Julian Stringer - Movie Blockbusters

MOVIE BLOCKBUSTERS

Big-budget, spectacular films designed to appeal to a mass audience: is this what or all blockbusters are? Movie Blockbusters brings together leading film scholars to consider this most high-profile and culturally significant genre. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives, the book traces how and why the event movie has played such a large role in the popular imagination, tracing a path from the spectacles of the silent era to the effects-laden mega-hits of the digital age.

The contributors explain what the rise of the blockbuster says about the Hollywood film industry, address the work of notable blockbuster auteurs such as Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, discuss key movies such as Jaws, The Jazz Singer, The Ten Commandments, Terminator 2, and Titanic, and consider the various contexts in which blockbusters are produced, distributed, marketed, and consumed. In addition, the book considers the movie scene outside Hollywood, discussing blockbusters made in Bollywood, China, South Korea, New Zealand, and Argentina.

MOVIE BLOCKBUSTERS

Edited by

Julian Stringer

FOR STEVE

First published 2003

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Reprinted 2006, 2008

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2003 Editorial material: Julian Stringer; chapters: the contributors

Typeset in Perpetua by

BOOK NOW Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested

ISBN 978-0-415-25608-7 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-415-25609-4 (pbk)

CONTENTS

JULIAN STRINGER

THOMAS SCHATZ

PART I
Industry matters

STEVE NEALE

JON LEWIS

DOUGLAS GOMERY

WARREN BUCKLAND

PART II
Exploring spectacle

MICHAEL ALLEN

GEOFF KING

PETER KRMER

GIANLUCA SERGI

PART III
Establishing cultural status

GILLIAN ROBERTS

REBECCA FEASEY

MATT HILLS

MARK JANCOVICH AND LUCY FAIRE

JULIAN STRINGER

PART IV
The blockbuster in the international frame

CHRIS BERRY

KIRSTEN MOANA THOMPSON

TAMARA L. FALICOV

ANDREW WILLIS

The bigness of Ben-Hur (1925)

The most fantastic Bond set ever until the next one: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The Ten Commandments (1956): the parting of the Red Sea

A box-office blockbuster: Quo Vadis (1951)

The spectacle of destruction: Earthquake (1974)

Follow the money: Batman (1989)

Jaws (1975)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Recirculating E. T., Manhattan, New York, March 2002

Advertising the event: The Jazz Singer (1927)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Contact (1997): Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) prepares for the ride of her life

Do they think theyre making a film or a movie?: James Cameron (right) directs Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of Titanic (1997)

Bonking big time: Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone go at it in Basic Instinct (1992)

Star Wars (1977)

The Showcase multiplex, Nottingham, England

Anna May Wong and Douglas Fairbanks senior in The Thief of Bagdad (1924), one of the Thames Silent Classics showcased at the London Film Festival

Made in China: The Opium War (1997)

Made in Korea: Shiri (1999)

Once Were Warriors (1994)

Comodines (1997)

Aoka (2001)

Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan

CONTRIBUTORS

Michael Allen teaches film, television, and new media at Birkbeck College, London. He is author of Family Secrets: The Feature Films of D.W. Griffith (British Film Institute, 2000), has contributed to The Cinema Book (BFI, 1999) and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Routledge, 1998), and has just completed a book on contemporary American cinema for McLean Press and Pearson International. He also designs multimedia materials for film and television studies use.

Chris Berry teaches in the Film Studies Program and Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of numerous articles on Chinese cinema, and editor of Perspectives on Chinese Cinema (British Film Institute, 1991). His current project is a book on Chinese cinema and the national (co-written with Mary Farquhar) for Cambridge University Press.

Warren Buckland is Associate Professor in Film Studies at Chapman University, California. He is editor of The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind (Amsterdam University Press, 1995), author of Teach Yourself Film Studies (Hodder & Stoughton/NTC Press, 1998) and The Cognitive Semiotics of Film (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and co-author (with Thomas Elsaesser) of Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (Arnold, 2002).

Lucy Faire is a Research Associate in the Department of Geography at Loughborough University, working on the project Modernizing the City: Experiences of Urban Change in Post-War Britain. She is co-author of The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (British Film Institute, 2003).

Tamara L. Falicov is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film and Latin American Studies at the University of Kansas. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Argentina and a Rockefeller Humanities Visiting Fellowship at the University of the Republic, Uruguay. She has published in Media, Culture and Society, Southern Quarterly, and Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. She is currently writing a book on the history of the film industry in Argentina and its relationships with Hollywood and European cinema.

Rebecca Feasey is a Ph.D student in the Institute of Film Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include star studies, reception studies, and the contemporary erotic thriller.

Douglas Gomery teaches at the University of Maryland, and is resident scholar at the Library of American Broadcasting. His previous publications include Who Owns the Media? (Erlbaum Publishers, 2000), Shared Pleasures (University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), and The Hollywood Studio System (Macmillan/BFI, 1986).

Matt Hills is a Lecturer in the School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He is the author of Fan Cultures (Routledge, 2002) and has written for The Velvet Light Trap, Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, and