The Lindsay Brothers

Category: 100 Extraordinary Adventures

  • The Last of the Mohicans

    Extraordinary
    Adventure
    100

    Extraordinary Adventures usually take place in far off places.  Or in exotic locales, pursuing beautiful women and diffusing smart bombs. Usually there’s some sort of desert involved.

    So perhaps it is quite a shock to start off a countdown of the world’s most Extraordinary Adventures (in any media) with something that takes place in America’s own backyard with America’s original inhabitants: Actors.

    Madeleine Stowe and her stunt double on an early morning shoot in the smoky mountains.

    The Last of the Mohicans may seem like a really odd fit for an adventure list, but of course that is only if you’ve read the stodgy old James Fennimore Cooper novel. Which I confess, I have not. But I have read the Wikipedia entry about it and was not terribly impressed.  In fact, not to run the word into the ground, but the Wikipedia entry itself was a tad stodgy. I tend to avoid old things that strike me as stodgy. At second blush, you may remember there was a black-and-white Hollywood movie version made in the early nineteen something or others. And hats off to you if you remember that movie because that would make you around 70. At any rate, we are quite lucky that there was. Not because it is a great film adaptation, but because if was, Hollywood might not have decided to remake it in 1992 with Wes Studi.

    Gotcha! Graham Greene is not in this movie, but you’re right he's usually in these sorts of flicks.

    Oh yeah, and Daniel Day Lewis is in it too. For those of you who don’t know, Daniel Day Lewis is famous for quitting acting to become an apprentice cobbler in Italy. Sadly that is not a joke. He really was an apprentice cobbler, but before all that he managed to make one of the most pretentious adventure movies on our list. All with the help of one smarmy-looking Michael Mann, who was the wunderkind in charge of making Miami Vice, which was sort of the precursor to Baywatch. In other words, he’s a man who knows how to heat things up.

    Smarmy looking Michael Mann.

    I recently sat down to re-watch Mohicans and it’s obvious right off the bat that something is running through the forest. Cutting to the chase from the chase; the thing that was running through the forest was in fact, an elk. Followed closely by an apprentice cobbler from Italy named Hawkeye (awesome) played by Daniel Day Lewis. It seems young Hawkeye or Nathaniel as he’s sometimes called is the adopted son of (stay with me here) Chingachgook who has an actual biological son named Uncas presumably because it is much easier to pronounce. The adopted white son is a common thread among Hollywood movies whereby you have to explain why the movie star who is obviously not Persian is playing the role of the Prince. (See also: The Godfather)

    Being able to add a lot of action in what is actually a sort of Merchant-Ivory production is no small feat. And by starting the story with the hunt we are clued in on what’s different about this version: Wicked cool tomahawks.  In all serious, a debt is owed to Michael Mann here because the editing and the pacing of this sequence is superb. The entire film plays as a wonderful travelogue as well, and is balanced so well that some might even call it “politically correct.”

    And so it is, but in a good way. There are Good Indians and Bad Indians just as there are Good English and Bad English.  The main villain here is Magua as played by Cherokee actor Wes Studi and he is beyond stellar. He actually should be on a list of best film villains. It’s that good. Studi has done other work, most recently in Avatar, but this is his best role to date. He has very few lines but the menace is palpable. There’s also a sly bit of underplayed confusion at the Europeans coming from Studi here. From another point of view Magua is not a villain but, in fact, a noble warrior. His confusion when someone threatens suicide is as understatedly terrific, as his acceptance of it.

    Some of the action scenes are quite tough and actually show scalping in all its gory detail, so be careful. But the story is quite effecting. A fantastic final scene that settles all scores, and leaves us with the titular last of the Mohicans caps it off, but the meat of the movie is the love story. There’s a great attack on the fort and a stirring escape/desertion with Day Lewis and his brother adding cover. Not to mention a great leap from a waterfall and an amazing musical score. Very short on missteps, The Last of the Mohicans deserves its place at first/last in our countdown.

    Also, because it was written by an Englishmen, it technically does involve far off places, albeit from an English point of view, natch. Also there is a lot of pursuing of beautiful women, but unfortunately no disarming of smart bombs. Next up: 99.

  • On Adventure

    If you’re like me you’ve probably been sitting around this past week pondering two words that captured your imagination when you were just a kid. Obviously, those two words were “adventure” and “extraordinary” and you probably remember the time when you realized that “extraordinary” should come before “adventure” so as to form a somewhat sensible phrase: “Extraordinary Adventure.”

    After that you probably got caught up in little side tangents such as capitalization for effect. If you’re not like me, then perhaps you might now very well be pondering one word: Why?

    Before I answer that let me get to my favorite part of blogging: Definitions!

    Webster defines the word “adventure” as:

    Actually I am pretty sure you know what adventure is already so I decided not to look at what its actual definition was. Instead I just brainstormed things that seemed adventure-y to me. Here’s a short list.

    • Sailboats – sailboats count as adventure because they are daring, exploratory, and sometimes pirates and/or captains can be found on them (especially in the 15th-18th centuries).  Also they have many different ways of tying a rope. The essence of adventure.
    Adventure stays crunchy even in milk
    • Sword Fights – Let’s see … possibility of death? Check. Single combat warriors? Check. Lightsabers? Double check. This is a no brainer. Sword fights are definitely in. Don’t pretend like you didn’t make the “ting” “clang” noises when you were younger either.
    A touch! A touch! I do confess it!
    • Airplanes. Flying — especially fast flying — is dangerous and romantic. Couple that with shooting and being shot at and you have yourself a good recipe for adventure. Airplanes are even cooler when they fly over the desert.
    No. Desert.
    • Rock climbing, jail breaking, wind surfing, mountain climbing, horseback riding, whitewater rafting, and meeting the in-laws all count as adventure. But what is the greatest adventure of them all? That’s right. Story.

    I also capitalized the word Story here in order to differentiate it from the lowercase “story” which I left uncapitalized. Otherwise there is basically no difference.  Why is Story the greatest adventure? Because with Story, you are able to have all these adventures without having to take years and years learning how to not die while performing them.

    Certainly I do not advocate sitting around watching TV instead of actually DOING something adventurous, but seeing as it is almost impossible to die from watching TV, it can sometimes be a better choice. Plus, when are you going to have the time to do all of the things one could possibly classify as adventure in one lifetime? Story is the next best thing.

    Story introduces the element of imagination.  All you have to do is hear Azeem say to Robin Hood: “Your horse is lame, mine carries two,” And instantly, maybe even without riding a horse, you kind of understand the adventure of horseback riding.

    Also Story is easier to access than most of the other things you might list as adventure. No matter the medium — poetry, prose, film, comics, video games, even history and board games — Stories are easily more obtainable than scuba certification.

    Coming up in the next several months we will explore what makes some Stories into Extraordinary Adventures, and because this is the Internet (which is capitalized because spell check told me to), we have decided to do it in list form. We will give you 100 major examples of adventures. They will be presented in descending order starting with 100 and working backwards all the way to the number one Most Extraordinary Adventure Story (in any medium).

    We invite you to check back often to see the list as it develops. Remember there are a hundred of these and they’re going in REVERSE order so that means that the series will just keep getting better. Meaning, no matter when you check back, it will always be on our best day. So there’s a little motivation for you.

    Next up: the 100th most Extraordinary Adventure. Stay tuned.