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A Companion to the Action Film
James Kendrick (Edited by)
9781119100492, Wiley
Hardback, published 15 March 2019
512 pages
24.6 x 17.8 x 2.8 cm, 0.93 kg
An authoritative guide to the action-packed film genre With 24 incisive, cutting-edge contributions from esteemed scholars and critics, A Companion to the Action Filmprovides an authoritative and in-depth guide to this internationally popular and wide-ranging genre. As the first major anthology on the action film in more than a decade, the volume offers insights into the genre’s historical development, explores its production techniques and visual poetics, and provides reflections on the numerous social, cultural, and political issues it has and continues to embody. A Companion to the Action Film offers original research and critical analysis that examines the iconic characteristics of the genre, its visual aesthetics, and its narrative traits; considers the impact of major directors and stars on the genre’s evolution; puts the action film in dialogue with various technologies and other forms of media such as graphic novels and television; and maps out new avenues of critical study for the future. This important resource: Written for scholars, teachers and students in film studies, film theory, film history, genre studies, and popular culture, A Companion to the Action Film is an essential guide to one of international cinema’s most important, popular, and influential genres.
About the Editor viii Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: The Action Film: “Over Familiar and Understudied” 1 Part I History 9 1 Origins of the Action Film: Types, Tropes, and Techniques in Early Film History 11 2 A Genre of Its Own: From Westerns, to Vigilantes, to Pure Action 35 3 The New Dominance: Action‐Fantasy Hybrids and the New Superhero in 2000s Action Cinema 55 4 Around the World in Action 74 Part II Form and Aesthetics 97 5 The Perpetual Motion Aesthetic of Action Cinema 99 6 Asian Action Cinema and Its Influence on Hollywood 118 7 Comedy in Action 140 8 The Composite Body: Action Stars and Embodiment in the Digital Age 165 9 Translating the Panel: Remediating a Comics Aesthetic in Contemporary Action Cinema 187 Part III Auteurs: Directors, Stars, Choreographers 207 10 Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah, and the Action Concept of Eastern Westerns 209 11 The Martial Arts Supremacy: Action Film and Fight Choreography 227 12 All Guts and No Glory: Stuntwork and Stunt Performers in Hollywood History 241 13 Hollywood’s Hard Bodies: The Stars Who Made the Action Films Famous 256 14 The Strange Case of Carlos Ray Norris: Reactionary Masculinity and Its Imaginary Discontents 270 15 New Action Realism: Claustrophobia, Immediacy, and Mediation in the Films of Kathryn Bigelow, Paul Greengrass, and Michael Mann 289 Part IV Social and Cultural Issues 307 16 Postmodernism in Action Movies 309 17 The 1980s Action Film and the Politics of Urban Expulsions 325 18 Infinite Crisis: Intertextuality and Watchmen 345 19 Blowing Up the War Film: Powerlessness and the Crisis of the Action‐Image in The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds 364 20 X‐Men/Action Men: Performing Masculinities in Superhero and Science‐Fiction Cinema 381 21 Unlikely Action Heroine: Melissa McCarthy Challenges Bodily Ideals in Modern Action Film 398 22 “I Am Become Death”: Managing Massacres and Constructing the Female Teen Leader in The 100 417 23 A Digital Nature: Lucy Takes Technology for a Ride 439 24 “I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed”: Prosthetics, Agency Panic, and the High‐Tech Action Film 456 Index 473
James Kendrick
Kyle Barrowman
James Kendrick
Lisa Purse
Mark Gallagher
Nick Jones
Barna William Donovan
Cynthia M. King
Drew Ayers
Joshua Wucher
Stephen Teo
Paul Bowman
Lauren Steimer
Susan Jeffords
Tony Williams
Vincent M. Gaine
Micheal McAlexander
Jon Kraszewski
Matt Yockey
Paul Gormley
Yvonne Tasker
Jeffrey A. Brown
Rikke Schubart
Lorrie Palmer
Steffen Hantke
Subject Areas: Society & culture: general [JF]
