Recently I've been noticing a trend of things to becoming dark.
You can see this in a lot of recent media - the last of the Star Wars prequels, the later Harry Potter films, and of course the ending of Mass Effect 3. You can often converse with someone and ask about how good something is, and they'll be like "Well it was the darkest of the films." Is Dark equated with good though?
The later Harry Potter films were darker, but I definitely preferred the older ones with their childlike charm. Give me A New Hope over Revenge of the Sith anyday!
You can see this in videogames too - Dragon Age: Origins was a fairly standard save-the-world fantasy game which was great (and not particularly dark, had difficult decisions though), and then Dragon Age 2 went all dark with torture and slavery and necrophilia and stuff, but it was definitely not the better game. Same with Mass Effect, the first two games were standard space opera, but then the third shoves out an out-of-place "dark" ending down our throats.
Lord of the Rings wasn't dark but its a timeless classic and the films are great - I doubt it would have improved by an ending where Sauron wins and murders everyone, and the last film consisted of rape of Elven women by Orcs and a brooding suicidal Legolas.
Not saying "dark" isn't bad, The Witcher 2 was a great game but it was handled in a mature fashion, as opposed to just shoving in blood and darkness and sex and stuff - it was mature which meant it could handle the "dark" subject matter easily. This runs parallel to 40k which is so grimdark that it's pretty much a self parody of itself, the lack of seriousness in 40k makes the grimdark better.
So yeah, do you think there's a tendency in media to equate dark with good, and therefore make everything dark? Do you even think dark is good?Do you enjoy dark stories or less dark ones?
You can see this in a lot of recent media - the last of the Star Wars prequels, the later Harry Potter films, and of course the ending of Mass Effect 3. You can often converse with someone and ask about how good something is, and they'll be like "Well it was the darkest of the films." Is Dark equated with good though?
The later Harry Potter films were darker, but I definitely preferred the older ones with their childlike charm. Give me A New Hope over Revenge of the Sith anyday!
You can see this in videogames too - Dragon Age: Origins was a fairly standard save-the-world fantasy game which was great (and not particularly dark, had difficult decisions though), and then Dragon Age 2 went all dark with torture and slavery and necrophilia and stuff, but it was definitely not the better game. Same with Mass Effect, the first two games were standard space opera, but then the third shoves out an out-of-place "dark" ending down our throats.
Lord of the Rings wasn't dark but its a timeless classic and the films are great - I doubt it would have improved by an ending where Sauron wins and murders everyone, and the last film consisted of rape of Elven women by Orcs and a brooding suicidal Legolas.
Not saying "dark" isn't bad, The Witcher 2 was a great game but it was handled in a mature fashion, as opposed to just shoving in blood and darkness and sex and stuff - it was mature which meant it could handle the "dark" subject matter easily. This runs parallel to 40k which is so grimdark that it's pretty much a self parody of itself, the lack of seriousness in 40k makes the grimdark better.
So yeah, do you think there's a tendency in media to equate dark with good, and therefore make everything dark? Do you even think dark is good?Do you enjoy dark stories or less dark ones?
