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Stars and the Legacyquel Trailer

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Indy's hat on the ground outside a car surrounded by Communist soldiers in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indy’s hat on the ground outside a car surrounded by Communist soldiers in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Beyond genre and story, stars are the most important part of a legacyquel’s marketing because the returning actors reprising their famous roles validate the legacyquel’s legitimacy even more than the character’s return does on its own. But that is only half of the importance stars bring to the legacyquel. As Kernan asserts, “The rhetoric of stardom is the only one of the three forms of appeal that relies on a feature of the film that possesses an indexical relationship to the social world.”[i] Stars are who they are, they have innate characteristics, and modern audiences care more than ever that the films they see feature different kinds of people than have been traditionally at the forefront of the kinds of movies that have legacyquels. There is, once again, a balance that most legacyquel trailer editors must control between selling the film on the backs of the older, returning stars and advertising the newer, younger stars who will take either prominent or secondary roles based on what the film is doing with its returning star(s). Rely too much on the returning stars and risk irrelevance to new audiences, while too much focus on new stars can have the returning stars and their devoted audiences feeling unsatisfied. Either of these outcomes leads to less excitement for the new legacyquel and more chance that it will be irrelevant rather than a true revitalization of the franchise in question.

There is one major problem that legacyquel trailer editors face: the fact that all of the returning stars will be older and therefore, in a youth-obsessed industry, less valuable than they used to be. However, as a counterbalance, the legacyquel came to prominence in a time when pre-established intellectual property is Hollywood’s biggest selling point for blockbuster franchises that make up the majority of legacyquel production. This focus on IP-based franchises has lead to a sense that stars matter less than ever, and when Marvel opens a new superhero film with a relative unknown like Chris Hemsworth or Simu Liu at the center of it, the notion can seem inescapable. The legacyquel, nevertheless, reminds us that actors (and stars in particular) are still crucial parts of selling a film. One need only look at the two 2010s portrayals of Han Solo to see what a returning star means to a film.

After the huge success of Harrison Ford’s return to the role in The Force Awakens, Disney greenlit a Han Solo prequel film clearly meant to be the first in the series given how much setup for a larger conflict occurs in the final act. But Alden Ehrenreich’s performance in the role drew criticism for both being too imitative and not close enough to Ford’s unique swagger. In studying what stars bring to the films they star in, Richard Dyer finds that it is “the repeated use, within films and through the films of a star’s career, of certain mannerisms, which do the job of personalizing the type the performer plays. These may be relatively ‘naturalistic’ mannerisms, but they are different and repeated enough to constitute idiosyncrasies. These form the basis of the individual star’s performance style.”[ii] Harrison Ford’s star image, reliant upon a delicate balance of being coolly aloof until he gets in way over his head at which point he becomes manically over-the-top, is very difficult to imitate. It’s in his sighs, his gait, even his mouth bouncing back and forth between a wry smile and an intense grimace that the Harrison Ford ‘thing’ becomes apparent. Audiences saw that star image develop over the course of numerous films, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Blade Runner, each of which eventually received a legacyquel where much of the draw was his return as Han Solo, Jones, and Rick Deckard. These legacyquels, however, had to sell him in different ways and took different approaches to his aged appearance.

In the Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s first trailer a full half of the runtime is dedicated to reestablishing not Ford as Jones but Jones the character via recurring iconography like his hat, whip, and even khaki slacks. Before any new footage is shown, viewers are reminded of all of the prior adventures Indy had via iconic shots taken from all three previous films. The trailer editors chose to hide Ford’s face and instead relied at first upon the aspects of the character that didn’t age, up to and including his silhouette. The first full face reveal of Ford features the dialogue “This won’t be easy,” to which Ford responds “Not as easy as it used to be.” This dialogue in combination with his older, more wrinkled face and grey hair and stubble indicates the pose the film will take with the character of acknowledging his aged body and allowing Ford to play the character with a bit more hesitation and bemused slowness. Based on this trailer and, indeed, in the full film, Indy seemingly isn’t much different from how he was the last time audiences saw him in 1989, he’s still a professor and adventurer, he can still do all of the same kinds of stunts he did in those earlier films. He’s just a little slower at it and the trailer editors (and filmmakers) are smart enough to know that this should be acknowledged and even poked fun at. In this way, a sense of continuity is reestablished and audiences are promised that their favorite history professor will be up to his old tricks again, no matter the time that has passed since last they saw him.

The return of an actor as a beloved character doesn’t just reinforce the desire to see that beloved actor but also revives the whole world they once inhabited. The full trailer for The Force Awakens uses Ford in this way as he once again comes in halfway through to briefly appear onscreen and give a voiceover that carries through the next minute or so of the trailer. In his brief appearance audiences are again reminded of his iconic look, leather jacket over white shirt, now replete with grey hair and stubble. His shoulders are more hunched by age than pulled back in Han Solo’s laconic style. And yet, this is Han Solo, no doubt. His presence starts to confirm the importance and even reality of the Star Wars universe, and his voice over continues this work as he says in response to Rey asking about the stories of what happened earlier, “It’s true, all of it. The dark side. The jedi. They’re real.” Here Ford’s gravely voice is used to impart even greater gravitas as he reaffirms both the “reality” and importance of the prior films he was in. Over the course of those films Han Solo went from loner skeptic to rebel leader and best friend to the most powerful man in the galaxy, so having him here say words he once tossed off as a joke like “the dark side” and “jedi” with the kind of near-religious weight some audiences feel for them not only confirms that this new film is indeed a direct sequel to those, it confirms for audiences familiar with these concepts and his prior disapproval of them that they were right to care about them. It’s not just the lines he’s saying, it’s the fact that it’s him saying them the way that he does that makes this such an effective marketing strategy. It speaks to not only his return but the return of the whole storyworld that audiences loved the first time around.

As trailer editors for legacyquels have shown in the prior two trailers examined, there are many possible combinations of prior iconic imagery and new footage, especially when mixed with the score associated with the famous films and characters that preceded the legacyquel and will return in it. There is, however, yet more possible ways to leverage the returning star, which is to create an aural contrast between the past and present. The announcement trailer for Blade Runner 2049 achieves this by playing Ford’s lines from the original film over new footage of Ryan Gosling walking around in the 30-year-later future world of Blade Runner. Ford’s lines are not the most famous, but they adequately set up what a Blade Runner is and reminds audiences of what his character was like, especially as they play over a man who looks a lot like the younger Ford in silhouette (which is mostly how he is shown). “Replicants are like any other machine” Ford says from the past, “they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit it’s not my problem.” These lines appearing in this trailer might have been the only appearance of Ford in the entire marketing and finished film and they’d be effective in setting up the stakes and continuity of the film. The trailer (and filmmakers) is not yet done with him, though, as he returns later in the trailer once again aged with grey hair and stubble. He speaks a few more lines and their content is not as important as the juxtaposition between his prior lines reused from the original film and the lines from this new one where his voice is noticeably more gruff and somehow even more mumbled. Ford has not only visibly aged but audibly as well. Each of these three films use Ford’s aged appearance and way of being in the world to great effect as they contain reflections on the passage of time and the change that has happened within the storyworld offscreen via his character and others. Whether it is through juxtapositions of visual or aural elements from prior films to the new films or the actor/character saying lines that directly affirm the connection between the old and new, legacyquel trailers rely on the returning stars to entice audiences to the theater to experience their old favorites once again.

[i] Ibid., 63.

[ii] Dyer, Richard. Stars. New Edition. London: British Film Institute, 1998.

 

Story and the Elegiac Sequel Trailer

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The rear end of the Ecto-1 from the teaser for Ghostbusters: Afterlife

The rear end of the Ecto-1 from the teaser for Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Legacyquel trailers rely upon the same kinds of story rhetorics as do normal film trailers, albeit with some additional standardized moves. As Kernan states, “The rhetoric of story deals with assumptions trailers make about what kinds of experiences audiences want to watch unfold and narrative time, and what kinds of knowledge they desire to gain at the movies.”[i] Modern trailer makers tend to assume that audiences want to see some indication of the story they will experience within the full film without revealing too much. Usually they will sketch out a rough plotline through the first half of a film in a trailer and occasionally they will use imagery from later in the film divorced from the context of such images. The assumption Kernan outlines suggests that one of the main pleasures of seeing a movie is the experience of an unfolding story such that audiences ooh and ahh in all the right places, gasp at reveals and cheer at victories. The trailer then must be delicately balanced so as to entice audiences by revealing just enough of the story to get audiences interested without giving away those moments (or the predecessors to those moments that would indicate what those moments will likely be) that will make the moviegoing experience a memorable one.

Kernan, writing in 2004, is additionally attuned to the way that movie trailers try to sell the necessity of experiencing the film in question theatrically, a necessity that has become even more urgent as of the writing of this essay in the end of 2021 when movie theaters and film distributors are trying to regain ground lost to streaming services during the (still ongoing) pandemic. She writes that, “The overall message of the rhetoric of story could be expressed thus: ‘You would like to experience these events – at the movies.’ Movies, in other words, aren’t just like ordinary experience […], but at times provide safe opportunities to experience events narratively that audiences might avoid, fear or for other reasons not experience outside the movie theater.”[ii] The legacyquel trailer extends the rhetoric of story as outlined by Kernan as they seek to entice audiences old and new to the theater to experience the full stories to which they refer.

