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Abstract

Although recent critical studies have begun to acknowledge the aesthetic connections that films and video games share, too often these studies neglect to extend an analysis to consumer culture. As video games now make up an important segment of the film industry’s market, this critical engagement is needed to extend the scholarship on video games. Specifically, this essay critically engages the concept of interactivity as an important theoretical construction in the study of video games. Through an analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King video game, the authors discover that interactivity can be limited in a way that augments the synergistic connections between films and video games.