The Return of the Epic Film : Genre, Aesthetics and History in the 21st Century

## Explores the return of the ‘epic’ in twenty-first-century cinema With the success of __Gladiator__, both critics and scholars enthusiastically announced the return of a genre which had lain dormant for thirty years. However, this return raises important new questions which remain unanswered. Why did the epic come back, and why did it fall out of fashion? Are these the same kinds of epics as the 1950s and 60s, or are there aesthetic differences? Can we treat __Kingdom of Heaven, 300__ and __Thor__ indiscriminately as one genre? Are non-Western histories like __Hero__ and __Mongol__ epics, too? Finally, what precisely do we mean when we talk about the return of the epic film, and why are they back? __The Return of the Epic Film__ offers a fresh way of thinking about a body of films which has dominated our screens for a decade. With contributions from top scholars in the field, the collection adopts a range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore the epic film in the twenty-first century.