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.
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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.