Book Chapters by Tara Lomax
Starring Tom Cruise, 2021
The idea of a “franchise star” reflects creative and industrial shifts in how the interplay of st... more The idea of a “franchise star” reflects creative and industrial shifts in how the interplay of stardom, intellectual property (IP), and narrative is negotiated in contemporary Hollywood. As Derek Johnson identifies, the star system and franchising are “two modes of Hollywood product differentiation” that sometimes work in contestation (2008, 216). Like the star system, Hollywood franchising leverages the marketability of recognizable icons; however, the difference between the two systems is that stardom’s iconicity centers on the bodily spectacle and narrational significance of human persona, and the franchise system leverages the iconicity and expandability of IP and story brands—like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Marvel’. This process of expansion is enabled by synergistic branding strategies and broader convergence practices in the media culture landscape. Stardom and franchising are therefore both effective industrial systems with comparable marketing objectives suited to different modes of production. Sometimes these systems converge, but they do not always easily coalesce. Focusing on producer and actor Tom Cruise as a case study, this chapter examines the negotiation of stardom and franchising as it relates to storyworld design and industrial synergy.
The Supervillain Reader, 2020
Darth Vader is one of the most iconic supervillains in popular culture. As an evil archetype, Vad... more Darth Vader is one of the most iconic supervillains in popular culture. As an evil archetype, Vader’s unequivocal villainy is predicated upon the enigma of his origin and the good versus evil polarity that arguably underpins the Star Wars franchise. However, the Star Wars prequel trilogy complicates the oversimplified dualism of this thematic premise by revealing Vader’s past as Anakin Skywalker: the once heroic “Chosen One” turned corrupted Jedi Knight then Sith Lord. Considering Vader’s various depictions across movies, comic books, and television, this chapter examines the sequential complexity of Vader’s villainy with a focus on how the prequel trilogy complicates notions of temporality, memory, and continuity. In occupying both the before and after, the prequel trilogy presents Vader as a liminal villain who is simultaneously Jedi and Sith, thus contributing a temporal perspective to Vader’s role as villain to re-works the themes of heroism, villainy, and ‘destiny’ in the Star Wars franchise.
Hannibal Lecter’s Monstrous Return: The Horror of Seriality in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, 2019
The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production, 2019
The Superhero Symbol: Media, Culture, and Politics , 2019
The industrial conditions concerning owner ship and licensing of intellectual property (IP) are c... more The industrial conditions concerning owner ship and licensing of intellectual property (IP) are central to the development of creative content in contemporary media franchising. Similarly, the licensing relationships between comic book publishers and Hollywood studios have a dynamic impact on the creative development and industrial identity of superhero properties. For example, in the late 1990s Marvel Comics regained its economic stability following bankruptcy by licensing high-profile superhero properties like Spider-Man and the X-Men to Hollywood studios.1 This licensing strategy saw Marvel forfeit creative control of a number of its characters. Media and cultural studies scholar Derek Johnson notes that such licensing agreements gave Hollywood studios "creative and economic control over production, marketing, and sublicensing," and thus Marvel "strug gled to maintain creative power over the direction of its comic book films."2 This creative-industrial tension is at the foundation of Marvel Studios' orga nizational identity as a movie production com pany conceived to selfproduce its remaining superhero properties. As president of Marvel Entertainment Alan Fine explains, in setting up Marvel Studios "we wanted to control the destinies of our own characters. We wanted to decide when, how, and in which ways we would bring them to filmed-entertainment."3 Therefore, Marvel Studios is founded as an industrial intervention into the conventional structures of owner ship and licensing relations between Hollywood and the American comic book industry. Marvel Studios' objective to self-produce its own superhero properties is realized in the development of what it has branded the Marvel Cinematic 3LMU E Q RQEC P > SC P QU 9 CPP 1II E QP CPC SCB Practicing Superhuman Law ✪ 119 3LMU E Q RQEC P > SC P QU 9 CPP 1II E QP CPC SCB
The book series Transmedia: Participatory Culture and Media Convergence provides a platform for c... more The book series Transmedia: Participatory Culture and Media Convergence provides a platform for cutting-edge research in the field of media studies, with a strong focus on the impact of digitization, globalization, and fan culture. The series is dedicated to publishing the highest-quality monographs (and exceptional edited collections) on the developing social, cultural, and economic practices surrounding media convergence and audience participation. The term 'media convergence' relates to the complex ways in which the production, distribution, and consumption of contemporary media are affected by digitization, while 'participatory culture' refers to the changing relationship between media producers and their audiences.
