• Following Us

  • Categories

  • Check out the Archives









  • Awards & Nominations

New Escapist Column! On “Top Gun: Maverick”, “Thor: Love and Thunder” and the Rise of the Anti-Legacyquel…

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of both Top Gun: Maverick and Thor: Love and Thunder recently, it seemed like an opportunity to unpack what might be described as “the rise of the anti-legacyquel.”

The term “legacyquel” emerged in the middle of the last decade to describe a new kind of franchise film, one that allowed an aging cast to gracefully hand over the series to a younger generation. For a few years, it seemed like this might offer a sustainable model for Hollywood’s future. However, recent years have seen a very firm rejection of this approach, with Maverick and Love and Thunder serving as two very recent and very high-profile examples of stories about an older generation seemingly welcoming a new generation of heroes, only to take back control at the climax of the story.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Column! On Squaring the Circle with Nostalgic Sequels Like “The Rise of Skywalker” and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”…

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife this weekend, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the larger trend of the modern nostalgia sequels, and the paradoxes at play within the genre.

By their very nature, belated sequels like Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens require the heroes to have left something unfinished or undone for years or even decades. Often, this involves forcing the heroes’ children to effectively grapple with the exact same problem that haunted their parents. There’s a recurring theme of generational failure running through these stories, a sense that the failure of these older heroes to wrap up their own stories exists at odds with the nostalgia that powers such stories.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.