Second Takes

Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel

Edited by Carolyn Jess-Cooke & Constantine Verevis

Subjects: Film Studies, Popular Culture
Series: SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema
Paperback : 9781438430300, 263 pages, April 2010
Hardcover : 9781438430294, 263 pages, April 2010

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis

1. Redefining the Sequel: The Case of the (Living) Dead
Constantine Verevis

2. Of “True” Sequels: The Four Daughters Movies, or the Series That Wasn’t
Jennifer Forrest

3. Sequel-Ready Fiction: After Austen’s Happily Ever After
Thomas Leitch

4. Before and After, Before Before and After: Godfather I, II , and III
R. Barton Palmer

5. Sequelizing Hollywood: The American “Smart” Film
Claire Perkins

6. From Remake to Sequel: Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve
Joyce Goggin

7. Decent Burial or Miraculous Resurrection: Serenity, Mourning, and Sequels to Dead Television Shows
Ina Rae Hark

8. Prequel: The “Afterwardsness” of the Sequel
Paul Sutton

9. Circulations: Technology and Discourse in The Ring Intertext
Daniel Herbert

10. Sequelizing the Superhero: Postmillennial Anxiety and Cultural “Need”
Simon McEnteggart

11. Before and After and Right Now: Sequels in the Digital Era 
Nicholas Rombes

12. Sequelizing Spectatorship and Building Up the Kingdom: The Case of Pirates of the Caribbean, Or, How a Theme Park Attraction Spawned a Multibillion-Dollar Film Franchise 
Carolyn Jess-Cooke

Works Cited
List of Contributors
Index

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

Description

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.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. She is the author of Shakespeare on Film: Such Things as Dreams Are Made Of and Film Sequels: Theory and Practice from Hollywood to Bollywood, and the coeditor (with Melissa Croteau) of Apocalyptic Shakespeare: Essays on Visions of Destruction and Revelation in Recent Film Adaptations. Constantine Verevis is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, and the author of Film Remakes.

Reviews

"…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