In the previous blog post, I introduced a couple of eccentric films that have since been celebrated as cult classics. Rumour has it that The Man Who Saves the World, mentioned in that post, has been selected as one of the ten worst films ever made and is taught at universities in the US as an example of how not to make a film.
Read MoreBelieve it or not, Yeşilçam, the studio system of Turkey, which became dominant from the 1960s to the 1980s, essentially introduced classical cinema to Turks. It drew its production systems from Hollywood—big producers familiarized themselves with the studio structure in Los Angeles and brought the same system back home—but localized the content to reflect the specific experiences of Turkish society.
Read MoreTrue to the promise of its title, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson, 2023) is an exhilarating and emotional journey that continues to blaze the narrative and visual trail started by its predecessor. Made by Sony Pictures Animation in association with Marvel, the film does not open with the previous film’s Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as one might expect. Instead, it shifts the focus to Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), also known as Spider-Woman, as she finds herself embroiled in the multiversal machinations of the taciturn, pragmatic Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), and his spider society.
Read MoreWhat’s in a flerken? Having watched Goose regurgitate the tesseract at the post-credit close of Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019), I immediately wanted to know: what’s in a flerken? Finding my answer meant looking to the comics, in particular the reboots of Captain Marvel in print by both Kelly Sue DeConnick and Margaret Stohl. I have to admit to not learning much more about flerkens, alien creatures which appear to resemble ginger cats, but DeConnick and Stohl’s revisionings did give me a lot more insight into Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel as a contemporary woman who struggles with her history.
Read MoreIt seems fair to suggest that, right now, there is just a bit of cultural interest in the figure of the superhero. Thanks to the efforts of DC and the MCU in particular, the superhero film has arisen out of its somewhat middling status amongst Hollywood production schedules throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to reach a status comparable only to that once enjoyed by the classical western or musical.
Read MoreThe comic book adaptation has become one of the most prominent genres in recent cinema. In response, academic studies on comic books, comic book adaptations, superheroes and their ilk, have increased in number with many scholars bringing a variety of critical approaches to this popular type of production. Drew Morton’s Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books During the Blockbuster Era (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016) focuses on an aesthetic used throughout cinematic adaptations of comic book properties, that of “remediation,” defined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin as “the representation of one medium in and by another” (6).
Read MoreThe awarding of the Golden Lion to Todd Philips’ Joker (2019) at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 illustrates the overwhelming significance of comic book material and its characters for the contemporary Hollywood film industry. Telling the origin story of Joker, Batman’s nemesis, through the development of a violent, nihilistic character, Joker subverts the heroic expectations we might expect from a perceived comic book film.
Read MoreNow that the proverbial dust has settled on Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, 2019), the fallout from the almost-three hour epic can well and truly begin. To immediately follow a film that is, to date, the highest-grossing film of 2019 and now the second-highest of all time (behind, of course, Avatar [James Cameron, 2009]) was always a tricky, if not borderline impossible, act. Yet coming a mere three months after Endgame and just two years (and six films) after Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017), the next instalment Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019) does a more than admirable job of taking up the reins left slack in a post-Endgame world.
Read MoreThe term ambivalence was coined by the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe two opposite ideas that coexist in uneasy union. While superheroes are often understood as narratives of assurance, comfort and security, it is ambivalence, or even anxiety, that provides the more useful concept when it comes to interrogating the dynamics at work in the cinematic superhero phenomena. This is particularly the case in its relationship with technology, both aesthetically and philosophically.
Read MoreRunning parallel to the ongoing battles about women superheroes is another that flashes across the surface and into the depths of Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Flack, 2019): a fight about the status of animation within the blockbuster (Fig. 1). Christopher Holliday (2018), Stephen Prince (2012) and Paul Wells (2008) are among those to have discussed the integration of CG animation technologies into the fabric of Hollywood filmmaking, in guises as diverse as character animation and digital grading.
Read MoreWhen Sony announced that they were making a solo vehicle for Venom, one of Spider-Man’s most popular villains, independent of Spidey’s ongoing film series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many fans were baffled. Not only is Venom an antagonist first and foremost, but more than any other villain his existence is predicated entirely on his relationship with Spider-Man. He is a dark inversion of Peter Parker, sharing his powers and his appearance, and his origin and motivation centre squarely around his hatred of the hero.
Read MoreThe Hollywood landscape into which Pixar’s twentieth computer-animated feature Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird, 2018) now sits is very different to the filmmaking climate of the original. Back in 2004 when audiences first glimpsed the superheroic exploits of the Parr family – Bob/Mr. Incredible and Helen/Elastigirl, alongside their three children Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack – the resurrection of contemporary superhero cinema was still very much in its infancy.
Read MoreIn his review of the latest in the Marvel-backed behemoths to embark upon an all-out assault against our eardrums, wallets and box office records, BBC Radio Five Live and Observer film critic Mark Kermode described Avengers: Infinity War (The Russo Brothers, 2018) as a having a fundamental problem stemming from a “fundamental lack of consequence”. This, from a movie that takes place across multiple galaxies, deals with a villain hell bent on wiping out half the universe’s population and, in the process of doing so, leaves a trail of destruction across planets, kingdoms and franchises. The culmination of a story arc ten years in the making, Avengers: Infinity War is a move with cross-franchise implications that demands a seemingly galactic level of prior narrative investment for audiences to even understand the opening reel.
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