Avengers Assemble!: Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe

by Terence McSweeney (Editor)

We are living in the age of the superhero and we cannot deny it. Avengers Assemble! is a vibrant and theoretically informed interrogation of one of the defining and most financially successful film franchises of the new millennium. In the first single-authored monograph on the topic of the Marvel cinematic universe, Terence McSweeney asks, "Why has the superhero genre reemerged so emphatically in recent years?" In an age where people have stopped going to the cinema as frequently as they used to, they returned to it in droves for the superhero film. What is it about these films that has resonated with audiences all around the globe? Are they just disposable pop culture artifacts or might they have something interesting to say about the fears and anxieties of the world we live in today?

Beginning with Iron Man in 2008, this study provocatively explores both the cinematic and the televisual branches of the series across ten dynamic and original chapters from a diverse range of critical perspectives which analyse their status as an embodiment of the changing industrial practices of the blockbuster film and their symbolic potency as affective cultural artifacts that are profoundly immersed in the turbulent political climate of their era.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

310 pages, Paperback

Published March 27, 2018

About the author

Dr Terence McSweeney, writer, film-maker and academic who works in Southampton and lives in London, is a senior lecturer in film and television studies at Solent University (Southhampton). He is widely recognized as one of the leading writers on contemporary American cinema. He is the author of The War on Terror and American Film: '9/11 Frames per Second' (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Avengers Assemble! Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Wallflower Press, 2018), The Hurt Locker (Auteur Press, 2019) and The Contemporary Superhero Film (Short Cuts) (Wallflower Press, 2020). He is the editor of American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11 (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), co-editor of Millennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film (Wallflower Press, 2012) and co-editor of Through the Black Mirror: Deconstructing the Side Effects of the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) with Dr Stuart Joy, which features contributions from renowned scholars such as Henry Jenkins, Sean Redmond, Steffen Hantke, M. Keith Booker and many others.
Terence's newest book, Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon (2021), is the first in a new series he is the co-founder of at Mississippi University Press (alongside Dr Stuart Joy) called Reframing Hollywood.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Convincing and nuanced analyses of the individual MCU films up to the beginning of Phase III. But the book stays too close to descriptive analyses of the movies themselves, and lacks any substantial reflection on the media-industrial shifts that facilitated Marvel’s rise in those years. And the rather laborious and repetitive writing makes it a bit of a chore to finish.

[Rangga Sukmawijaya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bagi yang tidak terbiasa membaca karya ilmiah, yang pertama kali terasa mengganggu adalah kutipan-kutipannya. Banyak sekali kutipan di buku ini, baik dari buku lain maupun dari film lain. Dengan model penulisan sumber kutipan (yang ditulis dalam kurung) ditaruh setelah kalimat, pembacaan narasi buku ini menjadi tersendat-sendat.

Buku ini sebenarnya menarik bagi mereka yang berminat pada politik, ideologi, dan nilai-nilai yang ada dalam film-film (baik televisi maupun layar lebar) Marvel. Hanya saja, pembahasan cenderung "terbatas" dari sudut pandang orang Amerika. Memang penulis berusaha melebarkan cakupannya dengan pembandingan film dari Rusia dan India, namun tetap saja terasa tidak memadai. Dan, sekali lagi, kutipannya itu lho ... membuat buku ini jadi tidak enak dibaca.

[Ryan Stanton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a decent analysis of the films you love or hate, that gives some well written and new perspectives. Didn’t agree with all the arguments (The Winter Soldier and to an extent Age Of Ultron), But they’re all well written. Special mention goes to the section on Ant Man which really made me rethink that film.

Worth a read if you like the movies, and maybe if you don’t as well (as some are critical of the films in a way that merits discussion)

[m · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was informative, thorough, and interesting read. The language was academic, yet I found it to be very readable. I found the author's arguments to be persuasive with one exception: in the chapter on Captain America: the Winter Solider, the author made some claims in the conclusion that weren't supported by the film or even the chapter itself. Other than that, I enjoyed this book and found it informative.

[Nora · Rating 2 out of 5]

i had to use this for one of my papers and it was okay.
it annoyed me that most of the footnotes were comments or expansions on what was said rather than where the author had gotten that information from (which was compiled at the end, but it was annoying and i'm feeling petty).
any whoosle yay academia