See the essay "A Critical Appreciation of John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian" on the site The Barbarian Keep: The author refers to an essay by Stephen Schiff titled "The Repeatable Experience" from Film Comment, March-April 1982 that seems relevant to some of what you talk about here.
What you said about serialirt made me think of tokusatsu shows and mecha anime from the 70s, which basically have all the characteristics you described, just 20-30 years later.
For sure. In fact, I was actually originally going to mention tokusatsu alongside my discussion of Irwin Allen's shows (being of a similar breed of "special effects shows") but I didn't really have much to say. Need to watch more tokusatsu!
