Edinburgh University Press Film Reboots Edinburgh University Press 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd i 21/07/20 4:34 PM Screen Serialities Series editors: Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis Series advisory board: Kim Akass, Glen Creeber, Shane Denson, Jennifer Forrest, Jonathan Gray, Julie Grossman, Daniel Herbert, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Frank Kelleter, Amanda Ann Klein, Kathleen Loock, Jason Mittell, Sean O’Sullivan, Barton Palmer, Alisa Perren, Dana Polan, Iain Robert Smith, Shannon Wells-Lassagne, Linda Williams Screen Serialities provides a forum for introducing, analysing and theorising a broad spectrum of serial screen formats – including franchises, series, serials, sequels and remakes. Over and above individual texts that happen to be serialised, the book series takes a guiding focus on seriality as an aesthetic and industrial principle that has shaped the narrative logic, socio-cultural function and economic identity of screen texts across more than a century of cinema, television and ‘new’ media. Titles in this ser ies include: Film Reboots EditedEdinburgh by Daniel Herbert and UniversityConstantine Verevis Press Reanimated: The Contemporary American Horror Remake By Laura Mee Gender and Seriality: Practices and Politics of Contemporary US Television By Maria Sulimma 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd ii 21/07/20 4:34 PM Film Reboots Edited by Daniel Herbert and Constantine Verevis Edinburgh University Press 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd iii 21/07/20 4:34 PM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Daniel Herbert and Constantine Verevis, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The TunEdinburgh – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) University Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh Press EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 5136 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 5138 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 5139 0 (epub) The right of Daniel Herbert and Constantine Verevis to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd iv 21/07/20 4:34 PM Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction: Film Reboots 1 Daniel Herbert and Constantine Verevis Part I Industry and Commerce 1 RethinkingEdinburgh the ‘Supersystem’: University Film Reboots Press and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Daniel Herbert 19 2 Live Long and Prosper: Rebooting Star Trek and Reimagining Fandom 33 Erin Hanna 3 The Many Reboots of the Batman 47 Eileen R. Meehan Part II Structure and Narrative 4 The Edge of Reality: Replicating Blade Runner 65 Constantine Verevis 5 Gender, Genre and the Reboot: From Ocean’s 11/Eleven to Ocean’s 8/Eight 81 Jennifer Forrest 6 Understanding Twin Peaks: The Return as a ‘Film Reboot’ via Anti-Franchise Discourses Within Media Franchising 97 Matt Hills 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd v 21/07/20 4:34 PM vi CONTENTS 7 All This Has Happened Before: Mythic Repetition in the Film-to-Television Reboot 111 Nicholas Benson and Jonathan Gray Part III Politics and Identity 8 Resistance and Empire: Star Wars and the Social Justice Reboot 127 Derek Johnson 9 Rebooting the Politics of the Sports Melodrama: Creed vs Rocky 143 Chuck Tryon 10 Ghost Girls: Ghostbusters, Popular Feminism and the Gender-Swap Reboot 157 Claire Perkins Part IV Fans and Audiences 11 Reboot, Requel, Legacyquel: Jurassic World and the Nostalgia Franchise 173 Kathleen Loock 12 World-building, Retconning and Legacy Rebooting: Alien and Contemporary Media Franchise Strategies 189 James Fleury 13 Anticipating the Reboot: Teasing Top Gun 2 205 EdinburghPaul Grainge University Press 14 A Dark Knight on Elm Street: Discursive Regimes of (Sub)Cultural Value, Paratextual Bonding, and the Perils of Remaking and Rebooting Canonical Horror Cinema 219 William Proctor Index 233 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd vi 21/07/20 4:34 PM Figures and Tables FIGURES 2.1 An objectifying shot of Uhura as she removes her top, Star Trek (2009) 41 2.2 AEdinburgh shot of Kirk in bed Universitywith a woman, her facePress and body obscured by shadow, appears between two suggestive shots of Uhura in the film’s trailer, Star Trek (2009) 41 2.3 A shot of Uhura and Kirk’s first meeting is taken out of context in order to suggest a sexual relationship between the two characters, Star Trek (2009) 41 4.1 Deckard emerges from the shadows, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 68 4.2 Rachael replicated, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 76 4.3 Deckard finds his daughter, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 77 5.1 Danny Ocean