Film Sequels: Theory and Practice from Hollywood to Bollywood

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

The film sequel has been much maligned in popular culture as a vampirish corporative exercise in profit-making and narrative regurgitation. Drawing upon a wide range of filmic examples from early cinema to the twenty-first century, this exciting new volume reveals the increasing popularity of, and experimentation with, film sequels as a central dynamic of Hollywood cinema. Now creeping into world cinemas and independent film festivals, the sequel is persistently employed as a vehicle for cross-cultural dialogue and as a structure by which memories and cultural narratives can be circulated across geographical and historical locations. This book aims to account for some of the major critical contexts within which sequelisation operates by exploring sequel production beyond box office figures. Its account ranges across sequels in recent mainstream cinema, art-house and ‘indie’ sequels, non-Hollywood sequels, the effects of the domestic market on sequelisation, and the impact of the video game industry on Hollywood. The the sequel within its industrial, cultural, theoretical and global contexts.*Offers an essential resource for students and critics interested in film and literary studies, adaptation, critical theory and cultural studies.*Provides the first study of film sequels in world cinemas and independent film-making.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published February 2, 2009

About the author

C.J. (Carolyn) Cooke is an acclaimed, award-winning poet, novelist and academic with numerous publications as Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Caro Carver. Her work has been published in twenty-three languages to date. Born in Belfast, C.J. has a PhD in Literature from Queen’s University, Belfast, and is currently Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and creative writing interventions for mental health. Her books have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Good Housekeeping, and the Daily Mail. She has been nominated for an Edgar Award and an ITW Thriller Award, selected as Waterstones’ Paperback Book of the Year and a BBC 2 Pick, and has had two Book of the Month Club selections in the last year. She lives in Scotland with her husband and four children.

Reviews

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Offered a great insight into the history of the sequel in the first chapters. The last chapter, however, seemed out of place as it tried to explain a sequel through a metaphorical one. Not that I don't agree, but would have enjoyed a 'classical' sequel instead. Would have liked to read more about the dramatic structure of a sequel and an in depth comparison between an 'original' and a sequel - to understand more clearly why the traditional Hollywood sequel so often disappoints based on the storytelling and characterization.