Journal Articles by Tara Lomax
Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2018
In Bryan Fuller's television show Hannibal (2013–2015), the kitchen and dining room are represent... more In Bryan Fuller's television show Hannibal (2013–2015), the kitchen and dining room are represented as traditional spaces for the sociocultural experience of cooking and eating food; however, the deliberate use of editing techniques subverts the conventionality of these spaces by re-formalizing them as crime and murder scenes. Here I consider how Fuller’s Hannibal deploys editing and the concept of “collisional montage” to provoke a spatial nexus between murder and the kitchen, and thus cannibalism and eating animals. This collisional dynamic corresponds with the theorization of montage by Soviet filmmaker and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein: “from the collision of two given factors arises a concept.”1 Following this theorem, I argue that in Fuller’s Hannibal, montage reformulates the monstrosity of cannibalism in its association with everyday meat-eating. Moreover, because intertextual and paratextual knowledge already informs viewers that Hannibal Lecter is a cannibal, I contend that the ambiguity of Lecter’s meals is less focused on the reprehensibility of cannibalism and is instead directed towards the conflicting association between cannibalism and everyday meat-eating. The use of montage in Fuller’s Hannibal is particularly significant in this context because editing practices cut across our intertextual and paratextual knowledge of “Hannibal the Cannibal” in order to problematize the aesthetic benevolence of his kitchen and dining table.
“Too Busy Building a World to Tell a Story”: Between World-Building and Storytelling in the Cleverman Storyworld
Senses of Cinema, 2018
The notion of storyworlds is not new to storytelling or narratology; even so, transmedia storytel... more The notion of storyworlds is not new to storytelling or narratology; even so, transmedia storytelling and media convergence have enabled more ways of understanding the dynamic between storytelling and world-building. As recognised by seminal transmedia studies scholar Henry Jenkins, “More and more, storytelling has become the art of world-building, as artists create compelling environments that cannot be fully explored or exhausted within a single work or even a single medium.” The Australian science fiction/superhero storyworld of Cleverman offers a compelling perspective on this shift because its transmedial development, from television to a comic book, is not yet extensive but yet its narrative deliberately drives world-building; indeed, even before its extension from a television series to a comic book, season one of Cleverman was criticised by online commentator Brandon Nowalk for being “too busy building a world to tell a story.” Provoked by this review, this article examines the dynamic between world-building and storytelling in Cleverman and, in doing so, demonstrates how the storyworld activates the dimensions of world-building as a narrative strategy in itself.
Interviews by Tara Lomax
Talking Franchises: The World of Transmedia Development with Jeff Gomez
Assembled illusions, 2019
Interview with leading transmedia developer Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Je... more Interview with leading transmedia developer Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Jeff is an expert in transmedia narratology and storyworld design. With his team at Starlight Runner, he has worked as advisor on building blockbuster franchise properties like Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, Transformers, and Amazing Spider-Man. Our conversation focused on the art and craft of transmedia development, with discussion venturing into the successes and failures of franchises like Dark Universe, Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and more.
Online Essays by Tara Lomax
‘Rogue One’ and the Paradoxes of Franchise Development
“That’s Not How the Force Works!” Rebooting the Franchise Mythos in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’
Conference Presentations by Tara Lomax
The Legacy of Superhero Film Serials: Early Adaptations, Crude Licensing Agreements, and the Case of Republic Pictures’ ‘Captain America’ (1944)
Superheroes Beyond Conference, 2018
The adaptation of comic book superheroes into movie franchises is a decidedly dominant feature of... more The adaptation of comic book superheroes into movie franchises is a decidedly dominant feature of current entertainment, but the history of superheroes in Hollywood cinema extends beyond the contemporary blockbuster period. The historical precedent for this current moment of peak superhero cinema is frequently charted back to the beginning of the blockbuster era of the late-1970s with Superman (Richard Donner, 1978), and the conglomerate era of the new millennium with X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000) and Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002); however, these milestones only trace part of the ‘historical narrative’ of the superhero movie adaptation.
Comic book superheroes have been adapted for cinema since the classical Hollywood era in the form of film serials, which were short cliff hanger narratives that screened weekly before Hollywood features typically as part of a Saturday matinee program. The superhero genre was significant to the film serial form, with The Adventures of Captain Marvel (Republic, 1941) being the first Hollywood production to adapt a costumed superhero property from a comic book; this initiated a decade-long genre cycle until the decline of the film serial form in the 1950s.
Republic Pictures’ 15-chapter film serial Captain America (1944) is noteworthy because it reveals the unrefined licensing arrangements of superhero properties during this early adaptation period. Only loosely based on the superhero character of the comic books, Republic’s adaptation of Captain America is a productive example of what I call ‘crude licensing agreements,’ which are common during this early adaptation period and pay very little attention to a consistency of brand or narrative mythos—indeed, in Republics’ film serial, Captain America wields a gun instead of a shield.
Like the film serial form itself, the cycle of early adaptations of comic book superheroes is significantly under-researched and often marginalised within studies of classical Hollywood cinema and the emergent interest in superhero scholarship. The objective of this paper is to counter this critical deficiency by acknowledge how the history of comic book superhero adaptations in Hollywood cinema extends beyond the contemporary era.
Practicing Superhuman Law: The Multiplicity of Licensing and Franchising Superhero Identities
Post-Hollywood: Animating the Illusion of Location in Melbourne’s Post, Digital, and Visual Effects Industry
Hannibal Lecter’s Monstrous Return: The Horror of Seriality in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal.