         The legacyquel trailer doesn’t have the same job as most trailers do. As I wrote above, the trailer must attract audiences already familiar with the series to which they seek to add a new entry and audiences unfamiliar with the previous entries. As such, legacyquels tend to have one of two story structures depending on whether the protagonist of the original films will continue to be the protagonist of the new film or if they will instead fulfill a supporting role. In the first case, the films and therefore their accompanying trailers will lead with the returning protagonist prominently featured and the trailer will sell the premise that the character, now older and more experienced, will have to face new problems and encounter new characters who will help or harm them. Examples of this can be seen in the cases of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Matrix: Ressurections, both of which had trailers that heavily feature the returning protagonists and take great pains to note how long it has been since audiences had seen those characters. In the second case, the films tend to hold the returning characters back for anywhere between a few scenes and an act or two. With these kinds of legacyquels, the new characters take on the primary roles and the returning characters act most frequently as mentors, often not showing up until the end of the first act or even as deep as the end of the second act of the film. Because these characters are meant to be a reveal to the audience, their presence is often not centered in the trailers for the films in question. However, since their presence is so essential to the validity of this sequel as being directly connected to the prior entries, the trailers for these kinds of films must either hint heavily at the eventual appearance of the returning characters via glimpses at familiar costuming, iconic associated props or locations, and perhaps a name drop.

The teaser trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife consists of only two shots: a wide shot of a mysterious barn and a growing storm above it, and a low tracking shot going into the barn which ends with a crackle of proton-pack energy and a billowing car cover lifting just enough to show the rear end of the Ecto-1, the iconic ghostbusting vehicle from the original films. The full trailer, released almost a year later, focuses almost entirely on the new characters, a family that moves into a run down house “in the middle of nowhere” full of props familiar to returning audiences like the PK meter, ghost trap, proton pack, and, again, the Ecto-1. But the full trailer doesn’t need to rely just on the props, it also features old footage from the original Ghostbusters film in the guise of a YouTube video of “news footage” of the old gang following their defeat of Gozer. Along with mysterious mentions of a father/grandfather who had abandoned the family long ago, the suspiciously round spectacles and big curly hair of the two kids in the family, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse at a Ghostbuster uniform with the nametag “Spengler,” audiences began to put the pieces together. The final puzzle piece is the reuse of a line from the original Ghostbusters film, “For whatever reasons, call it fate, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason” spoken by an older man. The Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailers do not reveal that any character other than Aykroyd’s returns and even then audiences only hear his voice over a phone. Because the reveal of most of the original characters only happens at the climax of the new film the trailers go out of their way to hide the original Ghostbusters the same way the movie does, only hinting here and there at revelations that will eventually be made late in the full film. These hints speak to returning audiences and engage in what Jason Mittell calls forensic fandom, a kind of fan engagement that sees artists and subsequently trailer editors hiding clues about the mysteries contained within the full work for people to speculate, write, and make YouTube videos about, explaining the 5 hidden references you missed in the trailer.

Most legacyquels, however, don’t either feature the protagonist returning in the main role of the new movie nor do they keep the returning characters hidden until the climax of the latest entry. Instead, most returning characters are introduced somewhere between the end of the first act and the end of the second. Here they’ll be able to help the new protagonists navigate difficulties similar to those they navigated in the earlier entries in the franchise. These entrypoints give audiences enough time to fully invest in the new characters before the reveal that they live in a world shared by (now older) prior protagonists who will take the new characters under their wing.

The delayed entries also align with where trailer editors usually stop showing narrative progression in trailers. Trailer editors will usually save the reveal of the returning character for over a minute and will usually not show much beyond the introduction of the returning character and an offer or ask of support. The first Creed trailer saves the reveal of Sylvester Stallone’s return as Rocky Balboa for a full minute and a half, and the first shot of him is actually a picture of his fight with Apollo Creed from the first Rocky film. Before that the trailer focuses heavily on Adonis Creed, though it doesn’t mention his name and the brief mention of his father who died in the ring is brushed off as something that might have happened to any boxer. Indeed, the first half of this trailer goes out of its way to hide that it is a legacyquel to the Rocky series before revealing Stallone’s Rocky who offers to train the younger Creed.

Whether the trailer is for a legacyquel with a protagonist returning in the main role or as a mentor/supporting character, the trailer still needs to sell the film on a story about an older character teaming up with a younger one in some way, as that is the core conceit of almost all legacyquel films. The story of a young person learning from an elder is common in the kinds of series that get legacyquels, and indeed most of the original films legacyquels are based on shared this kind of character dynamic, whether it was Obi-wan and Luke in Star Wars or Rocky and Mickey in the Rocky films. In this way, the legacyquel marketing needn’t be much different from a standard trailer in these genres. Instead, they can focus on the particularly cinematic aspects of these stories. As the Creed trailer demonstrates, being able to refer to or even visually show scenes and moments from the original films can be an effective reminder of the thrills those films provided audiences as theatrical experiences. The black-and-white photograph of the iconic Rocky/Creed fight from the first Rocky film recalls the event of watching that fight play out for those who had seen the film and as a bit of backstory for those who are new to the franchise. Either way, it sells the monumental nature of that fight, its iconicity not just as a visual bit of excitement but also as perhaps the defining moment for the Rocky character who famously loses in a moment that still somehow feels like a triumph. The picture, even as a small framed photo on a wall, is a stand-in for the event-like nature of going to see a movie like Rocky in a theater, and a promise that this new film, Creed, will be similarly exciting to watch unfold. The trailer editors have done their job to show just how similar but also importantly different (more on this in the next section) Creed is from Rocky by selling him as an underdog just like Rocky was with an aesthetic updating in the filmmaking as discussed in the prior section.

The purpose here is to not only sell audiences on watching the film eventually but on watching it in a movie theater. During the second stage of the Covid-19 pandemic this kind of theatrical drive has become even stronger as trailers go out of their way to say that the upcoming film is premiering “Only in theaters” to distinguish them from those few that have day-and-date releases on a home streaming platform like all 2021 Warner Bros. releases including The Matrix: Ressurrections and Disney’s MCU prequel Black Widow. Here the rhetoric of the necessity of experiencing these stories in a theater becomes not just a promise of excitement and novelty but also exclusivity. Spider-Man: No Way Home will feature returning villains and Peter Parkers from the previous two theatrical Spider-Man franchises via a multi-dimensional warp in Marvel’s first semi-legacyquel and its trailer touts that you’ll only be able to see such sights in a movie theater to try to juice the audience levels back to pre-pandemic levels. Now that the streaming cat is out of the proverbial bag, expect such explicit marketing terms to stick around as trailer editors continue to entice audiences via slightly more subtle means.

[i] Ibid., 53.

[ii] Ibid., 53-54.

Genre and the Elegiac Sequel Trailer

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Rocky and Adonis Creed prepare to fight in Creed

Rocky and Adonis Creed prepare to fight in Creed

Legacyquels most frequently appear within genre franchises. Indeed, the only legacyquel I have found that doesn’t fit into the sci-fi, horror, action, sports, or romance genres is Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2½, a sequel to the first film with the same name made 35+ years prior to its release in 2005. William Greaves’ films deliberately eschew genre and filmmaking mode boundaries, mixing documentary and fiction, romance and social revolution. Nearly every other legacyquel-bearing series/franchise can be painted with some broad genre brush, from Star Wars to Rocky/Creed and the Before series, each film slots neatly into a genre category that can be listed on a streaming service’s platform.

As films in a series rarely shift genres and legacyquels even more rarely change this element, being sold as a continuation of a thing audiences loved some time ago returning triumphantly to the big screen, the genre aspect of a legacyquel trailer becomes a two-part sales technique. First, it reminds the viewer familiar with the series what specific genre pleasures can be had within this series of films as an enticement to return when the film debuts. Secondly, it shows a newer, updated vision of the generic world contained within the original film as a promise to new audiences that this film will be just as visually rewarding as the other films within this genre released at this time. The balance between reminding audiences of the past, promising more of that, and ensuring those unfamiliar with the series that it will not be an outdated dinosaur of a movie (with the exception of the Jurassic Park/World series, of course) is crucial to the advertising of the legacyquel film.

While makers of traditional sequel trailers can rest relatively sure that the audience is in fact anticipating a new entry in a series that is ongoing, legacyquel trailer makers face a different set of audience expectations altogether. Kernan asserts that “The rhetorical logic of sequel and cycle trailers entails a textual demonstration of the producers’ knowledge that audiences liked the original film by asserting in the sequel trailer their desire to make another one like it, which in turn creates an assumption that audiences will want to come to see the latest episode or version since they are assumed to have liked the first one.”[i] While this may be true of traditional sequel trailers, the legacyquel trailer must first remind audiences of why they went to see the original films in the first place and reignite any passion they might have for the series. One of their biggest tools for such a reignition is the generic world that was originally crafted in the prior entries in the series.

