2025/03/19 by JAMES C. TAYLOR · 1 voice
Computer Science · #Advanced Image Processing Techniques
paper · doi:10.2307/jj.25465118
openalex publication_date 2025/03/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This book develops analytical tools for examining superhero blockbusters. The book’s close textual analysis of significant superhero blockbusters demonstrates that the meanings of these films are shaped through the ways in which they adapt stylistic and narrative strategies from comic books, along with their sustained intertextual dialogue with networks of texts in a range of media. Adaptation theory is used to elucidate narrative and stylistic exchanges that occur within the network of texts featuring all existing incarnations of a character that comprises a superhero franchise, illuminating meanings that accrue through these interactions. The book’s analysis outlines conceptual and formal similarities between the media of comics and cinema that facilitate adaptation but is also attuned to differences that affect the adaptation process and thus the meanings of superhero blockbusters. The book’s framework is developed through detailed analysis of case studies that exemplify popular character models and storytelling strategies within the superhero genre and feature franchises owned by DC Comics and Marvel Comics. The opening chapter examines on the first superhero blockbuster, 1978’s Superman: The Movie, while the others focus on films produced in the genre’s twenty-first century cycle, covering franchises that include Spider-Man, The Avengers and the X-Men. Each chapter expands the book’s critical framework by introducing new concepts that help understand the ways in which superhero blockbusters engage with changing sociopolitical, technological, and industrial contexts. The exploration also demonstrates the crucial role of superhero films in helping establish and develop Hollywood’s post-classical paradigm of blockbuster filmmaking.