Film Reboots

Daniel Herbert is an associate professor in the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan. Constantine Verevis is Associate Professor in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. His publications include: Film Remakes (Edinburgh UP, 2006), Transnational Film Remakes (Edinburgh UP, 2017), Film Reboots (Edinburgh UP, 2020), and Flaming Creatures (2020). With Claire Perkins, he is founding co-editor of Screen Serialities (Edinburgh UP).

Daniel Herbert and Constantine Verevis’ Film Reboots is dedicated to a fundamental question of the form, namely why do reboots exist and what do they do? An impressive array of scholars engage with the contemporary reboot as an industrial practice, narrative strategy, political text, and fan object, using both expected (Batman, Star Wars) and unexpected (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Twin Peaks) franchises as case studies. This collection is an important addition to and intervention in the growing body of scholarship on screen serialities.

• Introduction: Film Reboots 5Daniel Herbert and Constantine VerevisPART I: INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE1. Rethinking the ‘Supersystem’: Film Reboots and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 31Daniel Herbert2. Live Long and Prosper: Rebooting Star Trek and Reimagining Fandom 53Erin Hanna3. The Many Reboots of the Batman 76Eileen R. Meehan PART II: STRUCTURE AND NARRATIVE4. The Edge of Reality: Replicating Blade Runner 103Constantine Verevis5. Gender, Genre and the Reboot: From Ocean’s 11/Eleven to Ocean’s 8/Eight 124Jennifer Forrest6. Understanding Twin Peaks: The Return as a ‘Film Reboot’ via Anti-Franchise Discourses Within Media Franchising 145Matt Hills7. All This Has Happened Before: Mythic Repetition in the Film-to-Television Reboot 167Nicholas Benson & Jonathan GrayPART III: POLITICS AND IDENTITY8. Resistance and Empire: Star Wars and the Social Justice Reboot 189Derek Johnson9. Rebooting the Politics of the Sports Melodrama: Creed vs. Rocky 214Chuck Tryon10. Ghost Girls: Ghostbusters, Popular Feminism and the Gender-Swap Reboot236Claire PerkinsPART IV: FANS AND AUDIENCES11. Reboot, Requel, Legacyquel: Jurassic World and the Nostalgia Franchise 259Kathleen Loock12. Worldbuilding, Retconning, and Legacy Rebooting: Alien and Contemporary Media Franchise Strategies 283James Fleury13. Anticipating the Reboot: Teasing Top Gun 2 309Paul Grainge14. A Dark Knight on Elm Street: Discursive Regimes of (Sub) Cultural Value, Paratextual Bonding, and the Perils of Remaking and Rebooting Canonical Horror Cinema 331William ProctorContributors 352Notes