The previous chapters have been a series of interrupted journeys or forays into and around Malaysian film culture, with each chapter approaching its subject increasingly more specifically, until a selection of films made in Malaysia were examined in detail in chapter 4 in order to illustrate the arguments presented throughout the book. The metaphor of the journey is important and relevant, because it suggests a movement through time and space. Movement has been the prime characteristic of the theoretical and cultural perspectives employed in the argument: the movement of ideas and the movement of peoples through place and history, defined as transtextuality and transmigration. The two are intimately linked by those ‘lines of connectedness’ frequently referred to in the book, and each chapter is structured as a series of ‘border crossings’ that highlight the cross-cultural nature of the enterprise. Journeys have also been central to the histories and stories of the cultures examined in this book: the journeys of the sojourners to the Archipelago, whether as elite or mass migrants; the fearful journeys across the kaala pani by Indian laborers; the journeys from the kampung to the city and back to the kampung; the journeys of the exiled Rama and Pandavas in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata; the journeys of the Chinese knight-errant men and women; the journeys of Hang Tuah. This chapter recaps and summarizes the complex and detailed arguments of the previous chapters, before presenting the major conclusions of the book.

The introduction considered the location of the analyst in relation to the book's argument, represented as literal and cultural journeys between Australia and Malaysia. The encounters with Malaysian cultural products attested to the difficulties and the creative possibilities of cross-cultural analysis, irrespective of the linguistic/cultural origin of the product. The films discussed indicate the heterogeneity and cultural complexity of film distribution and exhibition in Malaysia, where Malay, Chinese, Hong Kong, Indian and Ameri can films are all shown in ‘mainstream’ cinemas and the phenomenon of specialist or ‘art’ cinemas does not exist.