On Being Cinematic in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Medium Specificity in Transmedia Storytelling and Media Franchising
Transmedia storytelling and media franchising are modes of creative and industrial practice that ... more Transmedia storytelling and media franchising are modes of creative and industrial practice that reflect the pervasiveness of media multiplicity in contemporary screen media culture. In this context, cinema is arguably no longer foregrounded as the creative centrepiece of the entertainment landscape; rather, it can exist in dialogue, confluence, and even tension with other media platforms, like television, video gaming, comic books, and theme parks. For this reason, the emergent critical intersection between cinema and media studies has encouraged a shift away from medium specificity as an analytic approach to textuality—which is now arguably considered an outdated form of media purism—towards a heightened focus on the influences and confluence across media forms.
This paper argues that, in the context of transmedia storytelling and media franchising, the study of media specificity is more relevant than ever to understanding the nature and function of media multiplicity. In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins seminally defines the ideal form of transmedia storytelling as the organised dispersal of a story world across multiple media platforms. Moreover, Jenkins provides an often understated qualification to this definition: he specifies that, in strategically organising story worlds across multiple media, “each medium does what it does best” (2006, 96). This paper considers the implications of this statement for cinema in relation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as a compelling case study.
The MCU is a transmedia franchise that assembles and expands a narrative world across media platforms; in this way, it follows the creative premise “it’s all connected,” as it interweaves character development and plot across multiple iterations and mediums. Paradoxically, the MCU foregrounds the ‘cinematic’ as the media centrepiece of its branding strategy. Therefore, in considering the role of media specificity in the context of transmedia franchising, the MCU incites questions about what it means to be ‘cinematic’ in the context of its strategically organised transmedia universe.
Talks by Tara Lomax
Post-Hollywood: The Illusion of Location in Melbourne’s Post, Digital, and Visual Effects Industry
Papers by Tara Lomax
7 Practicing Superhuman Law Creative License, Industrial Identity, and Spider-Man’s Homecoming
Rutgers University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022
“Make it in Post”: Digital Visual Effects and the Temporality of Creative Value in Post-Production
The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production, 2019
Digital production has had a transformative impact on the temporal process of traditional screen ... more Digital production has had a transformative impact on the temporal process of traditional screen production, such that screen content is not only “fixed in post” but now also “made in post.” However, industrial ideologies and production protocols related to digital visual effects (VFX) and post-production tacitly maintain distinctions between creative and technical skillsets and labour output across production stages, particularly between principal and post-production. This chapter focuses on the production culture concerning digital VFX, which productively reflects the complex temporal dynamics impacting the value of creativity in post-production more broadly. The production protocol “fix it in post” reflects a history of such ideologies that marginalise and devalue the contribution of post-production in the creative appraisal of screen output; moreover, the protocol expresses creative value in temporal terms, in which “after-ness” in the screen production process connotes technica...
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Book Chapters by Tara Lomax
Journal Articles by Tara Lomax
Interviews by Tara Lomax
Online Essays by Tara Lomax
Conference Presentations by Tara Lomax
Comic book superheroes have been adapted for cinema since the classical Hollywood era in the form of film serials, which were short cliff hanger narratives that screened weekly before Hollywood features typically as part of a Saturday matinee program. The superhero genre was significant to the film serial form, with The Adventures of Captain Marvel (Republic, 1941) being the first Hollywood production to adapt a costumed superhero property from a comic book; this initiated a decade-long genre cycle until the decline of the film serial form in the 1950s.
Republic Pictures’ 15-chapter film serial Captain America (1944) is noteworthy because it reveals the unrefined licensing arrangements of superhero properties during this early adaptation period. Only loosely based on the superhero character of the comic books, Republic’s adaptation of Captain America is a productive example of what I call ‘crude licensing agreements,’ which are common during this early adaptation period and pay very little attention to a consistency of brand or narrative mythos—indeed, in Republics’ film serial, Captain America wields a gun instead of a shield.
Like the film serial form itself, the cycle of early adaptations of comic book superheroes is significantly under-researched and often marginalised within studies of classical Hollywood cinema and the emergent interest in superhero scholarship. The objective of this paper is to counter this critical deficiency by acknowledge how the history of comic book superhero adaptations in Hollywood cinema extends beyond the contemporary era.
This paper argues that, in the context of transmedia storytelling and media franchising, the study of media specificity is more relevant than ever to understanding the nature and function of media multiplicity. In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins seminally defines the ideal form of transmedia storytelling as the organised dispersal of a story world across multiple media platforms. Moreover, Jenkins provides an often understated qualification to this definition: he specifies that, in strategically organising story worlds across multiple media, “each medium does what it does best” (2006, 96). This paper considers the implications of this statement for cinema in relation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as a compelling case study.
The MCU is a transmedia franchise that assembles and expands a narrative world across media platforms; in this way, it follows the creative premise “it’s all connected,” as it interweaves character development and plot across multiple iterations and mediums. Paradoxically, the MCU foregrounds the ‘cinematic’ as the media centrepiece of its branding strategy. Therefore, in considering the role of media specificity in the context of transmedia franchising, the MCU incites questions about what it means to be ‘cinematic’ in the context of its strategically organised transmedia universe.
Talks by Tara Lomax
Papers by Tara Lomax