Ever since the turn of the century, the adventure genre has delivered several films that can be counted among the greatest of modern times. This is, after all, one of the oldest of all story genres, one essential to humanity’s love and need for storytelling as a whole. Since time immemorial, we’ve craved stories about heroes going on grand quests with very specific goals in mind, overcoming terrible threats on the way to their objectives. Since this is a genre so foundational to storytelling, it’s no surprise that it has been the basis of several of the most entertaining motion pictures ever made—some of them made over the course of the last 26 years.
Whether it’s a space adventure like Interstellar, one following our hero through a post-apocalyptic landscape like that of Mad Max: Fury Road, or one set the past like Gladiator, adventure cinema has offered several of the greatest blockbusters since 2000. These are films which blend the unique affordances of the modern day, like hyper-believable CGI and multi-hundred-million-dollar budgets, with the kinds of timeless tropes that have kept the adventure genre so timeless throughout the years. A few decades from now, it would be unsurprising if they were still remembered among the greatest genre flicks of the early 21st century.
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‘Interstellar’ (2014)
Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper flying a spaceship in InterstellarImage via Paramount Pictures
Few filmmakers understand the adventure genre quite as perfectly as Christopher Nolan, as irrefutably proven by Interstellar. Hailed by some as his single greatest film to date, this space opera is one of the best hard sci-fi movies since 2000, and it isn’t surprising in the slightest that it’s among the highest-grossing sci-fi films of the 2010s. The project began development all the way back in 2006 from a treatment by producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, and it was originally supposed to be directed by Steven Spielberg. The concept evolved greatly through the years until becoming the modern classic we know and love today.
Anchored in the relative scientific realism provided by Thorne’s involvement, Interstellar definitely takes a few creative liberties with the material, but those liberties are all in service of an enthralling story about love, fatherhood, and the future of humanity. The reason Interstellar works as well as the 20th century’s best space adventure movies is that, like them, the plot’s actual adventure element is secondary to the emotional core that gives the narrative its heart.
5
‘The Odyssey’ (2026)
Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and Telemachus (Tom Holland) in ‘The Odyssey’Image via Universal Pictures
Once recency bias wears down, only time will tell whether The Odyssey will continue to age as one of Christopher Nolan’s best movies; but for the time being, it can absolutely be considered as one of them. If there is one story that has never been set in stone, it’s Homer‘s poem; the epic that fathered all epics, the story that best represents why storytelling has been so important to humanity throughout the years. Just like the bards of yesteryear shifted details of Homer’s story to fit their audience’s tastes, so too has Nolan created a version of The Odyssey that feels like it’s entirely his, just as much as it is Homer’s.
The Odyssey is a brilliant spiritual successor to Oppenheimer, exploring the natural fears of living in a war-torn world and celebrating the hope of the good people who may still save its future. It’s technically masterful, impeccably acted, scored with tremendous power by Ludwig Göransson, and directed with the utmost authority by Nolan at the very top of his game. Fantasy adventure stories don’t really get much more essential than Homer’s Odyssey, and this new cinematic version of it is the greatest adaptation of the original that we have seen thus far.
4
‘Gladiator’ (2000)
Image via DreamWorks Distribution
With films of the caliber of Alien and Blade Runner, what Ridley Scott did over the course of the late 20th century can only be labeled revolutionary. As such, it feels only fitting that his final outing before the arrival of the 21st century was just as big of a turning point: The Best Picture Oscar-winning Gladiator, one of the greatest and most influential adventure epics of the 2000s. As the years have passed and Scott’s modern filmography has gotten a bit more hit-or-miss, Gladiator has kept aging like fine wine, an action drama and revenge story that’s as emotionally stirring as it is incredibly thrilling.
What’s not to love about this masterpiece? For one, its production values are absolutely stunning, offering some of the most riveting and violent action sequences of any movie set during the age of the Roman Empire. Add to that a phenomenal score by Hans Zimmer, a pair of powerhouse performances by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, perfect pacing that makes the two-and-a-half-hour runtime flow right by, and a rousing tale about duty and honor, and it should become all that much less surprising that Gladiator is still as widely beloved as it is.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
3
‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
It’s pretty much humanly impossible to watch Mad Max: Fury Road and not have at least a little bit of fun. George Miller‘s triumphant return to both the Mad Max franchise and the action genre as a whole since 1985 was this cinematic injection of adrenaline straight to the jugular, a non-stop chase that doesn’t let up for two whole hours of intense runtime. There’s virtually no space to breathe when watching Fury Road, but true action adventure movie fans wouldn’t have it any other way. It results in one of the most irresistibly entertaining cinematic experiences of the 21st century so far.
Indeed, this is one of the most amazing blockbuster movies of all time, a masterpiece where Miller throws everything but the kitchen sink at the screen in terms of creative ideas over the course of two hours. The world-building is delightfully bizarre, the character writing has a surprising amount of depth, and the action sequences are all impeccably shot and edited in every single way possible. There really aren’t very many adventure movies like Fury Road being made today, and whether its planned sequel does end up materializing someday or not, this will always be remembered as one of the best action epics of the 2010s.
2
‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)
The Fremen ride the Sandworm into battle in Dune: Part Two (2024).Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Frank Herbert‘s Dune is one of the most essential sci-fi adventure novels of the 20th century, a masterpiece so perfect that it’s almost crazy that anyone would even attempt to make a film adaptation of it. Then again, Denis Villeneuve is no ordinary filmmaker. He’s one of the best sci-fi movie directors currently working in Hollywood, and no film of his better demonstrates that fact than Dune: Part Two. As great as its predecessor was, it’s this sequel that deserves to be remembered as a pillar of 2020s science fiction in the same way that The Empire Strikes Back is a pillar of 1980s science fiction.
No film is fully and truly perfect, but there are some that come remarkably close, and Dune: Part Two is one such film. Whether it’s the stunning visual effects, Hans Zimmer‘s rousing score, the cast’s consistently fantastic performances, the narrative’s exceptional pacing, or the flawless way in which Villeneuve’s vision blends with Herbert’s imagination, Dune: Part Two really is one of the greatest sci-fi film sequels ever created. It’s exciting, it’s action-packed, it’s romantic, it’s creative, and it’s proof that adventure cinema is more than alive and well in the 2020s.
1
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ (2003)
Image via New Line Cinema
There is arguably no adventure novel from the 20th century better, more important, or more influential than J. R. R. Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings. Originally designed as a simple sequel to the fantasy children’s book The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings gradually started transforming into something far larger and far more epic. Today, it’s widely regarded as the most foundational works of literary fantasy of the 20th century. As such, Peter Jackson and co.’s attempt at turning the book into an epic trilogy always had sky-high expectations.
And yet, even with those high expectations, the trilogy turned out to be the greatest fantasy film trilogy of all time. Its conclusion in particular, The Return of the King, tied with Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most Oscar wins in history (a whopping 11), is nothing short of one of the greatest feature films of all time. At the very least, it’s one of the greatest Best Picture Oscar winners since 2000, an adventure masterpiece on the same scale as foundational epics of the size of Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur itself.