appears before a New Jersey parole review board, Ocean’s Eleven (2001) 83 5.2 Keeping it in the family, Debbie Ocean appears before another New Jersey parole review board, Ocean’s Eight (2018) 84 11.1 Gray’s View-Master expresses Jurassic World ’s (2015) self-understanding as a nostalgia-driven reboot 180 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd vii 21/07/20 4:34 PM viii FIGURES AND TABLES 11.2 Serial progression: Gray and Zach’s ‘Gyrosphere’ ride echoes and surpasses the View-Master’s immersive experience Jurassic World (2015) 183 11.3 Backward-gazing temporalities of the nostalgia franchise: Jurassic World (2015) privileges ideas of white, middle-class heteronormativity 185 13.1 Artefacts of Top Gun nostalgia, photo by author 207 TABLES 3.1 Budget and revenues for WCI’s Superman films 56 3.2 Budget and revenues for WCI’s Batman films 57 3.3 Budget and revenues for TWI’s Batman films 58 Edinburgh University Press 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd viii 21/07/20 4:34 PM Notes on Contributors Nicholas Benson is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Com- munication Studies at Augustana College, Illinois. His work has appeared in Critical Studies in Television and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. James Fleury is a lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St Louis. He received his PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA in 2019. He is the co-editor of the anthology The Franchise Era: Managing Media in the DigitalEdinburgh Economy (2019). UniversityHis publications have Press appeared in Mediascape (2012, 2015), the South Atlantic Review (2015), and the edited collections James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy (2014) and Content Wars: Tech Empires vs. Media Empires (forthcoming). He is currently preparing a monograph based on his doctoral dissertation, which analyses the history of video game development and licensing at Warner Bros. Jennifer Forrest is Professor of French at Texas State University. She is the co-editor with Leonard Koos of Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (2002), the editor of The Legend Returns and Dies Harder Another Day: Essays on Film Series (2008) and Decadent Aesthetics and the Acrobat in Fin-de-Siècle France (2019). Her media-related publications in journals and book chapters centre on remakes and seriality in cinema and television. Paul Grainge is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. His books include Promotional Screen Industries (co-authored with Catherine Johnson, 2015), Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube (ed. 2011), Brand Hollywood: Selling Entertain- ment in a Global Media Age (2008), Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader (ed. 2007), Memory and Popular Film (ed. 2003) and Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America (2002). 6359_Herbert and Verevis.indd ix 21/07/20 4:34 PM x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts and Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin– Madison. He is author of Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (2006), Television Entertainment (2008), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010) and (with Amanda D. Lotz) Television Studies (2012), and co-editor of numerous collections including A Companion to Media Authorship (2013) and Keywords for Media Studies (2017). He is also Chief Editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies. Erin Hanna is an assistant professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Only at Comic-Con: Hollywood, Fans, and the Limits of Exclusivity (2019), and her work also appears in CineAction, Television and New Media and the Journal of Fandom Studies. Daniel Herbert is an associate professor in the Department of Film, Televi- sion, and Media at the University of Michigan. He is author of Film Remakes and Franchises (2017) and Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store (2014), the co-author (with Amanda Lotz and Aswin Punathambekar) of Media Industry Studies (2020) and co-editor (with Derek Johnson) of Point of Sale: Analyzing Media Retail (2020). Matt Hills is Professor of Media and Film at the University of Huddersfield. He has published widely on fandom and cult media, beginning with the book Fan Cul- tures (2002), and including The Pleasures of Horror (2005), Triumph of a Time Lord (2010)Edinburgh and Doctor Who: The University Unfolding Event (2015).Press Matt is working on a follow- up to Fan Cultures for Routledge, Fan Studies, and has published on Twin Peaks in the Palgrave edited collection Return to Twin Peaks (2016) as well as in ‘American TV Series Revivals’, a themed special issue of Television and New Media (2017).