Ben Stiller’s Walter Mitty daydreams turned into a real adventure across Iceland and the Himalayas. Here’s why this 2013 film still makes you want to quit your job.
Walter Mitty film energy is that specific brand of “what if my boring life secretly contained epic adventure” that hits different when you’re stuck in a cubicle. Ben Stiller directed and starred in this 2013 adaptation of James Thurber’s classic short story, and the result is a movie so aggressively earnest it should come with a warning label for cynics.
The plot is deceptively simple. Walter works in the photo department of Life magazine, which is about to cease print publication. He has a crush on Cheryl, played by Kristen Wiig with the perfect mix of warmth and unattainability. He daydreams constantly—saving puppies from burning buildings, trading witty banter as a secret agent, fighting his boss through a Transformers-style cityscape. Then a negative from legendary photographer Sean O’Connell goes missing, and Walter has to track it down across Greenland, Iceland, and the Himalayas. The daydreams stop. The real adventure begins.
Walter Mitty Film Locations That Will Ruin Your Travel Budget
Walter Mitty film production went to actual Iceland for the skateboarding scene down a winding mountain road, and the cinematography is so gorgeous it makes your passport itch. The crew filmed in Seyðisfjörður, a tiny Icelandic town where Walter races to catch a helicopter pilot played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who is eating a drumstick and drinking from a flask and generally being the most Icelandic person imaginable. The Himalayas sequence required filming in the Canadian Rockies, but you’d never know it—the snow looks Himalayan enough to fool your eyes and your travel agent.
Stuart Dryburgh shot the film, and his work earned the movie its only Oscar nomination. The visual effects team also got recognized for making Walter’s fantasies look simultaneously ridiculous and beautiful. The “Benjamin Button” aging sequence during the opening credits is pure CGI silliness, but the real-world landscapes are practical, tangible, and genuinely breathtaking.
What makes Walter Mitty film special is its commitment to sincerity in an era of irony. Released in 2013, it arrived when prestige television was getting gritty and superhero movies were getting cynical. This movie says “beautiful things don’t ask for attention” with a straight face. It features a Life magazine motto about seeing the world and having adventures, and it means every word. Sean Penn shows up as O’Connell, the photographer who waits in the Himalayas for a snow leopard to appear, and his monologue about “the moment” is the kind of thing that would get roasted on Twitter but works perfectly in context.
The soundtrack deserves its own paragraph. Jose Gonzalez’s “Step Out” plays during the Iceland sequence and immediately makes you want to buy a one-way ticket. Of Monsters and Men contribute “Dirty Paws.” David Bowie and Arcade Fire cover “Wake Up.” The music supervisor clearly understood that this film needed songs that felt like anthems for people who haven’t found their anthem yet.
Walter Mitty film didn’t win critics over—it sits at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers calling it “ambitious but lacking substance.” But audiences gave it a 71% audience score, and the $188 million worldwide gross on a $90 million budget means it found its people. Sometimes a movie doesn’t need to be technically perfect. Sometimes it just needs to make you believe that your life could be bigger than it currently is.
The final reveal about the missing negative—that it was in the wallet Walter threw away, that it was a gift for him all along—lands with the emotional precision of a film that understands what it’s actually about. Walter Mitty film isn’t about finding a photograph. It’s about finding yourself, which is corny but also kind of the whole point.
Stream Walter Mitty film tonight and start planning your own adventure. Iceland isn’t going anywhere.
Also Read: Jerry O’Connell’s Wild Career Path