Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel

by Carolyn Jess-Cooke (Editor), Constantine Verevis (Editor)

The first collection of essays devoted to the phenomenon of the film sequel.

Sequels, serials, and remakes have been a staple of cinema since the very beginning, and recent years have seen the emergence of dynamic and progressive variations of these multi-film franchises. Taking a broad range of sequels as case studies, from the Godfather movies to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Second Takes confronts the complications posed by film sequels and their aftermaths, proposing new critical approaches to what has become a dominant industrial mode of Hollywood cinema. The contributors explore the sequel’s investments in repetition, difference, continuation, and retroactivity, and particularly those attitudes and approaches toward the sequel that hold it up as a kind of figurehead of Hollywood’s commercial imperatives. An invaluable resource to the film student, critic, and fan, Second Takes offers new ways of looking at the film sequel’s industrial, aesthetic, cultural, political, and theoretical contexts.

“…engage[s] with the sequel in a wide range of national and historical contexts.” — Scope

“… Second Takes is the first essay collection exploring the trend of sequelization and multi-film franchises in contemporary cinema and an excellent and valuable addition to the slowly growing field of academic research on sequels, series, and remakes.” — Screening the Past

“A comprehensive and adventurous exploration of a timely topic.” — Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia

263 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2010

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.