Commentary

Hollywood heroes in high tech risk societies: modern fairy tales and emerging technologies

part of Science and South Park, Reddit and Facebook, Leonardo da Vinci and the Vitruvian Man, and modern fairy tales about emerging technologies: science communication and popular culture

Science, research and emerging technologies often play a key role in many modern action movies. In this contribution we suggest to use genre analysis of folk narratives as an innovative and useful tool for understanding science and technology in action movies. In this contribution we outline our approach using illustrative examples and detail how understanding action movies as modern fairy tales can benefit the study of science, research and technology in popular culture.