Steampunk Film

<i>Steampunk Film: A Critical Introduction</i> is a concise and accessible overview of steampunk's indelible impact within film and acts as a case study for examining the ways with which genres hybridize and coalesce into new forms. Since the beginning of the 21st century a series of high-profile and big-budget films have adopted steampunk identities to re-imagine periods of industrial development into fantastical histories where future meets past. By calling this growing mass-cultural fetishism for anachronistic machines into question this book examines how a retro-futuristic romanticism for technology powered by cogs pistons and steam-engines has taken center stage in blockbuster cinema.<br/><br/>As the first monograph to consider cinema's unique relationship with steampunk it places this burgeoning genre in the context of ongoing debates within film theory: each of which reflecting the movement's remarkable interest in reengineering historical technologies. Rather than acting as a niche subculture Robbie McAllister argues that steampunk's proliferation in mainstream filmmaking reflects a desire to reassess contemporary relationships with technology and navigate the intense changes that the medium itself is experiencing in the 21st century.