John wrote:
Steve Irwin was more "Here's a dangerous creature. I will fuck it."

Hahaha, that's how I read that the first time XD

Never been in that bathtub situation hahaha! Sounds like the hills have eyes…


You're both right, there is plenty of scope for personal adventures. I think the larger, more epic ones from Burton, T.E.Lawrence, Marco Polo Et Al. are unlikely to happen again or be extremely rare though because those were pretty formative to our world- like placing the jigsaw pieces: once they're placed that's it.
T.E.Lawrence maybe not as much… that was very situational. In the right circumstances that can happen again.
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That said, who're you fave adventurers from fiction or reality?
And what adventures have you had?

I really like the early Lara Croft as an adventurer.

In the early days she was an Indiana Jones style adventurer with a modern twist.
Then they changed her to James Bond and that started to ruin her character a bit. The current version of her is terrible, it's the modern fashion that I like to think of as “victim as hero”. It's removed all power, wonder and interest to the character. She's just a “survivor” character now.

Good for people who like the survivor genre. Whatever, that's not me and that's not why the charter became famous or why anyone liked Lara Croft initially. (and no it wasn't the boobs, but people DID appreciate a female protagonist for all sorts of reasons)

The bathtub tale is true. Anything that would pass as an adventure of mine is mostly the result of having been the sort of fellow you would NOT introduce to Mum.

I agree the epic adventures of discovery, at least on this planet, are pretty much over.

I'm tempted to consider the immigrant an adventurer. Travelling a long distance, not knowing what would become of them once the destination was reached must be daunting. My in-laws, for instance walked out of Hungary with the clothes on their backs and 2 children in 1956.

I did go on a light reading binge last summer. A few of the Honey West novels, several of the Bond books and Edgar Rice Burroughs adventures. Then I re-read Huckleberry Finn, which put them all to shame. THAT was an adventure!

@UnkaJohn

I agree, the Tom Sawyer stories are some of the best adventure stories out there. Mark Twain also wrote a few short stories about Tom as an adult working as an agent.

I will honestly take Indiana Jones over Star Wars most of the time. I don't think Brendan Frasier's Mummy movies have been mentioned, I really liked the first one.

I preferred Lara Croft as an adrenalin junkie who raided tombs for the challenge of it. I liked the reboot, but it did not seem like she progressed beyond being a constant victim. By the third game, they were billing her as a superhero. Lara has always been a hot property that they could never figure out what to do with.

sleeping_gorilla wrote:
Lara has always been a hot property that they could never figure what to do with.

True. I think it's because people are idiots XD
She was an adventurer and that was super cool.
A big part of why she got popular was because she was female - so women had a character to identify with and straight men had a female figure to look at on the screen. But that was by NO means what kept her popular, that only got her foot in the door.
The real reason she stayed popular was the adventuring and exploring.

They turned her into James Bond because they didn't understand that and wanted to make her a typical video-game character that just does everything.

Then the reboot as a “survivor” because the James Bond stuff had ruined her popularity, and the victim/survivor genre is part of this sexist idea of empowerment through struggle that female characters are currently limited by, but it's popular- And a terrible fit for the character!

-Back when I was thinking about Pinky's back story years ago, before the survivor tend took off, Pinky was going to have that sort of beginning. I'd written it out… I am SOOOOOOoo glad I didn't goo with it. I scrapped the idea when I realised how tropey, cliché and misogynist it was. I really dogged a bullet.

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Brendan Fraser in The Mummy is a perfect example man. One of the very best.

I think Dwayne Johnson was meant to be something similar in Jungle Cruise but it dodn't quite get there. I liked the movie though.

Forgot to mention. Even though it was not the best era of Disney animation I liked their version of Atlantis, Tarzan, and especially Treasure Planet.

Crossgen had a really good steampunk Adventure series called Meridian. A bit like Prelude to Foundation where the spoiled hero's worldview is changed as they travel and fight their way back home.

Yes, those are great, plus John Carter on Mars. I really like that film!

The new Disney Pixar movie (?) Strange World is specifically about an adventurer family. It's not bad.