Hollywood Action and Adventure Film

Yvonne Tasker is Professor of Film and Media at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (1993) and Soldiers’ Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television Since WWII (2011), and editor of Action and Adventure Cinema (2004).

• List of Plates viiAcknowledgements xiii1 Action and Adventure as Genre 12 Action and Adventure: Historical and Cultural Overview 233 Critical Perspectives on Action and Adventure 454 Silent Spectacle and Classical Adventure: The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) 715 War, Violence and the American Action Hero: Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Hell is for Heroes (1962) 896 Violence and Urban Action: Dirty Harry (1971) 1077 Nostalgic Adventure and Recycled Culture: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) 1218 Action Blockbusters in the 1980s: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Die Hard (1988) 1379 Global and Postmodern Action: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Kill Bill (2003) 15110 Espionage Action: The Bourne Identity (2002) and Salt (2010) 16511 Superhero Action Cinema 179Bibilography 193Index 000

“Even for readers familiarised with the previous work of Yvonne Tasker, this book brings a new look into her main area of study, as it presents not only issues pertaining the body and the representation of women in action and adventure, but also more general elements which help understand genre criticism as a whole and the action and adventure film in particular. Furthermore, and as a manual for students of Film Studies, the book fulfils its goal, as it combines the exposition of theory with clear examples, of both how the theory was previously applied and how it can be now employed to analyse the latest productions“.  (Pop-Zeitschrift, 9 October 2015)