The Force Awakens’s teaser trailer accomplishes this task while featuring very little dialogue outside of a voiceover by an unknown (but seemingly evil based on intonation and, in the full film, revealed to be the villainous Snoke) person talking about “an awakening,” asking (audiences) “Have you felt it?” This short bit of dialogue plays out over images of each of the new protagonists in familiar locations. There’s Finn in his stormtrooper uniform—sans helmet—popping up in a desert reminiscent of the first film’s Tatooine, Rey in a similar locale but with a floating bike reminiscent of Luke’s speeder in A New Hope, BB-8 traversing what seems like a shipyard, Poe in an X-Wing cockpit decked out in a very familiar Rebel uniform, and Kylo Ren walking into a snow-filled forest before igniting a red lightsaber indicating he’s going to be a villain. The final “character” who gets an introduction in this brief trailer is the Millennium Falcon, the disc-shaped ship that the heroes of the first films flew around the galaxy far, far away. We not only see this familiar sight but hear the familiar sound of the Falcon’s whining engines as well, ensuring audiences that this is the same old ship they’ve grown to know intimately over the course of the prior entries in the series. But it is not only the ship who is returning based on this trailer, it is the world of Star Wars that is being reasserted here.

Kernan suggest that “the most obvious way that many trailers invoke specific genres is through iconography. Those trailers with strong genre appeals will often underline familiar generic iconography by presenting it in hyperbolic fashion.” When the film is part of a series that genre appeal through iconography can be even more directly tuned to a series appeal. The specific genre pleasures associated with the prior entries in the series are revisited in legacyquel trailers to remind audiences of what they enjoyed about the original film(s)’s take on the genre in question. Star Wars famously rethought science fiction to emphasize its real-world grime and disrepair while exoticizing space travel as a journey between planets with giant, singular biomes (desert, swamp, forest, etc.), traits that seem to carry over in this teaser for the series’ first legacyquel entry alongside the more obvious iconography of the lightsaber, ship designs, and even John Williams’ score playing over all of these familiar image.

This Star Wars teaser, however, also fulfills the other genre expectation based on the desires of audiences unfamiliar with the series to see a film based in a certain genre and providing the kinds of pleasures they expect to see in films of that genre in their contemporary moment. It is unlikely that even audiences unfamiliar with the original Star Wars films would be entirely ignorant of the series iconography, so stuff like the lightsabers and Millennium Falcon would probably perform some kind of signification even for these newer audiences being courted by this trailer. But more important is how they are deployed.

Kylo Ren and Rey fight with lightsabers in The Force Awakens

Kylo Ren and Rey fight with lightsabers in The Force Awakens

Everything in this trailer is dynamically shot to achieve maximum effect. Part of this comes from director JJ Abrams’ distinctive visual style which emphasizes alacrity in both action and performance. No stormtrooper had ever popped up into the frame the way Finn does in the trailer’s first shot (nor have they ever had their helmets off). Rey’s hoverbike is shot from near ground level and in a quick pan that calls attention to the speed of her driving. BB-8 is a ball and thus rolls swiftly along the bumpy desert ground it is traversing while whistle-and-booping in an echo of R2-D2’s mode of communication even as the trailer asserts this is a new evolution of droid given its speed. The shot of Poe’s X-Wing (and the other two accompanying him) shakes vertically as if the camera capturing the footage is strapped to an equally fast ship. Kylo Ren’s lightsaber is unlike any other, rattling with almost uncontainable energy and featuring two exhaust vents that give it a look more like European swords than the katanas the original sabers were based on.

And, perhaps most importantly, we do not get an introduction to the Falcon in a typical flying situation. Instead, the shot we see of the Falcon is perhaps the most visually dynamic shot of the entire series as it follows the ship while it does a near-planet loop and skims along the surface of the desert we’ve seen throughout the trailer. The original Star Wars films, as groundbreaking and impressive as they were for their recreation of WWII-film-influenced ship battles rather than the relatively staid naval-warfare-influenced Star Trek battles, were simply unable to capture such visual dynamism in their ship-based action scenes. In the time between 1977 and the release of this trailer in 2014, CGI had become the dominant force in special effects rather than the miniatures that were primarily used in the original trilogy. The Star Wars prequels featured faster and more dynamic action scenes thanks to their CGI, but those were still formally locked down in ways that retained their status as homage to the WWII plane battles Lucas was originally inspired by. In other words, those space battles happened faster and featured more dynamic movement but weren’t filmed much differently than the battles in the original trilogy.

The Millennium Falcon flies at TIE Fighters in The Force Awakens

The Millennium Falcon flies at TIE Fighters in The Force Awakens

However, Abrams brought to the series a perspective inspired not by WWII films but by the videogames made about those prequel trilogy films, particularly the Rogue Squadron games that placed players in cockpits of the series’ ships for fast-paced dogfights and space battles. Offering first-person, in-cockpit views and third-person, behind-the-ship perspectives to play from, the games were well-reviewed for finally capturing the feeling of piloting these ships and giving players a unique, dynamic experience of these ships more intimate than any seen in the preceding films. So when Abrams, influenced by these games and the news coverage of modern warfare that featured on-the-ground filmed footage that also inspired takes on space fighting like those seen in the Battlestar Galactica tv show with its quick zooms and “handheld” imitation, directed the action and the placement of the CG “camera” within these ship action scenes he did so more freely and in such a way as to highlight the incredible agility, speed, and acrobatic nature of the ships and those piloting them. This is this trailer’s greatest appeal to new fans: our space action is going to be next level stuff. It will fit into (and exceed) your expectations for a sci-fi action film and a Star Wars film at the same time.

[i] Ibid., 50.

Chapter 2 Introduction: The Elegiac Sequel Trailer

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Han and Chewie in Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Han and Chewie in Star Wars – Episode VII: The Force Awakens

The first online mention of the legacyquel came in the form of Matt Singer’s article “Welcome to the Age of the Legacyquel.” It was written in response to the Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens’ first full trailer, and Singer begins by writing that “It’s rare for a movie trailer to give [him] chills. But the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens did.”[i] As paratexts for films, trailers aren’t often the subject of much consideration other than the brief bursts of excitement or dread they invoke within their watchers, sometimes expressed as hyperbolic responses in twitter threads or reddit posts. However, as the industry has moved toward not only the kinds of big-budget movies that are preceded by a half-dozen different trailers but also the kinds of franchise-driven decision-making that makes trailers a key paratext to position the film among an ever-expanding constellation of tie-ins and off-shoots, the trailer becomes a key part of the marketing and even creative output in relation to the movie it is advertising. Legacyquel trailers in particular become a crucial part of the audience’s understanding of the films they advertise as they aim to both reignite the fan-ish feelings audience members have or had about the previous entries in the franchise while they also try to draw in new audience members promising an experience that is in line with modern filmmaking styles and concerns.

Lisa Kernan reminds us that in addition to their advertising function trailers “are also a unique form of narrative film exhibition, wherein promotional discourse and narrative pleasure are combined.”[ii] Indeed, the stories film trailers tell are oddly among the industry’s most popular, far outreaching the actual audience for any given film. Their twofold job, to sell a filmic experience and to do so by providing, however misleading, a bite-sized version of that experience and story, makes them a vital location for understanding how Hollywood conceives of their products and the audiences to whom they sell that product.

Following Kernan and using her framework, I will examine the “unique and specific rhetorical structures that fold visual and auditory evidence of the film production industry’s assessment of its actual audience (as well as its desires for a potential audience”[iii] in legacyquel trailers, particularly her understanding of the “three principal textual features of films: genres, stories, and stars” within the additional constraints and affordances of the legacyquel storytelling tropes. Each of these three elements of film trailers gains an extra valence of nostalgic energy within legacyquel trailers as their editors work to blend old audiences with the new. As Kernan notes, “Different markets are made visible in trailers by textual evidence of ‘targeting,’ or appeals to specific genders, age groups, or other categories of subjectivity within trailers’ overall mission to expand the audience.”[iv] In the trailers for legacyquels those targeted appeals are balanced between reminding existing fans of their attachment to the story, characters, and actors involved in the series prior to the new entry and exciting potential new audience members with the promise of an intelligible entrypoint into the franchise usually through the method of new, younger stars/characters, often in the form of a more diverse cast than previous entries as well. This diversity appeals to the desire in current audiences to see a broader representation of races, genders, and sexualities on screen, especially in the blockbuster spaces where characters of minoritized backgrounds were often absent or shunted to sidekick and love interest roles. (INSERT REFERENCE TO BLOCKBUSTER BOOK HERE). Like the movies they are made to sell, legacyquel trailers speak to a dual audience and sell the promise of a newer, more diverse vision of the franchise they are attached to while promising that things haven’t changed too much via the presence of the older characters and their returning actors.

