I have been noticing a trend in movies these days that I find both intriguing and unsettling. And that is a theme of DARKNESS. I noticed it most recently when I was sitting in the Star Trek: Into DARKNESS movie and was thinking about the new Hobbit trailer that had the phrase BEYOND DARKNESS in it's title scheme. A few weeks later, I see Superman: Man of Steel. That movie was not the usual, happy Superman film; instead it was dark and dreary. And again, a few days ago I read an interview from Peter Jackson saying that the Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug will be much darker than it's predecessor and will not contain much humor. (Hence the "beyond darkness" I guess.)
For a person like myself, who LOVES conflict and darkness, this is great news! I love dark thematic material. My favorite stories are tragedies, my favorite superhero films dark, my favorite films full of battle and darkness. So yeah, I'm PUMPED. But at the same time, I'm a little bit unsettled by this turn in films. And it really hasn't been this "all of a sudden thing", you can actually really start to see the turn towards bleak over the past few years. But lately, it seems like Hollywood is marketing and pushing these dark thematic works. Even if you reflect upon the past year of Oscar movies there is a pattern of morbidity. Zero Dark Thirty: woman's fight to find Osama Bin Ladin, in which almost all of her friends die and is stripped raw with determination. Lincoln: uplifting story but the whole movie was filmed in this grey overlay. Argo: an intense drama, about a hostage crisis, where the people are avoiding death the entire time. Life of Pi: a shipwreck, cannibalism/animal slaughters, and starving to death (almost). Amore: woman gets Alzheimer and has her husband take care of her whilst she withers away and dies. Django: slavery. Les Miserables: do I need to say more. I could go on and on about how dark these movies were, and yes you could argue that morbid/intense themes make for a more critically relevant cinematic experience but to the extent that they have been lately it's odd.
I mean, what happened to the age (like the freaking 90s....) where cinema was sooo diverse? We had the Disney Renaissance, amazing romantic comedies (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail), epic war movies and tragedies alike. Everything was balanced, you could go to the cinema with the opportunity to have your heart warmed or sob your guts out. It was beautiful time. Now the only options you have are mindless action movies, or movies that make you cry. Again, personally I think it's great. But at a cinematic standpoint..perhaps not so much.
