About the Editor
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction--The Action Film: “Over Familiar and Understudied”
James Kendrick
Part I: History
1. Origins of the Action Film: Types, Tropes, and Techniques in Early Film History
Kyle Barrowman
2. A Genre of Its Own: From Westerns, to Vigilantes, to Pure Action
James Kendrick
3. The New Dominance: Action-Fantasy Hybrids and the New Superhero in 2000s Action Cinema
Lisa Purse
4. Around the World in Action
Mark Gallagher
Part II: Form and Aesthetics
5. The Perpetual Motion Aesthetic of Action Cinema
Nick Jones
6. Asian Action Cinema and Its Influence on Hollywood
Barna William Donovan
7. Comedy in Action
Cynthia M. King
8. The Composite Body: Action Stars and Embodiment in the Digital Age
Drew Ayers
9. Translating the Panel: Remediating a Comics Aesthetic in Contemporary Action Cinema
Joshua Wucher
Part III: Auteurs--Directors, Stars, Choreographers
10. Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah, and the Action Concept of Eastern Westerns
Stephen Teo
11. The Martial Arts Supremacy: Action Film and Fight Choreography
Paul Bowman
12. All Guts and No Glory: Stuntwork and Stunt Performers in Hollywood History
Lauren Steimer
13. Hollywood’s Hard Bodies: The Stars Who Made the Action Films Famous
Susan Jeffords
14. The Strange Case of Carlos Ray Norris: Reactionary Masculinity and Its Imaginary Discontents
Tony Williams
15. New Action Realism: Claustrophobia, Immediacy, and Mediation in the Films of Kathryn Bigelow, Paul Greengrass, and Michael Mann
Vincent M. Gaine
Part IV: Social and Cultural Issues
16. Postmodernism in Action Movies
By Micheal McAlexander
17. The 1980s Action Film and the Politics of Urban Expulsions
Jon Kraszewski
18. Infinite Crisis: Intertextuality and Watchmen
Matt Yockey
19. Blowing Up the War Film: Powerlessness and the Crisis of the Action-Image in The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds
Paul Gormley
20. X-Men/Action Men: Performing Masculinities in Superhero and Science-Fiction Cinema
Yvonne Tasker
21. Unlikely Action Heroine: Melissa McCarthy Challenges Bodily Ideals in Modern Action Film
Jeffrey A. Brown
22. “I Am Become Death”: Managing Massacres and Constructing the Female Teen Leader in The 100
Rikke Schubart
23. A Digital Nature: Lucy Takes Technology for a Ride
Lorrie Palmer
24. “I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed”: Prosthetics, Agency Panic, and the High-Tech Action Film
Steffen Hantke