[i] Singer, Matt. “Welcome to the Age of the Legacyquel.” Media Journalism. Screen Crush, November 23, 2015. https://screencrush.com/the-age-of-legacyquels/.

[ii] Kernan, Lisa. Coming Attractions: Reading American Movie Trailers. Texas Film and Media Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004, 1.

[iii] Ibid., 3.

[iv] Ibid., 14-15.

A Brief Prehistory of the Elegiac Sequel

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Kirk and Scotty in Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Kirk and Scotty in Star Trek: The Motion Picture

         The first instance of the kind of elegiac sequel storytelling that happens within the Hollywood blockbuster franchise that primarily comprises this canon of films came in the form of one of the longest running science fiction franchises, Star Trek. Almost a decade after the cancellation of the original series in 1969, Paramount Pictures and creator Gene Roddenberry began talks about returning to the Enterprise, a return that was first conceived of as a movie with the original cast returning, then as a show with most of the original cast on board, then, following the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a promising pilot script was expanded upon for a film starring every member of the original cast including prior hold-out Leonard Nimoy. With stalwart director Robert Wise at the helm, the Enterprise and her crew launched a mission to boldly go from television to film. The transition brought with it opportunities to expand upon the storytelling and aesthetics of the original tv series as well as the cast and crew of the Enterprise. With Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Wise dedicated a lengthy sequence to revealing the newly updated Enterprise design in loving detail as the expanded orchestral score signaled the triumphant return of the iconic ship and its crew. Indeed, audiences are placed in the crew’s position as they too marvel at the increased detail afforded by the 8-foot long model and higher fidelity film capture and projection. Such a sequence would feel overdone in a tv show, a medium that requires to-the-point storytelling and resists such fanfare as a matter of course. But on the big screen and after a decade lacking new filmed Star Trek stories, such a scene cements the story being told as feeling appropriate to its medium, larger than life and able to indulge in spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

         Not only was there a new version of the Enterprise in The Motion Picture, but there were also a few new cast members. Persis Khambatta played Ilia and Stephen Collins played Decker, two new crew members of the Enterprise around whom some of the story’s important machinations happen. Ilia, in particular, becomes a central character when she becomes somewhat possessed by the entity V’Ger (later revealed to be the Voyager space probe that had developed delusions of godhood after hundreds of years of neglect in the emptiness of space). In this way, she and Decker, who share a romantic interest unlike any of the returning crew, become entrypoints for audience members not familiar with the original series and its cast. Both younger than the original crew (each of whom was closer to 50 than 40 and not particularly in line with the younger casts of movies like Star Wars, Alien, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Ilia and Decker were crafted to appeal to wider audiences and provide some sexual chemistry. However, neither of them make it beyond the events of this film and the next film, Wrath of Khan, brought in Kirstie Alley as Saavik, a Vulcan protégé to Nimoy’s Spock, and Merritt Butrick as David Marcus, Kirk’s son. Again, these two new cast members act as entry points for new audience members but neither threatens to take over for the character for which they are echoes. Indeed, David Marcus dies in the next film and Saavik eventually disappears unceremoniously from the later films after being recast in the next film.

Kirk and Spock in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

Kirk and Spock in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

However, Wrath of Khan, like The Motion Picture, is again thematically concerned with the past returning to wreak havoc in the present. This time it’s Ricardo Montalban’s titular Khan who returns from his first appearance in 1967’s “Space Seed” episode of The Original Series. In that episode he was revealed to be a genetically modified warlord from the late twentieth century and was eventually exiled to a remote, deserted planet with his followers. In Wrath of Khan, he finds out about the Genesis technology Starfleet is developing to terraform planets and wants to use it to wipe out Earth as vengeance for his treatment. Montalban’s performance as a man over 200 years old yet genetically modified to remain in the prime of his life enables him to play both the wizened old man and the vivacious action villain at once. The character’s presence at three periods of Star Trek’s history, including its pre-history involving Eugenics Wars, also imparts onto him the quality of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’s Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) who similarly sees three different wartimes in the three acts of that film. What Colonel Blimp achieves with makeup to age Candy Star Trekachieves first with drawings that captured the youthfulness of the Khan character in the late twentieth century, then with Montalban’s two performances separated by 15 years in both real time and story time. Like Colonel Blimp, Khan’s presence here enables the film’s writers (Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennett, and Jack B. Sowards), director (Meyer), and actors to craft a story about past injustices coming back to haunt people who were trying to do the right thing in a tough situation and to reflect on the changing nature of war. Though Star Trek has always had a semi-utopian impulse, its stories still need conflict and drama and its universe can plausibly contain a villain like Khan, particularly when it casts that villain as a remnant of an earlier, more violent time. By bringing Khan back again and giving him a mission to exact revenge on Kirk and Star Fleet, the Star Trek franchise asserts that the stories contained in the Original Series’ episodes were not as self-contained as they seemed, that what happened in the past has consequences for the present and that the end of an episode isn’t the end of a story.

As the film series continued, the actors from the original crew continued to stick around and age along with their characters. The last film to feature all of the crew was 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a Cold War allegory about what might happen when the Berlin Wall fell and the people living on either side were unwilling to give up their long-simmering resentment of each other and a movie about whether the old crew of the Enterprise is outmoded in this new galactic configuration. By the time the film came out much of the cast was nearing or over 60 years old and feeling distinctly out of place in a film landscape dominated by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise. In this way, the franchise’s continued repetition and replication across media enabled something somewhat unique as it gave a cast full of near-geriatrics a long lasting and successful action sci-fi career. Children who were enamored of Kirk and Spock on TV in the late 60s could bring their kids to see the final adventures of the crew nearly three decades later. Of course, this wasn’t the end of Star Trek, as three of this crew returned in the next movie to hand-off the franchise officially to the crew of The Next Generation in Star Trek Generations, a film that featured Kirk’s onscreen death. And Nimoy eventually reprised the role of Spock in the 2009 reboot/elegiac sequel thanks to some tricky plot maneuvering involving alternate dimensions allowing the original Spock to meet and mentor Zachary Quinto’s rebooted, much younger version of the character. Star Trek predates the franchise model that came to account for a large number of Hollywood productions and its initial steps outside the original series were proto-elegiac sequel films that paved the path for older stars to return to famous characters and filmmakers to revive (semi)dormant intellectual properties in an attempt to retain original fans and make new ones.

Heather Langenkamp plays herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Heather Langenkamp plays herself in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

As the Star Trek movies continued throughout the 80s, another pair of franchises were started and rapidly expanded within a decade to have half a dozen entries each: Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street. These two supernatural slasher franchises fed on a similar formula of introducing a new crop of teenaged victims in each film to be soon chopped up, impaled, and otherwise dispatched by Michael Myers (various actors) or Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). While the Nightmare films were able to keep things relatively fresh given Krueger’s dream powers granting filmmakers involved in the franchise opportunities to change things up with some regularity, the Halloween films soon had to take absurd narrative turns involving druids and cults to keep that franchise running. Eventually, however, both franchises ran out of steam and by the middle of the 1990s the two franchises were looking for another shot of reinvigorating creativity. 1994 saw the release of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a movie that brings back writer/director Wes Craven and actor Heather Langenkamp to play themselves in a meta-story about Freddy haunting the cast of the original film into making a new film where he’d be scary again instead of silly. Similarly, in 1998 Jamie Lee Curtis returned to the Halloween franchise for the first time since Halloween II in a film that ignored all of the films that she wasn’t in, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.

What is the Elegiac Sequel and Why Does It Matter?

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Michael Meyers walks by a car in Halloween 2018

Image from Halloween (2018)

With film franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Rocky, Blade Runner, Top Gun, Halloween, and many others employing the storytelling strategy of a long-deferred sequel in the past 15 years, it is an appropriate time to start asking questions about how such deferrals change the nature of the much-studied concept of the film sequel: what ties these films together across multiple generations of filmgoers? What industrial and cultural conditions influence their production and call them into existence? Given the changes in film production and exhibition that separates the early films from their deferred sequels, how might we theorize reception for these serial texts? Film writer Matt Singer coined the term “legacyquels” for these films, based on their reliance upon the popularity and continued cultural relevance of the original films. However, that name does not capture the full range of effects of these films.

Laura Mulvey wrote of film’s malleability on video as creating “a dialectical relation between the old and the new, breaking down the separation from the past from which nostalgia is derived. But at the same time, it is elegiac: there is no escape from passing time and death itself.”[i] Mulvey’s astute observations about the way viewers who can pause, rewind, and fast-forward through a film when watching it at home provides insight into the ways that these delayed sequels operate in new mediums and new generations. Borrowing from Mulvey, I call these films elegiac sequels, given their existence as reminders that there is “no escape from passing time and death itself” as evidenced in their main features: (1) a delayed appearance of at least 10 years, and (2) the return of at least one actor from the original film(s). These features combine to put evidence of the passage of time on screen in the older bodies and often in-film deaths of the original actors/characters. As franchise-building exercises, elegiac sequels fare better than reboots and remakes because they affirm the importance, canonicity, and emotions that have been accreted around the original films as time has passed. Additionally, the elegiac sequel provides the occasion for the reevaluation of the cultural impact of the original film, opening up new conversations about cultural impact, casting, and celebrity.

