ABSTRACT

Big-budget, spectacular films designed to appeal to a mass audience: is this what - or all - blockbusters are? Movie Blockbusters brings together writings from key film scholars, including Douglas Gomery, Peter Kramer, Jon Lewis and Steve Neale, to address the work of notable blockbuster auteurs such as Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, discuss key movies such as Star Wars and Titanic, and consider the context in which blockbusters are produced and consumed, including what the rise of the blockbuster says about the Hollywood film industry, how blockbusters are marketed and exhibited, and who goes to see them. The book also considers the movie scene outside Hollywood, discussing blockbusters made in Bollywood, China, South Korea, New Zealand and Argentina

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

chapter |30 pages

The New Hollywood

part 1|54 pages

Industry Matters

chapter 1|14 pages

Hollywood Blockbusters

Historical dimensions

chapter 2|11 pages

Following the Money in America's Sunniest Company Town

Some notes on the political economy of the Hollywood blockbuster

chapter 3|12 pages

The Hollywood Blockbuster

Industrial analysis and practice

chapter 4|15 pages

The Role of the Auteur in the Age of the Blockbuster

Steven Spielberg and Dream Works

part 2|54 pages

Exploring Spectacle

chapter 5|13 pages

Talking About a Revolution

The blockbuster as industrial advertisement

chapter 7|13 pages

“Want to Take a Ride?”

Reflections on the blockbuster experience in Contact (1997)

chapter 8|12 pages

Blockbusting Sound

The case of The Fugitive

part 3|61 pages

Establishing Cultural Status

chapter 9|12 pages

Circulations of Taste

Titanic, the Oscars, and the middlebrow

chapter 10|11 pages

Sex, Controversy, Box-Office

From blockbuster to bonkbuster

chapter 11|12 pages

Star Wars in Fandom, Film Theory, and the Museum

The cultural status of the cult blockbuster

chapter 12|12 pages

The Best Place to See a Film

The blockbuster, the multiplex, and the contexts of consumption

chapter 13|12 pages

Neither One Thing Nor the Other

Blockbusters at film festivals

part 4|54 pages

The Blockbuster in the International Frame

chapter 14|13 pages

“What's Big About the Big Film?”

“De-Westernizing” the blockbuster in Korea and China

chapter 15|12 pages

Once Were Warriors

New Zealand's first indigenous blockbuster

chapter 16|13 pages

Television for the Big Screen

How Comodines became Argentina's first blockbuster phenomenon

chapter 17|14 pages

Locating Bollywood

Notes on the Hindi blockbuster, 1975 to the present