Examining a range of fantasy films released in the past decade, Pheasant-Kelly looks at why these films are meaningful to current audiences. The imagery and themes reflecting 9/11, millennial anxieties, and environmental disasters have furthered fantasy's rise to dominance as they allow viewers to work through traumatic memories of these issues.

Autorentext
Frances Pheasant-Kelly is a senior lecturer in Film Studies in the School of Law, Social Science and Communication at the University of Wolverhampton.

Inhalt

1. Settings, Spectacle, and the Other: Picturing Disgust in Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy 2. Bewitching, Abject, Uncanny: Magical Spectacle in the Harry Potter Films 3. Pirate Politics and the Spectacle of the Other: Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Resurrection, Anthropomorphism, and Cold War Echoes in Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 5. The Aesthetics of Trauma: Temporality and Multidirectional Memory in Pan's Labyrinth 6. Reframing the Cold War in the Twenty-First Century: Action, Nostalgia, and Nuclear Holocaust in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 7. The Ecstasy of Chaos: Mediating 9/11, Terrorism, and Trauma in The Dark Knight 8. Wounding, Morality, and Torture: Reflections of the War on Terror in Iron Man and Iron Man 2 9. Shock and Awe: Terror, Technology, and the Sublime Nature of Cameron's Avatar