The Adventure Movies We Can't Wait to See This Year

What’s the difference between action and adventure? Genre gun to our head, we’d say it has something to do with wonder and awe. Whereas action centers on struggle, adventure celebrates discovery. It’s a world never seen before, a treasure buried for centuries, a mystery unsolved for millennia. The adventure film is a journey. It shares more territory with myth and heroic epic than it does with actual cinematic spectacle. And that’s why the modern myth factories of Disney and Pixar turn out some of the best adventure narratives today. This year is no exception. This year will be a hell of a year for animated adventure.

That's not to say 2020 was without some great live-action adventure films. Though its roots are in sci-fi, Christopher Nolan’s continent-hopping, time-hopping Tenet scratched a long-quarantined adventure itch. Mulan, while not quite the historical war movie we hoped for, managed plenty of large-scale semi-magical journeying. And Bill and Ted was, like, totally Bill and Ted.

So far, 2021 promises to be even bigger thanks to lots of holdovers from 2020 and some brand-new imaginative flicks from the animated myth factories. Here are the top adventure movies of 2021 we can’t wait to see.