Lucy and Andy and their son Marlon in Twin Peaks: The Return

         I see the elegiac sequel as a storytelling strategy that allows for a wide variety of film and television discourses to be brought together in novel and valuable combinations because of its unique construction, outcomes, and effects. Though I primarily think of the elegiac sequel as a function of blockbuster filmmaking given the prominence of those kinds of films in the flashpoint year of 2008 and their prominence in many large franchises, the elegiac sequel is a mobile phenomenon that can appear within indie filmmaking (the Before trilogy) and television from prestige examples like Twin Peaks: The Return to commercial streaming content like Fuller House as easily as it does within the Star Wars franchise. As such, they allow for a study of what remains consistent between these varied filmed media including the general format of elegiac sequel stories and the importance of actors/characters in the digital age, as well as what changes between them including various expressions of seriality, aesthetic differences, and paradigms of audience/fan response. My primary lens used throughout this text will be a rhetorical one, informed by the work of James Phelan and Gilberto Perez, the latter of whom suggests that “whereas poetics looks at the work and its construction, and the study of reception looks at the audience and its response, rhetoric looks at the way construction elicits response and the way the work works on the audience.”[ii] This rhetorical lens allows, as Perez states, for an investigation of the elegiac sequel not only from the angle of construction, which for me will encompass industrial and artistic influences and outcomes, but also reception, which, given the elegiac sequel’s revivification of (varyingly) dormant franchises with prior and lasting fan attachments, will lend itself to a study of the various audiences the elegiac sequel addresses on different levels of discourse and with occasionally disparate results. The rhetorical lens will also enable a broader umbrella under which I will pull together the various disciplines from which I will borrow, including star studies, genre studies, new media theories, and fan studies. Finally, the rhetorical lens will aid in my political motives for investigating the elegiac sequel, as I put to the test Mulvey’s theory that the juxtaposition between the old and new breaks down nostalgia rather than reifies it. Does the elegiac sequel’s ability to revisit and revise ideas, themes, and representations contained within the original text while crafting new stories give it political relevance or are the studios and filmmakers behind elegiac sequels hesitant to go beyond aesthetic changes in representation? Are they making nostalgia’s inherent conservatism available for revision and reimagination by new generations of audiences, or are they reinscribing it and making its grasp more difficult to escape?

The elegiac sequel is one in a long line of what Frank Kelleter and Kathleen Loock call an “auto-adaptive, evolutionary structure” within the “evolving cinematic formatting process” of cinematic remaking, one which they see as “a practice that generates media-specific modes of variation and organizes them into historically variable categories such as, currently, the ‘remake’, the ‘sequel’, the ‘spin-off’, the ‘revision’, the ‘spoof’, the ‘re-imagining’, the ‘prequel’, the ‘franchise’, and – most recently – the ‘reboot’.”[iii] As a narrative structure, the elegiac sequel combines tendencies of the remake, the sequel, the revision, the franchise, and the reboot as it adapts and evolves within the modern media environment. This is all part of the process of near-constant creative and industrial churn produced within Hollywood. Barry Langford suggests that, “Above and beyond any defined or definable set of stylistic parameters or industrial practices, this ongoing reinvention may be the most classical of all Hollywood’s enduring traditions.”[iv] And, as David Bordwell writes, “Crucial practices of storytelling persisted, despite the demise of the studio system, the emergence of conglomerate control, and new methods of marketing and distribution.”[v] As such, the elegiac sequel tends to follow a certain formula after meeting the criteria that enable its existence, similar to any other blockbuster film which must first fulfill some criteria of marketability and adaptability to other revenue streams. The most important criteria for the elegiac sequel is that there must be some lasting cultural impact that the original film or films had and upon which the new elegiac sequel can capitalize. In order to ensure that the franchise does meet this condition, the elegiac sequel must come at least 10 years after the original film franchise’s latest entry to ensure that enough time has passed and the original’s popularity has maintained a certain level. Finally, in order to ensure that there is a sense of continuity between the original and elegiac sequel, there must be at least one returning actor whose aged visage will do the bulk of the affective labor in portraying the loss of time and, potentially, inspire grief at the ultimate fate of the beloved character they play. Once these conditions are met, the formula can play out with various results.

Celine almost touches Jesse in Before Sunset

Celine almost touches Jesse in Before Sunset

         The formula for an elegiac sequel sees audiences introduced to the new cast of characters and, frequently, an action scene or opening kill (in a horror film) before they are reintroduced to the returning character(s). The way that the plot plays out is highly dependent upon the genre in which the elegiac sequel and its antecedents appear. The neo-noir detective story of Blade Runner is repeated with a difference in its elegiac sequel, Blade Runner 2049, just as the wandering through a city on a first date indie movie “plot” of Before Sunrise is repeated nearly a decade later in Before Sunset for a second date. As the genre plot is set into motion, one of the new characters is usually revealed to be a child or grandchild of the returning character. Not only does this familial connection make the relationship between the new and returning characters easy to understand as they slot into traditional familial roles, but it also allows for the very reflections on the passage of time and eventual death, real or metaphorical, of the returning character that enables the new characters to take over both in the franchise in and the hearts of the new fans attracted by their presence. This emphasis on the bloodline also opens an opportunity for the filmmakers to either embrace or critique the inherent conservatism of following genealogies of celebrity and power. The middle of the film is then filled with exploits both exciting and poignant as the returning character, like Stallone’s Rocky or Ford’s Han Solo slowly comes to recognize some of themselves in the new characters (Jordan’s Creed or Ridley’s Rey) while reminding them that they are still the ones with all the knowledge and the charisma that once made them a star in the same kind of situation. These middle scenes, when executed well, are the engines that drive the elegiac sequel as a vehicle for both aging and newly arrived stars. If the newbies can match the old star’s ability to charm an audience and carry a film, there’s a great chance that it will launch their career into greater renown. If the aging star can remind us that behind the wrinkles and grey hair remains the same incandescent core that made them into indelible characters and movie stars in the first place, they can make the audience think about the value of the movie star as an aspirational figure, as an enduring and still entertaining performer who carries with them the weight of all of their previous performances but can still delight and surprise just as they did at the start of their careers. Time may pass, these scenes suggest, but it doesn’t entirely destroy, it only changes and provides opportunities for new experiences. As the Log Lady from Twin Peaks: The Return says towards the end of her final scene (filmed days before the actor, Catherine E. Coulson died in real life from cancer and two years before it aired within the show), “You know about death; that it’s just a change, not an end.” Unfortunately, one of those changes is indeed death, and so whether it is a metaphorical death, a health scare, or the real death of the character (and sometimes, tragically, the actor), the climax of the film often ends with the death of a returning character or characters in order to give audiences closure on that character before the new characters fully take over. In Hollywood, death is the only way out of the franchise.

         The formula for elegiac sequels is open enough to allow for a wide variation in tone and effect. They can be triumphant, as in the dual victories of Adonis Creed and Rocky over their boxing opponent and cancer, respectively. They can be foreboding, as in the Halloween elegiac sequel confusingly just named Halloween in which Michael Myers seems to be defeated by the trio of Strode women who survived the events of the film but whose signature heavy breathing over the end credits signals his undying return. They can even be upsetting, as in the case of Blade Runner 2049 which sees its hero discover after 2.5 hours of mystery that he is not special or even the center of his own story but rather a side character whose investigation ends in the reunion Deckard and his special daughter. Or they can be mixed, as the Star Wars sequel trilogy attempted with the deaths of the three signature returning characters (in order: Han, Luke, and Leia) across the three planned films that are mixed in with narrow victories over the ultimate evil (also a returning character in the form of Emperor Palpatine).

K walks through an irradiated Las Vegas in Blade Runner 2049

K walks through an irradiated Las Vegas in Blade Runner 2049

Elegiac sequels can also have varied effects within the culture they come from. It is not a mistake that the elegiac sequel tends not to have white male characters as the primary new character, as studios respond (ever so slowly) to criticisms that their blockbusters were too focused on white male leads. With the metaphorical or actual death of the original characters and the prominence of the new, more diverse cast of characters introduced to replace them, Hollywood studios and creatives can point at their representational politics and say that they’ve fixed past mistakes. Whether those new representations are actually beneficial of course varies from example to example, though the tendency is towards surface-level representation without much appreciation for how the new characters’ non-white-male-ness might influence the story being told (the terrible fumbling of Finn’s arc in the Star Wars sequels are perhaps the best example of this kind of failure). Though the surface level representational politics might have been brought up to the standards of modern culture in these elegiac sequels, there is still a question of whether or not that representation is meaningful without a deeper revision of the themes and politics of the franchise.

[i] Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books, 2006, 194.

[ii] Gilberto Perez, The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019, IXX.

