The Amazon
A huge rainforest, with big trees, plants all around, a bunch of insects and, of course, a river. That's the basic concept.
But, don't expect much more researching than this from the writers. The Amazon—be it the Amazon, an African Jungle, Vietnam or any other else—is always basically the same. If you're lucky, the writers won't put a lion in the middle of Peru's eastern side. Some really well worked settings will even include a native language. Again, if you're really lucky, it will be a real native language.
Featured in any other media than the Movies, it normally contains An Aesop about preserving the rainforests. Another common features is that either it is depicted as if it were contained entirely within Brazil or extends to places where it does not actually stretches to, Like Lima, the northernmost of Colombia and Venezuela and sometimes even into central America.
Not to be confused with the women warriors, the Hot Amazon, the Amazonian Beauty, or even a brigade of them. Or the website, for that matter.
For the videogame example, see Jungle Japes.
Comic Books
- The river Coliflor in Tintin and the Broken Ear, whose banks are home to the Arumbaya tribe.
- The home turf of Rima The Jungle, both in her own title and First Wave.
Film
- Anaconda: Despite its authentic Portuguese cursing ("filho da..."), infamous for its upward waterfall—although it could be an optical illusion. However, the whole waterfall thing is a crock, just as in...
- Moonraker: This 007 movie featured a "Brazilian" rainforest with a waterfall—despite the Amazon River, as any other plains river, being unable to have waterfalls—and a pre-Columbian building.
- Dragonfly.
- The Rundown/Welcome to the Jungle.
- Tarzan should live in Darkest Africa, but sometimes appears in The Amazon instead.
- Vietnam War movies, such as Rambo and the war scene from Forrest Gump.
- The Dancer Upstairs of John Malkovich extends the Amazon to Lima...
- Two Brothers is set partly in the jungles of Cambodia.
- At Play in the Fields of the Lord
- Cannibal Ferox
- Cannibal Holocaust
Literature
- The short story "Leiningen Versus the Ants". It was adapted several times, including the film The Naked Jungle and the "Trumbo's World" episode of MacGyver.
- In the Discworld book Eric, the title character and Rincewind travel to Discworld's equivalent of the Amazon, and encounter a Mayincatec tribe.
Live-Action TV
- The Sentinel's backstory, full with black panthers and demeaning portrayals of the natives.
- Kamen Rider Amazon, as the name suggests. The story is much like Tarzan, but with a Japanese baby and a Mayincatec artifact that lets him become an armored superhero.
Video Games
- Amazon Trail
Western Animation
- The South Park episode "Rainforest Schmainforest" features a parody of this, and the final Spoof Aesop is "stop the rain forest before it's too late".
- The animated TV series Jana of the Jungle.
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers, whenever they wanted to do a rainforest episode. Had the benefit of being fairly accurate with respect to native flora and fauna, and the drawback of being very condescending with respect to native peoples, partly because a show that represents the early 90's environmentalist craze wouldn't make sense without these accuracies.
- The The Venture Brothers episode "Dr. Guymn, Medicine Woman", featured an orangutan and circumcision among the native peoples. Both are, of course, characteristic of Australasia.
- The Squad visits what is reasonably accurate depiction of the Amazon Basin in Exo Squad. Well, unless you count a horde of genetically-engineered green-skinned Half Human Hybrids...
