Action Cinema Since 2000

Abstract

Action Cinema Since 2000 addresses an increasingly lively and evolving field of scholarship, probing the definition and testing the potential of action cinema to reframe the mode for the 21st century. Contributors examine a broad range of content, from blockbusters to smaller independent films, originating from China, Korea, India, France, the USA, and Mexico. Ranging from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to Polite Society (2023), they consider the changing modes of action cinema, with streaming assuming global importance and an ever-increasing number of generic blends. They consider under-explored areas of action film, particularly how race, ethnicity, gender, and age figure in narratives and through image and soundtracks. Overall, the book demonstrates how 21st century action cinema engages with and reflects geopolitical, creative, and industrial developments. Arguing that it continues to offer fantasies of empowerment and mobility that say much about how power is understood in diverse contexts today. This collection explores action cinema since 2000, taking account of current and previous scholarship on action and developments in action films and filmmaking. Despite well-documented socio-political shifts, economic changes, and contested public discourse around media representations in this period, there have been comparatively few comprehensive academic appraisals of recent action films, particularly of those made after 2010. Our anthology focuses, in consequence, on films released 2010–2019, with some chapters looking forward beyond that, and others looking backwards to action history. We view action as a mode rather than a genre because so much action now includes horror, espionage, comic, and thriller conventions, cuts across both big budget blockbusters and smaller independent films and is produced and released around the globe. Essays explore co-productions and work originating from China, Korea, and India as well as in France, the US, and Mexico. Some concentrate on what digital cinema brings to movement, rhythm, sound, and speed. Others consider the ways race, ethnicity, gender, and age figure in narratives and through image and soundtracks. A handful evaluate stardom and study performance. A few signal the oh-so-important contributions of stunt performers, effects artists, and sound designers. Collectively we demonstrate how 21st century action cinema engages with and reflects geopolitical, creative, and industrial developments. Streaming services have assumed global as well as regional or national importance. New generic blends have become prominent. New action bodies have come to the fore. Action cinema continues to offer fantasies of empowerment and mobility that say much about how power is understood in diverse contexts today.