[iii] Kelleter, Frank and Kathleen Loock, “Hollywood Remaking as Second-Order Serialization.” Remake/Remodel: Film Remakes, Adaptations and Fan Productions, Kathleen Loock, and Constantine Verevis, eds.. E-Book. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 130.

[iv] Langford, Barry. Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style, and Ideology Since 1945. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, 282-3.

[v] Bordwell, David. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. E-Book. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006, 17.

Chapter 1 Introduction

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Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk before the final battle of Avengers Endgame

Image from Avengers: Endgame (2019)

In 2021, at the writing of this chapter, the world of visual media is in a state of flux more tumultuous than it has been in decades. The introduction of streaming services has upended several industries, the coronavirus pandemic has brought the lurking danger of the end of cinemagoing as we know it to a head, and media critics everywhere are casting about for people and phenomena to blame for the massive changes that the filmmaking industry is undergoing. Among the chief causes to blame for the downfall of one of the few remaining mass culture enterprises, Hollywood filmmaking, is the sequel. In a piece for The Guardian in 2019, seemingly prompted by the popularity of Marvel’s capstone for the previous decade’s worth of films, Avengers: Endgame, David Cox writes that when films get a sequel and that sequel gets a sequel, “Creative exhaustion inevitably threatens.”[i] Cox’s article is indicative of a larger sentiment among moviegoers and media critics alike, specifically that sequels stand as the nadir of Hollywood’s drive towards making money above creative output. “Inevitably,” Cox writes, “the sequels juggernaut is throttling fresh ideas, the lifeblood of any creative activity. It may be offering the movies a short-term fix by imperiling their long-term health.”[ii] It is a foregone conclusion, in Cox’s formulation, that sequels absolutely will lead to the self-inflicted and intimate death of Hollywood as an industry, a kind of autoerotic asphyxiation accident writ large. Cox imagines a mythical “past” when “each excursion to the cinema unveiled a new world of characters, situations, stories, sets, locations, and ways of seeing.”[iii] This past doesn’t and never did exist, as sequels and serials were integral to the growth of Hollywood as an industry. Whether it was the weekly entries in long running series like The Perils of Pauline or Flash Gordon, or the later heavily sequelized franchises like The Thin Man or Universal monster movies or, as Kristin Thompson notes, the Danish crime drama sequel Dr. Gar el Hama flugt from 1912[iv], the serial has existed throughout film history. And yet, Cox can’t help but pathologize the drive towards sequels as a “chance to retreat into thought bunkers with those of like mind, and cut ourselves off from unsettling ideas.”[v] The sequel, in his conception, is a wholly safe and unchallenging place in which the “comfort[s] of repetition” recall the “consoling” nature of children being told “the same bedtime story every night.”[vi] Not content with the self-harm metaphor for Hollywood, now it becomes the infantilizing force in popular culture, ensuring that audiences remain emotionally and mentally stunted as they delight in the same pleasures over and over again. Cox ends his article by suggesting that “Maybe … it is time for filmgoers to grow up,” but it is Cox’s easy ideas about the nature of film and sequels, audiences and the industry, that need to be interrogated more thoroughly. Cox isn’t alone in his dismissal of the sequel as toxic and damaging to the industry from which they come, cries of “franchise fatigue”[vii] damaging box office numbers and audience enjoyment have been commonplace for years.

The three posters for the Original Star Wars Trilogy

Posters for the three original Star Wars films

         If the discourse around sequels as an instance of franchised production is largely of fatigue, why and how do they continue to be successful in terms of box office performance and audience approval? The sequel, particularly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century Hollywood context that this study is primarily interested in, comes most often from a desire to create or expand upon a franchised intellectual property. However, franchised production, like Hollywood production in the post-classical era according to Barry Langford[viii], is not as stable as it seems. To explain how franchises come into existence Derek Johnson points toward “the shared exchange of content resources across multiple industrial sites and contexts of production operating in collaborative but contested ways through networked relation to one another (frequently across boundaries of media platform, production community, and geography).”[ix] This is perhaps most easily seen in the attempts to cohere the Star Wars franchise through careful management by Lucasfilm (under Disney) which still produces conflicting levels of canonicity[x] and artistic creation[xi], not to mention the destruction of the previous Extended Universe canon novels, games, and other media. Johnson goes on to suggest that “The products and content offered by media franchising, therefore, might be considered less in terms of unified brands and singular corporate interests, but instead as contested grounds of collaborative creativity where networked stakeholders have negotiated the ongoing generation, exchange, and use of shared cultural resources.”[xii] Johnson is quick to point out that this notion of “collaborative creativity” that franchises sprout from is not intended to celebrate the franchise as a site for unbounded creativity and invention, “but instead as a site where the autonomy and freedom of individuals laboring within media institutions might be imagined, organized, and contested.”[xiii] If the franchise is, as part of Hollywood’s overall production strategy, constantly being reinvented as different media laborers bring their ideas for how their piece of the franchise can best work within the structures of the economic deals and boundaries they are operating under, the permutations that result from successful and repeated franchise formulae tell important stories about the historical and industrial situations in which they appear.

         Much has been made of the way movie studios becoming small parts of larger conglomerates lead to the development of the franchising strategies of the 1980s and beyond[xiv], but there has been decidedly less theorizing exactly how that happened. In this chapter, I bring together theories of serialized storytelling and industrial theories of shifting production and exhibition processes in response to changing consumption trends within Hollywood film and television production to explain how one particular version of serialized franchise production became popular across visual media starting in 2008. The elegiac sequel, as I call them, is not a new phenomenon but has newly become one of two (along with the cinematic universe as seen in the Marvel and Conjuring franchises) dominant modes of franchised production in the past two decades. Here I will first explain what an elegiac sequel is before looking at examples of the elegiac sequel that were made throughout film history but which did not lead to such an explosion of them as we can see starting in 2008. Following that brief history, I will look at the industrial pressures that explain why the elegiac sequel became such a popular format for reviving and continuing franchises in the early twenty-first century.

[i] Cox, David. “Nearing the Endgame: Is Hollywood’s Lust for Sequels Destroying Cinema?” The Guardian, May 16, 2019. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/16/hollywood-sequels-cinema-avengers-endgame.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Thompson, Kristin. The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood. E-Book. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. https;//hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.08180.

[v] Cox, David.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Brew, Simon. “Franchise Fatigue: Why Big Movie Sequels Are Underperforming at the Box Office (Even the Good Ones).” The Independent, July 7, 2017. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/franchise-fatigue-blockbuster-sequels-hollywood-obsession-marvel-universal-warner-bros-despicable-me-3-mummy-a7829546.html.

[viii] “Above and beyond any defined or definable set of stylistic parameters or industrial practices, this ongoing reinvention may be the most classical of all Hollywood’s enduring traditions.” Langford, Barry. Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style, and Ideology Since 1945. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, 283.

[ix] Johnson, Derek. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. E-Book. Postmillennial Pop. New York City: New York University Press, 2013, 7.

[x] See the Lego Star Wars games and holiday specials that bend if not break canonicity

[xi] See the storytelling struggle between the two directors of the Sequel Trilogy films as they went back and forth over what to do with plot elements such as Rey’s parentage

[xii] Ibid., 7

[xiii] Ibid., 14

[xiv] See Langford, Johnson, Thompson, Hall and Neale,

The Virtual Life of Film by D.N. Rodowick

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The Wachowski’s The Matrix

Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007.

Rodowick’s philosophical musings on the curious circumstances at the beginning of the 21st century which saw the physical nature of the cinematographic medium changing from real film to digital capture, processing, and projection. Full of asides that feel just as valuable as his main ideas, which follow Stanley Cavell’s notions of the automatisms of media as their defining features, the book is dense and a little difficult to navigate. Luckily, in his preface he provides a succinct overview of his argument and its progress.

In his first section, he argues that even though the physical film is changing, the concepts and ways of understanding visual media propagated by film throughout the 20th century still retain a tight grasp on the current technology such that we can still use many of the ways of understanding images derived from film theory and our narrative practices still largely spring from classical Hollywood narrative structures.

In his second section, he spends a lot of pages working through understanding what the film medium provided artists and audiences in its automatism, or those elements that were central to the operation of the medium itself. Largely agreeing with and expanding upon Cavell’s ideas, Rodowick suggests that film (and photography before it), are isomorphic in their capturing of reality. That is, a photograph captures the shape and time of the physical world as it existed in the moment of capture. A film does the same thing but over the course of time itself, an additional automatism Rodowick names as “succession.” Rodowick argues that the automatisms of automatic isomorphic capture has been largely understood via its spatial representative powers, the idea that the photograph contains evidence of a place, while Rodowick argues that the temporal element is more important, it contains evidence of a place from the past. The photograph (and film) therefore brings evidence of the past to us in the present and creates an uneasy mixture of the two, a mixture that never fully coalesces into one thing but remains separate via the screen. Up there is the past, here in the present. Because of these automatisms, the physical nature of the cinematographic medium is crucial to understanding the way film effects us as audience members. When it disappears, Rodowick argues, something of great value is lost.

