Just Don't Look Down.
Also known as America Wild: National Parks Adventure, a 43-minute IMAX 3D documentary on the U.S. national parks shown mainly in museums. Narrated by Robert Redford, it follows three extreme-sports enthusiasts — Conrad, Max and Rachel — on a road trip to such parks as Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Redwoods, and Zion, intercut with the story of how the national-park system was created by Theodore Roosevelt under the influence of John Muir.Tropes:
- Action Girl: Rachel says that she's still learning to keep up with the guys, but she's pretty impressive in her own right. A particularly notable moment is when she's practically doing the splits in midair shimmying up the side of Devil's Tower.
- Bait-and-Switch: As Redford is introducing us to Devil's Tower, he describes over ominous music how the Native Americans thought it was the home of gigantic, terrifying bears — then we cut to a cute little prairie dog sticking its head out of its hole.
- Camera Abuse: When Conrad scales a frozen waterfall, shards of ice from his pick fall onto the camera lens. Also, though it isn't really "abuse," a prairie dog gives the camera a thorough sniffing at one point.
- Ghibli Hills: The Real Life version, since the park management tends to keep it from being completely Wild Wilderness.
- Magical Native American: There aren't any Native American characters in the movie, but the narration can give off this vibe when describing their beliefs about the land. "If you listen closely, you can hear their voices on the wind," Redford says over shots of a ruined pueblo.
- Nature Hero: John Muir, who spent much of his life alone in the wilds and fought to protect them.
- Parental Substitute: Max says that Conrad became this after the death of his own father, who was killed in an avalanche while he and Conrad were scaling the Himalayas.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The prairie dogs are totally adorable.
- Scenery Porn: This film IS scenery porn. The humans are relatively incidental.
- World of Badass: Of the five characters in the movie, three of them like to go scaling cliffs and whitewater rafting for fun, one of them walked a thousand miles alone through the American wilderness
in an era long before GPS and helicopter rescues, and the other is freaking Theodore Roosevelt.
