Is Sex Important To Adventure?
6 years ago
I'm a fan of "pulp adventure". Most people these days would know the genre as Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Uncharted. People going in search of lost treasure in exotic locations while getting into nail biting chases and action scenes.
After a couple of false starts at my own adventure comic, I've been slowly refining the ideas. I was watching a YouTube video about Star Wars when they mentioned that a key component of a good adventure story is sex and/or romance. This sounded dumb at first. but as I think about it's kind of a good point. Some lean into it more than others. Romancing the Stone has more going on in that area than The Last Crusade, but most of the good ones I can think of include it in some way.
It's not exactly spoilers to say I was going to include some skimpy outfits as eye candy. Maybe 1 short fetish scene at most. Now I'm wondering if having a romance plot or even a bunch of sex/fetish scenes is the way to go?
Now, I know asking that on FA is like asking a fat kid if they want ice cream, but I am curious to know what you think and what you'd like to see.
After a couple of false starts at my own adventure comic, I've been slowly refining the ideas. I was watching a YouTube video about Star Wars when they mentioned that a key component of a good adventure story is sex and/or romance. This sounded dumb at first. but as I think about it's kind of a good point. Some lean into it more than others. Romancing the Stone has more going on in that area than The Last Crusade, but most of the good ones I can think of include it in some way.
It's not exactly spoilers to say I was going to include some skimpy outfits as eye candy. Maybe 1 short fetish scene at most. Now I'm wondering if having a romance plot or even a bunch of sex/fetish scenes is the way to go?
Now, I know asking that on FA is like asking a fat kid if they want ice cream, but I am curious to know what you think and what you'd like to see.
The important aspect about adding such an element into the game is what you want to convey or how crucial it is to the plot: if it's intended to be there with a reason (character development, plot purposes, etc.), then it comes through well and can make the experience of the adventure all the more worth it, especially if it's crafted with care. But if it's added there for no other reasons than because it's a trope or merely thrown into there as an afterthought, it can kind of cheapen the experience: on one hand, if it just happens because it's trying to go for the theme of your typical action/adventure movie-telling, it will most likely receive shrugs and is otherwise accepted as is (after all, don't many of the 70s - 90s movies end up on such a high note?), but at worst, it won't make sense with the movie enthusiasts and can come off as forced, awful and not something even the most casual of viewers would like to have.
Having a sex scene in a movie also has to be considered carefully: in some movies it's opted to show out how deeply involved the main characters are with each other, both on mental and emotional level and depending on the situation at hand, it could also be considered as a moment of solace between the two characters before heading further into the dangers the movie has set the characters up to (think of it as "last chance to feel alive before we march into our certain doom" -kind of thing, the last chance to do something before that happens); in other movies, sex scenes are dropped in as nothing more than eye-candy for an otherwise average movie or a exploit to keep the viewers involved or even drawn into the product - hence the term "sexploitation genre" that blew up around 70s and 80s. (Though it does make you wonder how creation of sex scenes in movies often go and what problems and limitations in creating such things there are, even in big title movies and cult classics.)
Ultimately, however one wishes to go with, they have to consider how they build or implement such scenes into the movie: if it's there with a reason, then it needs to be scripted and filmed accordingly. If it's thrown in for no other reasons than "just because"/eye-candy, then at least the overall result has to be entertaining enough for them to fit in.
One of the difficulties in writing adventure stories is they're a series a set pieces where the usual rules of good story telling don't really apply. eg. The hero is a Mary Sue, but unlike most stories that's not really a problem. But there are other rules that make a good adventure story. I won't go into now, but the argument for sex scenes is that "getting the girl" or "fucking a bunch of hot women" is as much part of the fantasy as the fighting, car chases, and exotic locations. James Bond, Indiana Jones, Nathan Drake, the guy from The Mummy, the guy from Romancing the Stone. They all do it. Oddly enough, the only one that really breaks this mold is Tomb Raider, but you could argue that Lara Croft IS the eye candy.
Uncharted 4 and Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull cut the sex and romance, and they are largely know for being bad. Though there were many other problems with them aside from that so they aren't great examples.
As I said in the post, I was going to have the characters run around in skimpy clothes most of the story anyway, and was considering 1 fetish scene. So I'm not against this kind of "exploitation" since I was going to have a little anyway. But if it's an important part I can give it the same attention as I would the action scenes.
There's also a disconnect between what I want to make vs what I want to read. I find sex and romance subplots to be something that drags films down more often than not, but I'm obviously going to be ok with something written to pander to my particular tastes and preferences. I don't want to drag the thing down with unnessesary or boring scenes, but I also dont want the comic as a whole to be bad because I missed a fundamental part that I didn't consider.
If I ever make the comic, I don't think it would be some classic. A short, (and poorly drawn) adventure in the style of the old serials and films. I'm not going to compromise that for the sake of views. But pulling punches is a compromise in it's own way, and often far more damaging to the end result.
"Though it does make you wonder how creation of sex scenes in movies often go and what problems and limitations in creating such things there are, even in big title movies and cult classics."
I do wonder how do those old exploitation films manage to find so many women willing to run around in not a lot of clothing?