Part three is focused on that loss, and its digital replacement. Rodowick essentially argues that because digital capture is non-isomorphic because the light inputs are separated from the numerical outputs (that can be infinitely manipulated), it loses that sense of pastness that film once had and brought to the culture. In its place, Rodowick argues, the digital image creates a kind of ever-presentness (and interactive past) through its automatisms of constantly-refreshing, pixel-based “montage.” Basically, if every pixel is the smallest discrete unit of a digital image, Rodowick sees the digital image as already composed of the juxtaposition of those pixels in a way that creates a montage effect even in the still image. The fact that motion (or the simulation of it) is created by changing each of those pixels individually extremely quickly rather than the succession of images means that there is no longer such a thing as a shot, at least not without some modification. Rodowick proposes this drastic reconsideration of what the digital image is and how it works to reassert the value of film theory and terms to understand what’s happening, at least right now.

He astutely argues that the conventions of film and film theory still hold sway over the digital, even if the digital is fundamentally different from the filmic. Since artists, technology developers and engineers, and audiences still crave the sense of “perceptual realism” defined by the century of filmic history which says that what we see is a real record of the past as it was, modern digital images must still follow the rules of that perceptual realism, which asserts the physical reality of the image through the single-point perspective and laws of physics. It’s no wonder that digital images recreate these elements to claim a grounding in reality when their automatisms do not assert it themselves.

It’s a fascinating book, full of dialogue with film theorists like Metz and Bazin and Barthes and, of course, Cavell. On the digital side, Lev Manovich and Bolter and Grusin get their due as well. Film philosophy isn’t strictly my thing, and it usually takes me much longer to get through, but I also find it intensely fascinating. I noticed I was watching a movie after reading Rodowick’s breakdown of the digital image and I felt like I could see the pixels shifting, fundamentally changing the way I looked at digital images. That’s powerful stuff.

Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin

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Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

I’m going to start doing shorter recaps for the books and essays that feel less crucial to my understanding of what’s going on or don’t bring as much to the table. It’s no knock on the works themselves, especially as I really enjoyed reading this one. I just need to get through this faster and I don’t foresee it being as important to my exams as other works I’ve already covered.

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have one big idea in this text. It’s a little complicated but not too bad. Basically, they have a series of propositions that inform how they understand what media do and how they interact with each other. They examine this through the lens of new digital media like the web browser or VR, but it applies pretty generally across most media.

They claim that media works in two ways towards one goal. The two ways are immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy is the idea that a medium is a way to experience as closely as possible the thing represented in that medium, an idea most closely associated with point-of-view perspective in visual art forms. Hypermediacy is the idea that a medium is actually more multiplicative in ways that draw attention to the medium itself, as seen in a computer interface or television’s overwhelming combinations of different media like video and text and animation. Both of these interact with each other and are dependent upon each other, such that a medium is never wholly one or the other. Both of them are ways to get transparency, or an experience of something represented within the medium either via the act of getting closer to it or, paradoxically, further away but from many angles.

This is all tied in with their idea that remediation, or the movement of an idea or representation from one medium to another, is what mediums are. They contend that every new medium is simply the recreating and reformation of previous media in an attempt to get closer to transparency via a new combo of immediacy and hypermediacy. Its a convincing argument that they spend the majority of the middle of the book developing as they look at quite a few different media for how they remediate and employ immediacy and hypermediacy.

Their final section looks at the philosophical impact of their ideas as they develop ideas alongside Stanley Cavell and Laura Mulvey about how media position the self and incorporate their ideas of immediacy and hypermediacy into the fray. It’s all a little outside of my area of interest, but it was interesting to skim. They also push back against Marshall McLuhan’s technological determinism for its ignorance of the social and economic factors involved in the development and use of media but keep his concept of remediation and the interrelation of different media.

 

Media of Serial Narrative edited by Frank Kelleter

by

Various versions of the Planet of the Apes

Kelleter, Frank. Media of Serial Narrative. Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2017.

This book collects essays by a wide range of narrative media scholars and divides them into four different sections based on medium (comics/lit, film, television, and digital transmedia), even though there are obviously overlaps between those media as stories branch out and find homes in different media. I want to come back and read all the essays I skipped because they weren’t directly connected to the other works on my reading list, but for now I read the intro, all of the film and most of the television essays (I’m not allowed to read the essay by Sean O’Sullivan as he is on my exams committee). Here’s the brief summary of each.

“Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality” – Frank Kelleter

Kelleter, editor of the book, uses his introduction to talk about what he calls “popular seriality” or the sense of seriality that has pervaded most media forms. He juxtaposes this to the idea of the “work” that has dominated popular and academic conceptions of the media landscape, an idea of a full and complete object that can be fully studied and explained or taken in. Popular seriality, on the other hand, extends on almost interminably, constantly inventing and reinventing the story such that it cannot be studied, explained, or taken in the same way as a singular work. He calls out, like the title says, five ways of looking at popular seriality: as evolving narratives (where there is a feedback loop between everybody involved in the production and reception of the serial that all create change within the narrative); as narratives of recursive progression (where narratives constantly are revised and reformulated as they are adjusted and continued such that what might be the main idea at the beginning might not be even part of the story by the end); as narratives of proliferation (where we must take into account the wide array of official, semi-official, and unofficial stories that are told with elements of the narrative, particularly what Kelleter calls “serial figures” who retain some central core while also shifting greatly depending on their incarnation); as self-observing systems and actor-networks (where serials become what Kelleter calls “entities of distributed intention” that attain an agential status through the reflection and work of the people involved in its making or experiencing); and as agents of capitalist self-reflexivity (where serial narratives become ideologically wrapped up in the idea of renewal via duplication, a core tenant of capitalism itself).

Kelleter’s ideas start off relatively benign but become increasingly more troubling as they go along, largely because they seem so plausible. His last two ways of looking at popular seriality will be something to wrestle with as I continue my work on serialization as a storytelling strategy.

Based on the points discussed so far, we can describe popular series as self-observing systems, in the sense that they are never just the “product” of intentional choices and decisions, even as they require and involve intentional agents (most notably, people) for whom they provide real possibilities of deciding, choosing, using, objecting, and so on. In shaping the self-understanding of their human contributors, series themselves attain agential status. As praxeological networks, they experiment with formal identities and think about their own formal possibilities. And they do not do so instead of human beings but with and through dispersed participants, employing human practitioners (who are sometimes much younger than the series in question and who will often express a sense of practical commitment to it rather than a sense of originating authorship) for purposes of self-reproduction. Series are not intentional subjects but entities of distributed intention. (25)

At its most abstract, my (systems-theoretical) argument suggests that popular seriality, understood as a larger historical phenomenon that has accompanied Western modernity since the mid-nineteenth century, supports a practical regime of continuation itself. What is being continued here is the contingent, but historically powerful, partnership between democratic ideologies and a particular system of cultural production. It is worth remembering in this context that one of the most difficult problems of serial storytelling consists in translating repetition into difference. Following Eco (1990), this has been said so often that we sometimes like to move beyond these terms. But we ignore Eco’s lesson at our own peril, because what looks like a simple matter of narrative technique on closer inspection turns out to be a core problem of modernity itself: the problem of renewing something by duplicating it. This problem lies at the heart of an entire system of cultural production that, for want of a better term – and without need for revelatory pathos – is still best described by the name it has chosen to describe itself: capitalism. (29)

“Inevitability of Chance: Time in the Sound Serial” – Scott Higgins

Higgins writes about old film serials like Flash Gordon, and observes that not only do the serials have a pretty obvious 5-part structure in the small episodes (three action beats at the beginning, middle, and end with two dialogue segments that come between each of the action beats), but also that there is also a somewhat standard overall structure for the full run of the serial where the opening and closing episodes contain most of the narrative progression while most of the episodes between do relatively little to progress the plot in any real way. Though these early serials are not my main area of interest, they are nevertheless influential for the movies and shows that I am interested in, and so Higgins’ ideas must be contended with as I think about whether or not my objects of study stick to these structures or deviate from them meaningfully.

“Spectral Seriality: The Sights and Sounds of Count Dracula” – Shane Denson and Ruth Mayer

Denson and Mayer productively develop their own conception of the “serial figure” by claiming that they are the character who, via their liminality and ease of crossing borders, often takes up a kind of media-ness as they adapt and change depending on the time and situation they appear in. These figures don’t usually change over time, at least not in the way we think of traditional character growth or change. Instead, they adapt (or are adapted) to fit within one historically-rooted idea or another while retaining a core truth(s), especially including the ability to change form or inhabit different planes of existence. It’s a very intriguing idea, even if my own area of interest is in the very opposite phenomenon (where characters do change, usually offscreen, from their previous incarnation).

In particular, we are interested in the way that Dracula embodies and paradigmatically exemplifies a “spectral” logic that enables serial figures to proliferate across media channels, passing from literature to film to radio to TV and to digital media, exhibiting all the while and uncanny sort of resiliency that is the product as much of the figure’s flexibility as of its iconicity. By serial figure, we mean a type of stock character inhabiting the popular cultural imagination of modernity – a “flat” and recurring figure, subject to one or more media changes over the course of its career. We see serial figures as integral and ideologically powerful components of the political and economic order of modernity, part of a system that works expansively to increase commensurability and connectivity. Serial figures operate in this system as mediating instances between the familiar and the unknown, the ordinary and the unusual. […] These figures parasitically appropriate the media ensembles of a given period, taking up residence in them and making them their own. In doing so, they function as markers and active agents of the very process of media change. In a certain sense, they become media – epitomizing the fact that media are never only transparent means of transportation but that they also imprint their “traces” indelibly onto the “messages” or “contents” they convey (Krämer 1998: 74). […] These large-scale media transformations tend to be read in terms of “innovations” (or, more recently, “updates”) and thus suggest that media history is a directed and linear process. But serial figures, with their feedback loops and self-reflective logics of iteration, epitomize the fact that the evolution of media systems is a non-teleological process: overdetermined by competing forces, random, accidental, and consequently always also haunted by a sense that “things could have been otherwise) (Denson 2012). In this respect, not only are serial figures subject to constant narrative revision and adjustment for the sake of retrospective continuity, but they also invite counter factual questions (“what if?”) about the course of media history itself, thus situating themselves as the ideal conceptual figures for media archaeological inquiries. (108-9)

“Hollywood Remaking as Second-Order Serialization” – Frank Kelleter and Kathleen Loock

One of the two essays that directly touches upon my area of interest, this essay by Kelleter and Loock is rife with interesting ideas and examples. The central conceit is that the remake is not fundamentally distinct from the ways that serials work, from the ideas of revision and cinematic self-historicization (where a remake or sequel tends to confer a certain status upon the original film that is sometimes only recognized or reignited by that sequel or remake) to enable what they call second-order serialization, or serial narratives about (and by way of) serial narratives.

Unlike daily cartoons or telenovelas, feature film iterations cannot structure rhythms of everyday life. Instead, they often structure seasonal, generational, and media-historical sequences. (131)

In short, the early [Planet of the Apes] films, the 2001 remake, and the 2011 prequel/reboot – made so many years apart – all lay claim to being state-of-the-art, thereby reflecting, with varying degrees of success, distinct media specific moments of an expansive narrative consumer aesthetics. In this manner, popular culture’s increased availability for re-performance and comparison invites deeply autobiographical engagements with commercial material, to the point of structuring individual personalities and their life stories in terms of progressing brand (dis)attachments. But media generations can also recognize themselves in the cultural concerns of remade films, which are usually accentuated more sharply there than in non-serialized formats. (142-3)

“New Millennial Remakes” – Constantine Verevis

Verevis, like Kelleter in the opening essay, identifies several ways that a phenomenon happens or works, in this case the object of study is the spate of remakes that occurred in the early years of the new millennium. Verevis claims that these remakes are intermedial and transnational, that they embrace the postauteur (where the marks of authorship shift from originality towards reproducible trademarks), that they are characterized by proliferation and simultaneity, which lead into the final idea that they do not compete but coexist with the originals. There’s some strong crossover with the ideas presented in the previous essay by Kelleter and Loock, but Verevis uses the essay to draw out some minor differences in the concepts presented in each.

By the beginning of the new millennium, however, there was evidence of a discursive shift, with subsequent industry discourses framing publicity more positively around a new film’s “remake” status by ascribing value to an earlier version and then identifying various filters – technological, cultural, authorial – through which it had been transformed (“value-added”). In the first instance, this move can be seen as a commercial strategy (a way to sell a back catalogue), but it also identifies a serial practice in which the remake does not simply follow an original but recognizes new versions as free adaptations or variations that actualize an implicit potentiality at the source. This trend, which has increasingly led to authorized remakes that bear only a generic resemblance to their precursors, seems to have found its apotheosis in the “reboot”: a legally sanctioned version that attempts to disassociate itself textually from previous iterations while at the same time having to concede that it does not replace – but adds new associations to – an existing serial property. In other words, it marks out not merely a critical historical moment in which remakes no longer linearly follow and supersede their originals but also a digitized, globalized one in which multiple versions proliferate and coexist. (148-9)

The remake has never been a static thing but a concept that is always evolving. And while it may be too early to draw conclusions as to the nature of a distinct historical period, these notes should demonstrate that the present and future of cinema is a re-vision of its past, especially in the new millennium, and that aesthetic and economic evaluations of film remakes (good or bad, success or failure) are less interesting than the cultural and historical significance of new millennial remaking practice. (164)

“The Ends of Serial Criticism” – Jason Mittell

At the start of the TV section, Mittell focuses on arguing that the study of serial storytelling is fundamentally different from that of the singular work because it has formal and production-based differences that must be paid attention to. He writes of the way that a show might use one element (a taped confession in Homeland, for example) in different ways throughout the series to mean different things in different situation, a point that he extrapolates to write of the way that a long-running show can contain multiple different political (or other) perspectives, sometimes conflicting ones, over the course of the show. These realities mean that academics studying serial stories must be cautious of trying to pin a show or story down to one particular position, particularly if they are writing about a show that isn’t yet finished. Even a finished show might come down on one side or another, but that still doesn’t negate the variety of perspectives contained within the show.

His second point is that shows and other serial stories have the ability to incorporate audience sentiments within the show, but that such a possibility doesn’t cancel out other criticism of the show. To demonstrate this point, he writes of the way that Walter White uses much of the same language that the misogynist “fans” of Breaking Bad used in talking about Skyler White during a climactic speech to her. While this makes for a powerful example of the ways that shows can respond to their bad fans, Mittell takes pains to point out how the show fostered such fans to begin with through season after season that positioned Skyler as an obstacle to Walter instead of a more fully developed and understandable character. The overall point of Mittell’s essay is that we, as academics interested in looking at serial media, must pay attention to the plurality of polysemy of the form, a polysemy that comes not just from applying different lenses to a singular work but from the series itself, which by their nature contain multitudes of different meanings.

We can understand these serial instances of political reframing through the lens of articulation, as defined by Stuart Hall (Grossberg 1986): dominant forms of political ideology are forged by the contingent linking of social practices to cultural meanings, which frequently shift and transform within new contexts. […] Serial articulation depends on the practice of reiteration, where repeating and reframing help define which linkages are maintained and which are discarded over the course of a series, highlighting how the political interpretations of serial narratives are always subject to revision and recontextualization. Seriality itself is wrapped up within this notion of articulation, as the connections between the already-seen and the new installment are the chemical reactions that create resonances of meanings, emotional engagements, and layers of cultural politics that encourage viewers to keep watching for new linkages and recontextualizations. (175)

As argued by Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch (1994, analyzing conventional episodic forms), the power of television narratives to raise cultural questions is at least as important as their power to provide ideological answers. Television’s ability to act as a cultural forum is even more vital for long-form serialized narratives whose potential answers providing closure are deferred for weeks, months, or even years. Such temporal gaps highlight how much political meaning making occurs within the broader temporal frame of serial consumption, as the politically explosive questions that Homeland raises remain ambiguously unanswered for months, creating a temporal gap for viewers and critics to fill with their own shared practices of interpretation and debate. (176)

It is fairly straightforward business to interpret a television program using the field’s well-established critical tools, isolating the particular episodes and moments that best support an argument or focusing on opinions that will help label a text ideological and/or progressive. But once you account for how serial television works over time and across various cultural sites, it becomes hard to say anything about a program’s politics with any conviction that is not draped in contingency, partiality, and competing perspectives. That might also be true for a stand alone cultural work like a novel or film, as a text’s multiple layers of meaning contradict itself and create enough interpretive varieties to sustain decades of competing scholarly interpretations. But a serial text talks back to its critics by rearticulating the meaningful moments through reiterations and recontextualizations, as with Homeland‘s video, or by putting the words of its most rabidly misogynist viewers into its protagonist’s mouth, as with Breaking Bad‘s climactic phone call. Interpretive criticism of a moving target that both serially rearticulates itself and directly incorporates its own cultural reception is of a distinctly different order than the stable polysemy of a novel or film, or even the post-serialized finality of a television series that has completed its run. (181)

“Sensing the Opaque: Seriality and the Aesthetics of Televisual Form” – Sudeep Dasgupta

Dasgupta spends much of this essay adding on to Mittell’s concept of the “drillable” TV text, those shows that invite and inspire audiences to investigate and try to fully understand the plot, characters, and world depicted therein. Dasgupta suggests that if Mittell claims that these kinds of shows create a sense that audiences can completely take in and understand a text through this drilling process (which happens largely online after initial airing), they also usually contain moments of opacity that are un-drillable, pure sensation and meaningless. Dasgupta’s premise is intriguing to say the least, as it pushes back against the standard academic stance that everything is explainable and understandable with enough work, but I have to say that I was just not smart enough to follow the rest of the essay. I just couldn’t make sense of Dasgupta’s references to other academic works and theories, which left me without a lifejacket in the middle of an ocean of non-understanding. I’ll go back to this one in the future to try to figure it out, but for right now, I’m throwing the towel in.